The Restory Retreat Centre

WHAT I HEARD AT THE DISCOUNT DEPARTMENT STORE Don’t touch that. And stop your whining too. Stop it. I mean it. You know I do. If you don’t stop, I’ll give you fucking something to cry about right here and don’t you think I won’t either. So she did. She slapped him across the face. And you could hear the snap of flesh against flesh half-way across the store. Then he wasn’t whining anymore. Instead, he wept. His little body heaved and shivered and wept. He was seven or eight. She was maybe thirty. Above her left breast, the pin said: Nurse’s Aide. Now they walk hand in hand down the aisle between the tables piled with tennis shoes and underpants and plastic bags of socks. I told you I would. You knew I would. You can’t get away with shit like that with me, You know you can’t. You’re not in school anymore. You’re with your mother now. You can get away with fucking murder there, but you can’t get away with shit like that with me. Stop that cry...

Sometimes life asks the impossible of us: like packing up and moving from a place where you have lived for many decades of your life; emigrating; losing a life partner to an early death, a loved one to suicide. Sometimes, as in the case of a very dear friend of mine, it asks that you accompany your eighteen year old son through the dark valleys of chemotherapy and radiation in a fight against cancer; or it asks that you be that young man fighting this battle. It is hard to stand at the edge of such a situation and to not really know how to help. We always feel that we should somehow make it better. We somehow feel that the difficult things should be put behind us as soon as possible, or be avoided at all costs. We feel that the situations life puts us in and where we suffer pain or hardship = wrong or even evil. We pray for deliverance, for healing, for the miracle that will make everything better. But all around us life is happening and it is messy. It is mostly hard. We wer...