Tenderness, The Breaker of Curses

Dear Miracles,

To be cursed is to be dried up, devoid of moisture and suppleness, brittle and lacking the essential ingredient of life: fresh, circulating water.

The most harmful afflictions of body, mind, spirit, and soul are those that seek to take away, ignore, and otherwise exploit our ability to be tender towards ourselves and towards one another.

The remedy for this affliction may take many different forms, but always includes blessing what is tender within you.

In many different cultures, the evil eye is understood primarily as a “drying” condition, one in which your money dries up, your health dries up, your fertility and verve for life also dry up.

In opposition, to be blessed is to be moist, supple, full of flowing water, clean, bathed, and tender like new shoots of grass, tender like fresh green wood sprouting forth from a tree, tender like the water filled skin of a newborn baby nestled up safely in your arms.

 Losing one’s tenderness, therefore, is tantamount to losing one’s life.

The loss of tenderness and thus of life is not difficult to achieve.

Let yourself be taken over by anger, envy, jealousy, hatred, and fear, and you will know how easy it is to do.

You can observe for yourself the negative consequences of being taken over by these emotions, how they cause a withering and a contraction in your life and relationships.  

But even so, we may come to doubt the need for tenderness.

Why be tender in a world and in a time that seems so often to only reward the tougher–than–nails?

How does one cultivate tenderness in the face of violence, bloodshed, and injustice?

What is tenderness other than one more vulnerability, easily overcome by those who are “stronger”?

How do we stay tender in times such as these and how do we bless our tender places?

We bless our tender places by calling in the waters.

We call in the waters so that we might cry good and salty tears, make nourishing soup, wash the dust off our clothes, and irrigate the seeds we have planted.

So that we may drink of the waters and bathe in them, washing ourselves clean, literally renewing ourselves. We call in the waters from within, reaching deep and accessing the sacred well that may be blocked or polluted, but is simply waiting to be set free, waiting to be cleansed so that it can run, rush, and spring forth from the solid ground of your very life.

Tenderness – and the circulating life waters corresponding to it – points to the deepest parts of our resilient nature. Resilience is a power, and it is what makes for much needed hardiness of life and soul. Sometimes it seems that there is no water to call in, no source of nourishment, of life–celebrating and life–protecting magic.

But finding the water, finding the sources of life and nourishment, is not an easy task. Especially not when you look around and all you see is hard, sun–baked rock, packed gravel, and too much asphalt.

I have lived most of my life in desert regions, and so I know from firsthand experience the water that is there, hundreds of feet under the ground and flowing in madly rushing rivers or collected in fathomless lakes.

You don’t see it, but it is there. When the territory around looks most inhospitable to tenderness, then you know that you are in exactly the right spot to fill yourself up with all that gives life, all that keeps you supple, all that keeps you tender.

You may have to dig for it, you might have to learn to collect it drop by drop from precious rainfalls, you may end up going on a pilgrimage to find it; but it is there, waiting to be called upon.

To bless tenderness is also to protect it.

In desert areas that are hot, arid, and dry, the culture is one of toughness, and even the plants with their prickles and thorns seem to just be waiting for their chance to chew you up and spit you out.

If you neglected to look closely, you would be forgiven for thinking that toughness and hardness is all that matters. But soulful seekers DO look closer, and what we find are that the plants with the best boundaries are the same that have the most tender, water-filled skins. They give us the blessing way. Find the water, find the sources of life, and when you do, keep them safe; build a good boundary around them.

Don’t just let anyone access your tenderness, choose actively and with discernment who and when and where receives the privilege of your softness.

To bless our tender places is to ask for and gladly accept help. In many cultures there are Gods and Holy Helpers who bring the waters of life, bring the rains, bring the thunderclouds that roll in with their big noise, making the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and reminding you that you are very much alive, creating with every breath you take, holding an infinite cosmos within your very body.

We are not islands meant to do it all on our own.

We have two-legged and four-legged, winged, clawed, fanged, and finned relatives who are here and ready and willing to help point us in all the right directions; so we look to them and we listen.

Finally, tenderness is meant to be shared.

Like water, it requires a solid vessel, the boundary of the cacti, to keep it stored up safely; but once we are filled up with it we cannot help but overflow.

The overflow happens in many ways – through tears and laughter and deep kisses and long touches, through creative work and vibrant dance, and the sweet sound of the saxophone or drums under the stars. These are all medicines, results from the blessing and safe keeping of your tenderness, that literally spill forth and out into the world much like water, nourishing much like water, and restoring so many that are on the brink of death back into life.

Tenderness is no small thing. It is, in truth, a source of the greatest strength.

It is not the weak spot or the pain point to be covered up, but rather a sign post, the tracks in the snow, that carry you forward to your own headwaters, no matter where it leads.

So remember that anytime the flow feels blocked, anytime your skin feels shrunken and life feels too dry, relationships too brittle, and your broken places too yawning and jagged; remember when you feel raw and exposed, vulnerable, or too tender, remember what lessons tenderness has to teach you about your own hardiness, your own deeply resilient nature.

It may be time to bless your most tender places and call forth the waters once more.