Taking the Arrow Out of the Heart (Spanish Edition)

by Alice Walker

No one escapes a time in life when the arrow of sorrow, of anger, of despair pierces the heart. For many of us, there is the inevitable need to circle the wound. It is often such a surprise to find it there, in us, when we had assumed arrows so painful only landed in the hearts of other people. Some of us spend decades screaming at the archer. Or at least for longer periods than are good for us. How to take the arrow out of the heart? How to learn to relieve our own pain? That is the question. Like many such questions it is delved into by Buddhism, but also by anyone who has lived long enough to see—by trial and error, for the most part—that the futility we begin to feel, as we attempt to bring down the archer, leaves our wounded heart untended, and the medicine of Life that abounds wherever we are is left unapplied.

Impermanence. So the Buddha taught. And, to have once is to have forever: so certain of the Aboriginal peoples believe.

If the violated and exploited took back their stolen lands and goods from your fellow churchmen and brutally drove them out of house and home, after killing their parents and enslaving their children, would they be satisfied with an apology?

Hope rises, She always does, did we fail to notice this in all the stories they’ve tried to suppress? Hope rises, and she puts on her same unfashionable threadbare cloak and, penniless, she flings herself against the cold, polished, protective chain mail of the very powerful the very rich—chain mail that mimics suspiciously silver coins and lizard scales— and all she has to fight with is the reality of what was done to her; to her country; her people; her children; her home. All she has as armor is what she has learned must never be done. Not in the name of War and especially never in the name of Peace. Hope is always the teacher with the toughest homework.

But prayer is an energy that crosses mountains and deserts and continents and seas and is never stopped nor even slowed by anything. It arrives at its destination as a blessing that says: I feel—though it is but a shadow of your sorrow— the suffering that has befallen you. Though far away, you are securely cradled in the safety of my heart.

Prayer is the beginning: when we don’t know what else to do.