Julian Ungar-Sargon

  • Home
  • Theological Essays
  • Healing Essays
  • Podcast
  • Poetry
  • Daf Ditty
  • Deep Dive Ditty
  • Videos
  • Publications
  • Military Service
  • Dominican University
  • Home
  • Theological Essays
  • Healing Essays
  • Podcast
  • Poetry
  • Daf Ditty
  • Deep Dive Ditty
  • Videos
  • Publications
  • Military Service
  • Dominican University

Poems

Moving Poetry by Dr. Julian Ungar-Sargon

The Body In Pain

Julian Ungar-Sargon January 6, 2008

How to construct a new image

In light my recovery and divine intervention?

Re-visit old myths and texts in a new key.

That of salvation

For I have been saved

Not in the local spiritual meaning, far beyond that

But physically, emotionally and soul saving

In a divine act of grace and charity.

Within the pain I watch the body react

And see and perceive the miracle of daily improvement

The breath becomes longer the weak legs get stronger the

aching spasms of the left chest wall remain but respond

better to the heating packs

I also need fewer painkillers.

And realize that I am so powerless over everything in my

life, the accident as well as the speed of recovery,

privileged to have those who love me care for me in

powerlessness,

That these processes are set in the laws of physics and

molecular biology over which I have no control, that I am a

mere participant through which these laws are incarnate

yet I am able to document and watch closely as if I were

interpreting a text: The body as sacred text.

But how to live with the gnawing fact of something divine

in my salvation is the challenge; you know my tradition

does not handle salvation and crucifixion talk well! But

there you have it, a sister canonical text that embodies

notions of suffering and passion, salvation and new

insights. (Simone Weil may have seen this better than

anyone in the last century), but today I prefer Elaine

Scarry's meditation on pain and its currency in the

mythical and political landscape.

And how to live each day differently in the face of this

dimension?

For me it is clearer as the days go by¦

Live my vocation better

I am a healer

And in my healing I must add this new dimension of grace

and blessing;

For as I healed slowly and painfully daily

I realized the blessing came in and through the body of

pain and nowhere else.

Only in the body of pain could I locate meaning and

divinity

Not beyond

Not out there but very immanently within.

The incarnation is active and well. Tzimtzum has a new

dimension.

So my task is clear

To bless others and open their hearts to their pain

To see the divine within themselves albeit paradoxically

Feel the pain its length and breadth its quality and duration

and in the feeling

See something a message of grace.

For as Rabbi Nachman tells us God hides in the very

hidden spaces where you expect Him least

And not only that He hides His deepest secrets there! In

the most unexpected places to avoid the "Other side".

Yes I must teach my patients from my own pain

How see their own divine nature within

By blessing more

By being a conduit for blessing and divine succor.

TagsP1
  • Poems
  • Older
  • Newer

Julian Ungar-Sargon

This is Julian Ungar-Sargon's personal website. It contains poems, essays, and podcasts for the spiritual seeker and interdisciplinary aficionado.​