hurt

Currently listening to “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails…

For years, I couldn’t listen to it because my Grandpa had loved the Johnny Cash cover and sang it often. It struck a raw nerve, having much healing still needed after he passed. He was a larger than life kind of man whom most everyone loved… but he was also imperfect and caused pain that he regretted so much in his final days. This song became his prayer for forgiveness.

As I get older and look back at the pain I’ve caused, and continue to heal through both his presence in and absence from my life, this song has become my prayer OF forgiveness… for myself and others.

Music is salvation for me… it always has been. It’s that place of solace, wrapped warm in the blanket of words reminding me I am not alone.

I find myself mired in such an intermingling of emotions… joy for family created, found, and formed; but also deep mourning for family lost and global atrocities which seem to have no end. I’m flooded by grief and rage at the incessant violence perpetually forced upon Earth Mother and Her children: ecocide, genocide, femicide… all the “-cides” that are killing humanity as a species, but also destroying our innate humanity within.

Or, is it?

Perhaps, it’s showing that which was lost long ago upon the first voyages set out in the name of conquest and colonization. Maybe the Seeds of Hurt we, as a species, planted then, are the same ones choking out Life all around us.

We hurt ourselves then, today, and we’ll do it tomorrow.

Do we still feel? Can we focus on the pain… allow it to wash over us… wash us clean and invite us into a new depth of healing and reality?

As part of my healing… the one that will lend to that of the Collective that is Humanity, I’ll cuddle up to familiar songs, being held in the embrace of familiarity and friend. I can surrender to the truth of what I feel, no mask required. Some musicians plant seeds in our hearts and become forever a part of us. For me, that’s this band and particularly this song.

I used to advocate for silent meditation and “spiritual” music and then realized that some of my greatest “God moments” have been at concerts sobbing along to Nine Inch Nails or Brandi Carlile… some of the most profound yoga and meditation practices have been alone on my mat moving to or resting in stillness along with a playlist of Trent Reznor and Puscifer.

God is everything, and will meet us where we are if we just ask. I’m on a new but old and well worn journey with my Creator. Once again, God has shown me I couldn’t possibly know everything there is to know about the Divine and so we’ve evolved in our dynamic together. I’ll keep seeking and listening and Knowing God will meet me where and as I am… even in a Nine Inch Nails song