Wrestling with Angels
by
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The Lightness of the Human Condition
The theologians say, “Pain is part of the human condition."
Well, that seems to be a very pat answer,
especially when we are in very great pain.
I learned something important about pain.
I realized I had invested my ego in my pain.
For years I sat in a corner with my pain
and people offered to help.
And mostly I said: No. Go away.
My pain's too complicated;
you can't understand.
But what I was really saying was:
“My pain is more important than yours.”
“My pain’s more interesting than yours.”
I worked and worked on my pain like an artist,
trying to make it beautiful.
And my favorite one was:
“My pain is more painful than yours.”
And I realized we have a choice about pain.
If we look up, we can see that everyone has it.
Pain is in everyone's eyes.
And if we offer to help another person carry their pain
We have to set our own down.
And when we start to carry their pain we realize:
It's the same pain.
And pretty soon there are 10 people, 20 people, 50, 100, 1,000 people
all carrying the same pain, and it's getting lighter and lighter.
It's all the same pain.
And after we carry it a while down the road together, we realize
it's not pain anymore;
It's turned into love.
- By Madeline Strong Diehl
Excerpt from "Wrestling with Angels", Copyright 2013
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About the Book
Advance Praise for Wrestling with Angels:
"Often bracing and witty, Wrestling with Angels affirms the value of Madeline's life, and in so doing, all life.”
—Anne Stevenson
2007 Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award for poetry
“Madeline's writings testify to the fact that healing does not fall from the sky, but rather comes by tirelessly opening up our hearts and ourselves, and accepting with reverence whatever we find there.”
—Dr. Max Heirich, PhD
Retired professor, research scientist, former director of the University of Michigan Worker Health Program, and a forty-year explorer and consultant about holistic health and social and personal transformation.
“A mesmerizing journey inward into truth turned outward, these words conjure up chuckling, laughing out loud, and tears. Wrestling with Angels has blessed me with a sense of wholeness and a hunch that nothing escapes healing once it is entrusted to truth's tender light.”
—Lori Watanabe Saginaw
Race dialogue facilitator, Peacemaker
About the Author
Madeline Strong Diehl's professional writing career spans more than twenty-five years. In addition to her work as a magazine journalist and editor, she writes poems, essays, plays, and fiction. Diehl won the T.S. Eliot Poetry award from the University of Kent at Canterbury (England), and she has also won recognition for her fiction and plays. She combines her writing with a commitment to working beside the many gifted, visionary artists and activists in the nonprofit sector who devote their energies and talents to improving quality of life for all people, and to healing our planet. Madeline lives with her husband in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and they have two children.