Category: Reflections

Staying Grounded in a World of Despair

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I am in need of peace and hope. No, I am not in despair, but there are times in this chaos of 2018 in America when it seems that all that was familiar is being dismantled or hatefully deconstructed.  And what I value in life: kindness, honesty, caring actions towards others, strength of purpose, wisdom . . . these things are being devalued, tossed away, seen as weak and worthless.

It is when I realize I am on the edge of the dark abyss that I go to my Poetry and Inspiration digital file.  When I taught, I always opened my class with 5-8 minutes of silent centering/meditation/ breathwork and then (to end the silence) read one of many poems that I had collected over the years and that fit the day’s class content.  One of them was Wendell Berry’s The Peace of Wild Things:

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Today is a day on the edge of the abyss, and so I go happily to walk in today’s rain shower and feel the cleansing and peace of just being alive.   I rest in the grace of the world and am free.  

Blessings and hope and peace.

Jane +

Airplane — 38 years ago

I just read a post on my Facebook stream that Airplane (the movie) was released 38 years ago.  What memories that brought back.  Bittersweet and yet not sad.

Thirty-eight years ago, my then husband Ken Williams and I had fled to the shore to spend a long weekend in Ocean City at a borrowed house belonging to friends who wanted to offer us a bit of comfort after a huge shock.  I had sat in a doctor’s office with Ken just 3 days before and heard what no one wants or expects to hear . . . a diagnosis of late stage cancer.  It was called non-Hodgkins lymphoma — a cancer that these days is serious but considered more of a chronic condition than a terminal one.  But in those days, there were far fewer effective treatments and the doc struggled to tell us that Ken might have 3 months to live and would need to begin treatment in the hospital immediately.

We bargained with the doc (and, I suppose, with fate) and asked for one week of reprieve.  We had been married just over one year, and were trying to get pregnant, but treatment (if Ken survived) would make him infertile.  The doc said one week would not make a difference, but  to be sure it wasn’t longer.

So, we ended up in Ocean City.  Our time together was not only to try (futilely, it turned out) to get pregnant, but also to savor our last few days together before entering the world of chemo, radiation, and hospitals.  It was time tinged with knowledge of what we were facing, but holding each other, not letting go of each other’s hands as we walked, trying to hide tears from each other — all this was important and, in a sense, offering whatever balm was possible at such times.

So the second night we were at Ocean City we walked the boardwalk, one of Ken’s favorite things.  We passed the lone theater which was advertising Airplane.  It had been overcast all day — that grey sky dark with ominous heavy curtains of clouds just waiting to drop their payload of rain.  As we passed the marquee, the sky opened and rain fell with ferocity.   We stood under the marquee, then I suggested maybe seeing this movie — I had not seen ads for it and had no idea what it was.  I just wanted a distraction.

What a wonderful serendipitous opportunity it was.  We sat in the theater, almost the only patrons, and laughted until tears came.  These were not the tears of sadness, though, but of unbridled laughter.  For 90 minutes, our fears and grief were lightened and less present as we watched the screen.

At the end of 5 days, we returned to our home in Mt. Pocono and Ken entered St. Luke’s Hospital in Bethlehem — a 50 minute ride from home and the closest cancer treatment center at the time.  But our time in Ocean City was marked by that movie — we found we could laugh and find joy even in the midst of tragedy and threat.  That experience has never been forgotten.  Thirty-eight years ago today . . . like it was yesterday.

Jane+

Bliss

I have loved teaching.  I taught in a graduate counseling program that was lodged in a progressive Christian seminary.  By progressive I mean that this seminary was one of the few I know of that is Christian in tradition and that is open (radically open, some would say) to those of a variety of spiritual paths (and no path as well).  The inclusiveness of this seminary is in large part due to two programs and degrees/certificates.  One is a masters degree program in clinical counseling (the one I taught in) that sought to integrate spiritual awareness and psychological counseling skills.  The second is a broad set of programs that offered certificates in spiritual direction and formative spirituality.  The work that we did in teaching, supervising, and mentoring students in both of these programs was sacred.  Students often are drawn to a seminary for study in theology, ministry, chaplaincy.  But few seminaries offer programs in spiritual formation (duh?  why not? but ’tis the truth).  And no one I know looks for a counseling degree leading to licensure in a theological seminary.  So it was always a struggle to get enough students  and our classes were small.

But what occurred in those cohorts was sacred, mystical, transformative.
We graduated Muslim students, Buddhist followers, a Hindu priest, and many flavors of Christian.  Some of our students had not been in church since childhood.  The programs, however, renewed a quest in our students and many returned to their spiritual roots or found other paths that nurtured them in more fulfilling ways.  Throughout the program, students began to change the lenses with which they saw mental illness or life challenges.  They began to see how depression, loss, joy, illness were not just diagnosable using the DSM5, but were also spiritual problems.  They began to see more deeply into patients/clients, and into themselves as well.  They began to attune to the emotions of their patients/clients, and use their own feelings as potential cues to what was happening inside the Other (what is called countertransference in psychodynamic therapy).

I had not expected to write about my teaching or the program I taught in — just to say that I loved seeing the changes in students and felt that in answering God’s call to this work that I was walking the path to which I had been called.

I am now beginning retirement and am starting to experience a blissful feeling of freedom.  For although I truly loved what I did, I am now realizing the burden I carried with me constantly.  .  .the burden of always knowing there was something I could be doing to stay on top of teaching, grading, mentoring.  I have let go of this burden, and it is an experience of feeling lighter, more confident that what comes next is something that I can handle or survive, that I can dwell in a place of delight in being present to experiences without having to pull away and check the to do list of class prep or reading.

I know this won’t last forever and that there will be blips and bunders, but for now . . . bliss it is!