Tag: Loss

Posted on

The Power of Deep Dive Reflection

I usually see my path as it advances, eyes forward, looking to see what insights might be waiting up ahead. Every so often, it is helpful to look back and see the distance traveled. I recently did a deep dive reflection that included this question:

“Has there been a time when something you believed about God, the Divine, spirituality, or the meaning of life changed profoundly? What happened, and what emerged from that experience?”

Memories come flooding back.

I see the small-town church where I was raised. It was a loving place. There was no fire and brimstone, only the Gospel preached by a mysterious rabbi who wandered the plains of Palestine, imploring people to be more forgiving than resentful, to care for the stranger, to love their neighbor. I marveled at his courage and wisdom, and tried to follow the path he laid out. I believed; I was confirmed; I was active in youth ministry; I felt held and loved. This was where my spiritual yearnings were first awakened.

That life was my foundation, and so when the belief scaffold began to crumble under the weight of reason, it was a hard fall. I could not reconcile the inner presence I felt with Christian tenets that said salvation required specific beliefs. Jesus told me to forgive transgressions continually, not seven times, but seventy times seven. How could such boundless forgiveness be a commandment if God could not abide a person’s honest convictions? The contradictions mounted. I asked questions, but the theological answers I was given were dry, detached from the experience of love I had thought was the heart of Christianity.

Continue reading “The Power of Deep Dive Reflection”
Posted on

The World as We Know It Is Passing Away

I am troubled by the dark mood of our times. War, genocide, political upheaval, chaos, instability, and cruelty are all on the rise. Power is being amassed and abused with malignancy; institutions created to protect us from abuse of power are being weakened; norms of respect, decency, and honesty are being shredded; society is fragmenting.

The disruption feels weighty, more substantial than the usual ebb and flow of political tides. I believe the world as we know it is passing away.

That’s a hard statement to consider. It’s natural to want the disruption to stop, but hoping that the world will come to its senses and return and to “normal” is misplaced. We have passed the tipping point; there is no going back to the way things were. Realizing this allows me to face the future with pragmatism. I am not mired in angst; I have my fears and grieving, but they do not paralyze me.

There are reasons why the coming changes are irreversible. Many of the current financial, economic, and political systems that govern our lives are overripe for change. These systems worked well for a long time, but they’ve been distorted and no longer adequately serve the common good. They funnel an obese abundance to a small group while a growing portion of society scrapes to get by. This is unsustainable. And because there are vested players in these systems who don’t want to give up power, the coming changes are likely to be disruptive and even violent.

Continue reading “The World as We Know It Is Passing Away”
Posted on

Volaré

Volaré, oh, oh

I’m walking down Grafton Street in Dublin, past the Disney Store, Levi’s, Victoria’s Secret, and souvenir shops selling shamrocks and leprechauns. Up ahead, a busker is playing guitar and singing his heart out

Cantaré, oh, oh, oh, oh

I chuckle. This guy sings well, but his voice seems wasted on a cheesy pop hit. I expect to hear the Dean Martin version – silky, sanitized, tame. But no, he continues in the original Italian. And it’s not tame.

Nel blu dipinto di blu.
Felice di stare lassù.

He is singing with vigor. Full-throated, uninhibited, almost operatic. This man’s charisma is all-in, his joy ringing off the shop windows. His passion is infectious. People passing by walk in step, nodding in time, some are singing along.

E volavo, volavo felice
Più in alto del sole,
Ed ancora più su,
Mentre il mondo pian piano
Spariva lontano laggiù.

I let the mood of the street permeate me. My spirits lift, my steps lighten. I awaken to the delicious reality that I am walking in the sunshine of a beautiful city, in a crowd of smiling strangers, bathed in a song that shouts, Life Is A Gift. How can I not feel gratitude? More – I am happy.

When we touch something honest, everything becomes honest. The well of joy and grief at our feet reveals itself as simple fact. I think of my mother and father, who passed last year. My throat catches and my eyes wet. My happiness does not diminish, it receives, rounding out to include their absence and their presence. They also knew that life is a gift. I can’t enjoy this day with them, but I can enjoy this day for them.

