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Why Badstuff Happens
by Elsa Joy Bailey
among the earliest and dearest friends of The Zoo Fence
If it weren't for my beautiful sad mother
drinking
a beaker of cold cyanide when I was three,
I wouldn't have learned
she could both love and abandon me
in one hot severe
breath.
Nor would I have grown flowers in my heart
for people who urgently
want to die.
If I had not broken my leg in a wild fall,
I wouldn't have learned that stark
physical pain
is, to my great surprise, not permanent.
If I hadn't fallen in love with someone
who didn't love me,
I would never have
realized that unrequited love
is still an ecstatic dance of the heart.
If I hadn't encountered praise and blame,
success and failure, heat and cold,
darkness and light,
blows and kisses, pain and bliss,
never would I have found
out that through it all
there is a Spirit within me
which remains unceasingly
alive and loving.
If I hadn't received the gift of knowing you,
I would not have come to
realise
that our stories are different in details,
but never in
essence.
If I hadn't lived through an era of hurting
I would never have met the
miracle
of being fed with kindness by a friend.
If I hadn't discovered that you and I
are two threads in the same vast cloth,
I would have remained forever lost and imprisoned
in my separate universe.
If I hadn't seen both good and evil
occupying space in the same event,
I
would never have met the hand of humour
painting over these polarities
with
new clarity and light.
If I hadn't wept a thousand tears
over the loss of a beloved,
I would never
have been driven inward
to find the eternal companion,
my Soul.
If I had not witnessed cruelty
and man's inhumanity to man,
I would not have
been forced to look
beneath the ugliness of fear,
and encounter the common
Heart
that lies beneath it.
If I hadn't encountered our myriad differences,
I would never have discovered
that you and I
are not two,
but infinite sparks of love ever arising
from
one indestructible Flame.
And if I hadn't felt abandoned and heartsick,
I would never have heard the
wordless whisper
of an abiding, unseeable Friend,
who translated the feeling
of alone
into All One.
For TZF’s essay “Why Do Bad Things Happen To Good People” please click Here.
