When Change Comes Splashing

The Gifts of Blessing

Blessing
Sometimes you find yourself
at the center
of suffering-
yours, mine, ours, 
earth's.
It might be long
or just an infinity's minute.

Everything beyond 
your pain
disappears.
You forget
you are loved,
have known joy,
have been lifted by beauty.
Until

the touch of a hand,
the sound of a word,
a meeting of eyes,
the kiss of the wind
reminds you.
There is more,

and blessing arrives.

As when raindrops fall
on a smooth mirrored lake,
rippling out in widening circles,
touching each other,
no longer solitary drops,
but held
by the swelling lake
that will in time
grow calm 
and still
again, holding all
that has fallen 
into its arms.
           Karen Hering

When change comes, it often arrives with a splash, small or large, creating a vortex that can make us feel alone.

But change comes not as a solitary event to one of us, or some of us; change comes to all of us. Like raindrops on a calm lake, each sends out ripples from its center in circles that meet and overlap, even as they are all held and absorbed by the lake. In the middle of a storm, it can be hard to remember that in time, the lake’s surface, now wildly disrupted, will know stillness again.

Each of us takes our turn in the center of these circles, for a moment or a lifetime or something in between. We feel the impact caused by change or losses large and small, experienced directly or witnessed with an open heart. Each is worth acknowledging and comforting. Each can create a need to vent and express the feelings that rise.

This is why I find good wisdom in the “Ring Theory” of care.[1] Developed by psychologist Susan Silk, the Ring Theory puts the person at the center of any incident of loss or suffering in circle, with a slightly larger circle around it. The second circle is for the one(s) in closest relationship to the one in the middle. Drawing another wider circle around that, this is where we write the names of those next closest. And we continue drawing as many rings as needed to name those who are connected to the person in the middle and impacted by their experience.

The wisdom of Silk’s Ring Theory is that it describes two rules to create a healthy system of support for the one in the middle – as well as those in the ever widening circumference around them. First, all energy and effort moving inward through the rings must provide comfort and support. Secondly, when it’s necessary to name pain, sorrow, despair or fears, all of that must move outward, only to those in circles larger than our own. “Comfort IN; dumping OUT,” says Silk.

The beauty of the model is that the aggrieved person in middle gets to receive comfort AND to release their feelings – all of them. Others send their support inward to the one suffering (and to the others supporting them), but when they need to express their own angst or fears, it does not go inward to the one already with the largest share of suffering or to those closest to them. It goes outward to someone less intimately connected.

In times when change touches so many lives, sometimes horrifically, I think of the circles rippling out on the lake’s surface and the way they touch, overlap and merge into the greater body of water that holds it all. Each of us, will have many turns in the center where change strikes. Each of us, will have many more chances to participate in supporting others in the center. All of us, will be held by the larger sense of being that we share with all others, where our circles of care and concern meet and mix and absorb the ripples of life’s storms. We may feel alone in the middle of change, but we are always accompanied by others, many of them in the midst of change too.

This – the reconnection to others and to the wholeness of all being – is the work of blessing. To send comfort to the innermost ring, and to draw out the pain, isolation and fear that sometimes comes from change. As John O’Donohue once wrote, a blessing “awakens future wholeness.” It reminds us of the lake that holds us all.

On Tuesday, Dec 12, we will meet online to consider the gifts of blessing in the last session of the 2023 series, “A Year of Living with Change.” Whether you’ve come to an earlier session or not, you are welcome. If you are living through change and wish to consider how the act of “blessing” – including self-blessing – might bring you comfort and support, please come. Anyone can register through the series cosponsors, Prairiewoods and the Christine Center; and paid subscribers to Threshold Times, will receive a link to participate as a benefit of your support.

As I wrote in Trusting Change:

“Thankfully, there is no end to the variety and form of blessings we can offer and receive. On any scale, from the grandest to the most minute, at the core of every blessing is the simple and sacred experience of being seen. Being acknowledged and accepted, honored and loved for who we really are.”

Whether or not you attend the online session, if you need a blessing on the threshold of change today, you might enjoy reading my poem “Here,” which is also included in Trusting Change. It offers a blessing for times of change.

Wishing you all wholeness as we turn toward the closing of this year,

Karen

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[1] “How Not to Say the Wrong Thing,” Susan Silk and Barry Goldman, LA Times, April 7, 2013.