Meitzar is a Hebrew word that refers to the narrow press of hardship in living. In Psalm 118, it is translated as the narrow place: “From the narrow place I called to God [and] I was answered… from expansiveness.” This suggests that our ability to meet the narrow press of hardship rests in our devotion to expansiveness.

This holds the same insight found in the anonymous Hindu story in which a master tells a suffering student to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then drink from it. The student finds it bitter.

The master says, “Bring the same handful of salt in your hands and follow me.” He leads the student to a lake and says, “Put the salt in the lake and drink.” The student is surprised how fresh it tastes. The master says firmly, “Stop being a glass! Become a lake!”

The resource of expansiveness is always close at hand, though in our pain, we tighten and forget. This is how pain and fear say hello, by making us a glass. So, when facing pain and fear, the only thing to do is enlarge our sense of things, which won’t eliminate the pain or hardship, but will mitigate it’s narrow press—so we can right-size it.

Often, to slow ourselves to the pace of being allows the narrowness we suffer to loosen enough for the pulse of life to fill us. Two time-tried ways to welcome the pulse of life are by opening our heart and expanding our mind. A third way to enlarge our sense of things, that never fails, is being seen and heard by another. For the authenticity of love will always widen and right-size the narrow places of hardship. Once opened and held by the larger isness that is always around us and in us, things settle and soften. And we have more time to inhabit the situation and respond from a deeper, calmer place.

In a compelling and mysterious way, enlarging our sense of things lets the ground of being dissipate our agitation until we are left in the eye of the storm where everything remains quiet and calm. We can’t hide there or stay there. But we can live from there, the way a tree lives above ground while depending on its roots.

~Mark Nepo

why is it so hard sometimes?

inquiry for today~ can you believe in your darkness too?

when it’s time to trust….

Darkness deserves gratitude.

It is the alleluia point at which we learn to understand

that all growth does not take place in the sunlight.

~Joan Chittister