“Pain,” writes David Whyte, “is the doorway to the here and now.”*
My doorway coincided with the opening of 2026. I woke up New Year’s Day with a sharp pain running down the top of my left side, neck to wrist. We were with Abbie’s family in Quinter, Kansas and had packed the night before for the long drive home. My plan was to be back in the church office the following day. I tried a couple positions in the van before confirming there was no way I could travel. The only relief was back in the house, lying face down on the floor with my left hand above my head. Our family settled in for a couple more days. I settled in to the only time and place I could, a horizontal doorway on the living room carpet, the here and now.
David Whyte continues: “In real pain we have no other choice but learn to ask for help and on a daily basis.”
Not everyone owns a vehicle with a queen bed in it, but Abbie’s parents do – a camper van they’ve used to visit their far flung grandkids. This was our best plan. With Abbie’s dad as an additional driver, our two vans caravanned the 17-hour trip home. I was able to stay horizontal and extended the whole time, with a front door delivery to the Riverside Methodist Hospital Emergency Department at 2am on Sunday. I received an MRI that afternoon revealing bone spurs and a herniated disc, met with the surgeon the following day, and on Tuesday received three new titanium discs in my neck vertebrae. They released me the day after, and I’ve been home for a week doing the things one does (and doesn’t do) to rest and recover. The meals, cards, and well wishes from you all have been a great help.
More from David Whyte: “In deep pain we have energy only for what we can do wholeheartedly and then, only within a narrow range of motion, metaphorically and physically, from tying our shoelace to holding the essential core conversations that are reciprocal and reinforcing within the close-in circle of those we love. Pain teaches us a fine economy, in movement, in the heart’s affections…”
I can’t help but make a connection to the collective pain 2026 has already held for our Columbus community and national body. We’re reeling from some combination of slow wear and tear on democratic structures and the shockwaves of electing an aspiring autocrat. From where I sit, it looks like many folks are feeling the limited range of motion for addressing the pain. It also looks like a clarification of what matters most – the heart’s affections, how we show up in our relationships and extend into new ones. A clearer shape of wholehearted living. A keener sense of the here and now which opens like a doorway as the only place we can ever be, pain and all.
Joel
* Quotes from Whyte’s book Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, pp. 155, 156