Reading the secret history

If we could read the secret history

Of those we would like to punish

We would find in each life a sorrow and suffering

Enough to disarm all our hostility

                             Hendry Wadsworth Longfellow

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I often say

In my most irascible moment

when another has irritated me

even pushed me toward the edge of that abyss called anger

or even hate

“how would I have to be feeling to act like that?”

How indeed

out of what fear, hurt, pain, loneliness

out of what woundedness

what aching needed

did that act of anger, or greed, or jealousy emerge?

It is only recently that I have learned

to ask that question of myself

where did that act come from that I abhor in myself?

where did those words

that behavior come from

out of what fear, hurt, pain, loneliness

did that arise

for only then can I greet that wounded part of me

and enfold it

embrace it

cover it with love

only then can healing

a reconciliation happen

with that irascible

and difficult

me