Aching Souls
(C) Rabbi Menachem Creditor

We back away but look back,
when we wish to stay.
We back away and cover our eyes,
when staying is unbearable.

We are not meant to endure in those intensities,
sublime or horrific.
We don't live there.
Insight has its limits.

We back away.

The truths we can barely endure,
mortality, injustice, and pain,
threaten to deaden caring souls,
to blind our eyes from seeing what hurts.

But even (especially) when we back away,
we see and feel.
We care.

An aching soul is a gift, a portal,
straight from the universe
through one person into another.

When such souls connect and collide and entangle,
desperate to support and be supported,
the ache's answer is suggested,
and the Universe experiences intense Light.

We see.
We ache.
We care.