Wednesday Wisdom: Be Comforted
Blessed are those who mourn: for they will be comforted
Sunday evening my mother died. She was elderly, and in many ways this was expected at some point soon, but the series of events in the last month were dramatic, and her death felt sudden. I pulled out some vignettes from my book Comfort & Joy: Simple Ways to Care for Ourselves and Others, which mentions her and reconnects me to the power and presence of comfort.
***
Touch
Sometimes comfort needs to be felt, needs to be physical. I think of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, her ministry to the poor, sick, and dying. It was a ministry of touch. Every time I see my elderly neighbor—who now lives alone after the recent death of her husband of sixty years—we exchange a gesture of caring. It’s spontaneous. We squeeze hands, hug, or pat each other gently on the back.
We feel comfort through touch. I still hold my mother’s hand. I’ve held her hand forever, crossing the street, walking in the park, sitting in the hospital after my father’s heart attack. Her hands are warm and strong. Over the years, they have cleaned a lot of floors, folded piles of laundry, and stirred many pots. Her knuckles are thick like the roots of a tree.
To hold hands is a tender and intimate act. It is the child in us crawling into a refuge; it is the desire to connect; the desire for union in a very simple way. Sometimes, more than words, I desire the unspoken comfort of touch.
***
Smells
When I was a child, before my mother went on a trip, she would give me a white handkerchief scented in her perfume, Chanel No. 5. I would place it under my pillow, and when I missed her, I’d cover my face with the piece of cloth and inhale her scent. I can still close my eyes and smell that handkerchief.
The smells of comfort are held in the body. “You smell so human,” my husband says to me. He brushes his cheek against mine, delighting in the sweet oil of my skin, mingled with the warm air and dry grass after hours of walking in the open hills.
Daily smells are a constant comfort. As I walk up the steps of my house, I smell the salty sea air lingering from the ocean just a mile away. In the living room, I can smell last night’s fire. In the garden, I smell wet grass, and the bedroom still smells of the sandalwood incense I had been burning. For me, these are the smells that tell me I am home.
We punctuate our days with the comforting smells of food, from freshly baked blueberry muffins in the morning to garlic and basil cooking in a tomato sauce in the evening. A whiff, a waft, a sniff, and the scents carry and soothe.
The smells of comfort live deeply inside of us, held in our bodies and in our memories.
***
Calling
I walk into the Catholic church by my house. I have been walking into churches since I was a child, and the familiarity brings me comfort. The smells of incense and candles burning fill the air. There are always people praying, holding rosary beads, kneeling before statues, and lighting candles.
I feel the tremendous outpouring of prayers that have been said in this church. I have prayed here until I was speechless, and then my silence has prayed for me. There is comfort in not feeling alone and in joining in this communion.
We are calling, calling out to feel our glory, to reach beyond the tattered prayers on our tongues and dwell in the unbroken circle. We are the devotion of the body, reaching toward its divinity.
***
Stillness
I walk in a redwood grove, where giant sequoia trees have lived for hundreds of years. Because the trees are so large, the sight of tree trunks dominates my vision. There they stand, still and silent. Their stillness slows me down.
I sit and absorb the trees, feel the roots in my feet, the base deep in my belly. In the simple act of sitting, ease settles into my body, and there, comfort can find room.
Stillness comforts. I sit in a museum and look at a painting. I sit and absorb the colors, shapes, lines, feeling, and tone of the painting. I look, not intent on knowing whether it’s a Matisse or Picasso, but taking it in whole, unnamed, poetic and dreamy.
Still. Present. Allowing time to stop. Comfort is always there ready to be tapped. Comfort lives all around us: in a chair waiting to be sat in, a tree waiting to be looked at, in the eyes of a painting calling us inside.
***
Pause and Practice: Cultivating Comfort
Just like a tree needs room to grow in the ground, comfort needs room to grow in your life. Imagine yourself planted firmly into the earth like a large tree. Can you connect with the stillness that is inside of you? Sometimes by stopping and being still, you can recognize that comfort is right in front of you.