“The earth’s surface is made up of constantly moving plates shifting against one another. You might suppose that a solid, steel-like lithosphere would make for a more stable structure, but the opposite is true. The pressure, tension, and sublimation between the shifting plates - much of which occurs beneath the ocean floor - is one of the reasons the planet can sustain life. The earth’s seemingly Volcano erupting stable surface and molten interior are in constant dialogue, sometimes manifested as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis. The human parallel is striking. The more ductile our outer surface, or ego, the more seamlessly we can flow with the subterranean shifts in our awareness and understanding. Poetry is one conduit. The poet accesses the deep, unseen currents and invites the reader to follow. Nature is another portal, as are music and art. But if our ego is too stiff and rigid, like the dense rock surface of the San Andreas Fault, we cannot make the tiny, ongoing adjustments to our own inward movement. The ego and the soul become disjointed, causing pressure to mount until the correction comes in one cataclysmic jolt. The character Oliver in my novel April & Oliver exemplifies this. He has a created such a fixed, closed outer reality that he has left no room for the influence of more subtle, interior energies, such as insight and intuition. In fact, he is afraid of the power of those blocked off magma chambers, which harbor the musical sensibility he has long buried. Disowning one’s power is a dangerous thing, however, and the seismic adjustment for Oliver will be, by necessity, catastrophic. The metaphor is illustrated by this poem taught to Le Pichon by his mother. Can it be a coincidence that the boy who memorized this poem in childhood went on to become an expert in plate tectonics?
Xavier Le Pichon, one of the world's leading geophysicists, helped create the field of plate tectonics. A devout Catholic and spiritual thinker, he raised his family in intentional communities centered around people with mental disabilities. He shares his rare perspective on the meaning of humanity -- a perspective equally informed by his scientific and personal encounters with fragility as a fundament of vital, evolving systems. Le Pichon has come to think of caring attention to weakness as an essential quality that allowed humanity to evolve.” [1]
Xavier Pichon
Fragility
A presence and awareness to suffering in the world
On being, suffering, in failing we come together
Organized religion forces us into a theology of perfection
Whereby we are constantly being judged
Against a notion of the perfect man the Tzaddik
Where we always fall short in our human failings
Along comes this scientist and teaches us that tectonics
That earthquakes as a refutation of the divine
A theodicy of sorts to the rationalist mind
Weakness as part of the system that is alive
Pointing to the importance of the fragility of human life
At the heart of humanity,
Mirroring the tectonic plates of weakness in the living earth
How weakness is part of a system that is alive
That rather than refuting the divine
Points us to a fractured divine
Within us.
Morning to night I listen
To the suffering of human beings
Mostly impoverished
Most in deep pain that crosses the physical and mental
Defying the simplistic either or models
I listen and see the same pain within myself
The powerlessness of poverty
The fear of the next fall into violence or inner loss
The body as enemy that culturally must be tamed and beaten
In this mythic medical war
Pichon teaches me that we must focus more on the fragility
Which requires compassion
More compassion
In that delicate space of empathy
We enter a community of mutual respect and suffering
Where healing is first and foremost my hearing the pain
Understanding how deep it penetrates the soul
And the softness that underlies the story
The biography of trauma
The larger socio-economic tale of powerlessness
The divine is only present in such encounter
The suffering neighbor
The connection in tears
The stoke of the hair of understanding
The mercy of mutual loss
The depth of camaraderie.
It is so different from the technological mastery
How we treat chronic disease, degenerative diseases of the Brain
And spinal cord
The arthritis
The myalgia and neuropathies
All taxonomies and codes with ICD 10’s and DRG numbers
As if,
If you fall into this category or diagnosis you will be understood
And fixed.
In the slow dementia
Of mind and soul
We must find a spirituality of the fragility, the slow loss of function
Knowing full well we have no cure
Can we still be heroic?
Can we still endure in companionship?
Can we get through to the soul of the demented?
Unless we change the model
Unless we understand the fragility of being human on both sides of the white coat
We will forever remain
Lost in the stone age soulless technology of medicine.
