The Welcome Ache

My bones ache dully like an old woman’s when it storms. There is nothing unbearable about it, and I feel as if nothing can be done. Rubbing or stretching often are done, with no effect. Just now I’m feeling this way, and gazing at the skylights – such a romantic word for the only romantic part of the industrial steel box in which I work. Outside is a storm. Spring is still here, its violence the infant compared to the full grown warrior of summer. Today offered one blast of thunder, the long, patient rumble accompanying darker skies and a bit of rain. I wouldn’t exchange the storm for freedom from pain for anything. The pain may even awaken me to the conflict outdoors.

Weather is a conflict, a paradox. Bodies of air move over or under each other, affecting each other, fighting and at once altering. It is a bonding and a divorce, a war and a peace. The clouds hide the sun that formed them, only to be dissolved again or blown away by the solar powered wind.

There are some kinds of pain I hate. I rebel. They are senseless, pure war on life and love. Yet love always carries pain, the truth of pain against the empty imitation. I would not give up the love to banish the pain. They work together even, much as the weather, in its dance of wholeness and growth. Love sometimes explodes in thunder, accompanied inseparably by the curtain of lightning for a moment giving sight to reality.

To God be all glory.