Point taken

 There's not enough time, every moment of time is too precious to spend being reactive, nurturing resentments, ranting ad nauseum. Every day in the hospital I see people in distress, nearing their limit, grieving - and it seems, ...that there is no time to waste in any endeavor but love, in any position but in hearing and speaking to our mutual wounds.

I posted this recently, and I think it's an important reflection of mine, born of almost 2 years in different hospitals - I should say, 2 stints in hospitals: it's only a little less than a year now.

What I hoped to get from CPE was a sense of how I am and how people are in limit situations. As Kathleen O'Conner says in her Lamentations commentary, "to extend a gentle reception to the pain of others, we need familiar knowledge of our own pain, grief and doubt. [92]." She also talks about how denial (where we deny our grief through consumerism, escapism, addictions, or violence) blocks our creativity and ability to flourish.

Blanchot reflects this sense of nurturing solitude in order to be with others. In his Awaiting Oblivion, which I read at the beach, I found that lines like "narrow the presence, vast the place" and "he feels liberated by waiting for waiting" and what would happen if my speech were suddenly to make itself heard by me?" - this is all good stuff, and the effect on me was to craft an interior space where I could be with the other.