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Showing posts from August, 2010

Splinters

I’m thinking of a splinter, how a minute foreign object embedded in a finger or foot can cause enough discomfort to slow or completely halt our normal flow of activity, its size disproportionate to the rest of our bodies. So it is with a tiny pebble in a shoe or microscopic remnant of the roast beef between two teeth or a sticky burr stabbing the dog’s pad. At first we feel a little tic or snag…and then either its effect grows or our awareness of it sharpens, becoming extra-focused until the pain exaggerates and what we feel is no longer our finger anymore but the splinter itself. We once loved sliding our hand down the banister that bore the splinter. We relished the walk on the wooded path that yielded the pebble…and that roast beef tasted scrumptious the first time around. I meditated on Sunday, asking for clarity and cleansing. When we rid ourselves of that which causes discomfort, like pulling a splinter, we endure an acute, temporary pain. I once had to euthanize a dog, a standar