I throw a Euro into his case and tell him, “You sing well. Thank you.” We exchange a glance. He nods and smiles without missing a beat. How is it that we make the world lighter just by being ourselves? Why do I learn and forget this lesson over and over and over?

Una musica dolce suonava
Soltanto per me.

Volaré, oh, oh,
Cantaré, oh, oh, oh, oh.

Click here for a rousing clip of Volaré, sung by Il Volo

Photo by Yunus Tuğ on Unsplash

Posted on

The Honesty I’ve Learned From Grief

Family photo, circa 1960 - me, my father, grandfather and great-grandfather

My father is drifting away, a slow dissolve into dementia that will take months or years. I find myself grieving in several ways.

I am grieving the loss of my father as an intelligent, capable man. A math and physics major, he worked 38 years for the same company as a quality engineer, constantly finding and fixing problems. He taught me how to work with wood and build furniture. He could fix any plumbing or electrical problems around the house. It’s hard to watch a man whose mind was so strong and active struggle to hold a spoon and feed himself.

Coming into his room on any particular morning, I don’t know if he will recognize me, and it is wrenching to know that the days he does are dwindling. Seeing my father drift this way is like watching a flowing river empty out onto a large plateau, meandering into a web of broken streams, petering out, coming to rest in a marshy lowland.

There is another layer of loss I am grieving, and that is the relationship I had hoped I could have with him but never did. Dad was an introverted thinker. I was a hyperactive fidgeter. He, a cognitive processor; me, a swirl of passion and emotion. When I was fearful and sought reassurance, he would look for the problem that needed fixed. I wanted relational, he offered rational.

Continue reading “The Honesty I’ve Learned From Grief”
Posted on

Finding My Father

“Dad, I can’t understand what you’re saying.”

I strain to hear my father’s voice. He exerts himself to speak, wrinkling his forehead and the muscles of his face. He has something important he wants to convey, but his speech is garbled, a burble of feathery sounds with only an occasional word I can recognize. I move closer, listening to his whispers, scanning his face, searching his expression to garner some sense of what he’s trying to say.

My brother found dad on the floor of his apartment, incoherent and unable to get up. A CT scan at the ER showed that his brain was bleeding from a subdural hematoma, the blood pooling inside his skull, squeezing his brain to the side. Emergency surgery drained the fluid and relieved the pressure, but the damage has accelerated my father’s dementia. I flew into town to visit him and spell my brother, who lives nearby and handles the lion’s share of his care.

Dad’s dementia journey has been an up-and-down biplane ride through the clouds of the wild blue yonder. Synaptic waves climb and descend through different altitudes of lucidity. Sometimes he recognizes us, other times not. When he is occasionally clear enough to realize where he is, what is happening, that his wife of seven decades died three months ago, he demands to return to his old apartment, forcing us into heart-crushing arguments with him about why that can’t happen.

Continue reading “Finding My Father”
Posted on

Stumbling Mystic Podcast – Using the Wounds of Trauma to Heal

Apple
Spotify
Castbox
iHeart
Spreaker

Whether we have faced severe events like war or physical assault, or the garden-variety insults and wounds inherent in life, we are all affected by trauma. It is the unifying condition of human experience and the cause of much suffering.

One of the reasons we are drawn to spirituality is a desire to heal. Many of us feel that we are broken, need to be fixed, maybe even that we are unlovable. But there are some approaches to spiritual growth that help us encounter pain and some that suppress pain. One promotes healing and the other does not.

In Episode 2 of the Stumbling Mystic podcast, I spoke with therapists, coaches and healers to understand how the power of trauma can hinder or accelerate our spiritual growth. We talk about:

  • How trauma causes us to disassociate from our bodies in order to survive;

  • The need to reinhabit and celebrate the body as the path to healing;

  • How somatic work allows us to release trauma and excavate our true selves;

  • Whether the spiritual journey is one of experiencing pain and joy in order to bring Spirit into the world of form;

  • Why healing our own wounds is necessary if we are to be healers for others.

You can listen below to Episode 2 of the Stumbling Mystic podcast, “Using the Wounds of Trauma to Heal.” Or, visit the podcast page, or listen on your favorite podcast platform.

Photo by Matt Botsford on Unsplash

Posted on

My Mother Is in Hospice

On a normal morning, my regular practice made sense. Stretches and meditation were part of a comfortable routine. The world seemed stable, perhaps hinting that small corners of life were controllable.

But since mom fell, nothing has been normal.

For the past month, my days have turned upside down. My mother, 86, has not recovered well from her broken hip and pneumonia. Despite steroids, antibiotics, and respiratory treatments, the infections worsened, her lungs filled with fluid, and her breathing capacity eroded to a shallow spot at the top of her chest.

The fall and the hip surgery were traumatic; the struggle with pneumonia has been tortuous; and now the decision to enter hospice has been a gut-punch, hitting my father the hardest as he watches his sweetheart of 70 years slowly recede. This family emergency has me flailing to find a handhold.

Continue reading “My Mother Is in Hospice”
Posted on

Wise Words – Your Most Important Spiritual Task: Opening Your Heart

“If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

C.S. Lewis

A sadness comes over me as I read these words and recognize the truth of it in me. Over the years, I have learned how to protect myself by armoring my heart.  

We all do, I suppose. Shortly after our birth, the world began to show us it can be a hurtful place. One moment, we felt a sense of union and safety with our parents, and the next, we felt the devastating ache of absence. So, we learned to shield ourselves from painful feelings by shutting off the heart. 

These preverbal lessons embedded themselves in the first layers of our psyche. And perhaps the most painful early scar was to adopt the false belief that somehow the fault must be in us, that we are not lovable. In various ways, we all share the early tragic misconception that we are not okay as we are.

Keep Reading
Posted on

Wise Words – A World in Chaos, or the Birth of a New Consciousness?

Just before [an airplane] cracks the sonic barrier, there’s increased vibration and greater resistance . . . In our present state of evolutionary development, you might say we are flying just beneath the sound barrier of consciousness . . . On the other side of the sonic boom, we discover heightened connection, transparency, integration and resonance – more unity. 

People all over the world are experiencing decidedly tumultuous times.  Perhaps this is a sign that we’re moving closer to the “speed of sound” – closer to new consciousness. Of course, the faster we travel, the more volatility we meet – until we have breached the membrane and exceeded previous evolutionary limitations. What a beautiful boom that will make.

Thomas Hübl, from his book, Attuned

We live our lives in the day-to-day, so it’s easy to miss the longer view. In the day-to-day, we attend to the details of living life. The coffee pot, the kid’s breakfast, the list of appointments, errands, deadlines, and obligations, these all have their rightful place and deserve our attention.

We usually view the news while in the day-to-day mode of attention. Each item appears on the screen as a separate event and taken together, they sometimes paint a distressing picture. Extreme weather events, shootings, scenes of war, political gridlock, social unrest, hateful displays – we absorb the parade of disturbing headlines and react to each, feeling our emotions and grappling to make sense of it. 

And it seems to be getting worse, each day more extreme, the suffering amplified, our bodies more fatigued, and our emotions more numb. The speed of it is disorienting. We want it to slow down, for the madness to stop, for things to go back to normal.

Keep Reading
Posted on

What Is the Spiritual Response to Gaza?

The war that ignited last week in the Middle East has left me deeply distressed and confused. Distressed that heinous acts and the rageful reactions they provoke are feeding a murderous cycle; confused as I struggle to find a meaningful spiritual response.

I see the wheel of violence and revenge rolling forward, ages old, and I desperately want something to change, to make this time different, to free us from the macabre theater that will play itself out over months or years until our capacity for carnage is exhausted.

I am confronted with the bloodshed and atrocities of war and the prospects for a widening conflict destabilizing the region.

I am staggered by the devastation of cities and homes, the sickening loss of life, the oceans of grief, and the trauma that will last for generations.

I am paralyzed by the cultural and geopolitical complexities that fog our collective vision as we seek a path out of the bramble bush.

I am consumed with a desire to distinguish right from wrong, to understand what drives people to commit slaughter and to fathom a reply that does not match its depravity. I long for a clean line that separates good from evil, that labels which acts of violence are justified, even as I realize that the maelstrom of war eventually blurs and breaks those lines.

And I yearn for guidance. I cry out for answers in a landscape where answers don’t make sense.

Keep Reading