Tag: wisdom for the path

Grief

Grief

I need someone who believes that the sun will rise again, but who does not fear my darkness. . . Someone who can stand in thunder and watch the lightning and believe in a rainbow.    (Fr. Joe Mahoney)

Grief is one of the loneliest experiences one can have in our “I can handle this — I’m OK”, death-defying American culture.   Many of us run from the grief of a friend and even pretend that we haven’t noticed their pain. We try to distance from the grieving by making sense of it with one of many inanities: “She’s better off now and isn’t in pain”, or “Don’t cry.  He’s in heaven with God,” or “Your little girl is a flower in God’s garden now.”  Our corporate culture gives us 3 days of bereavement leave and assumes we should be all over our grief after that. 

Not at all!   Grief opens a trap door into deep darkness where we search desperately for the path that will return us to the life we knew — but we cannot find it.  And indeed there is no path back to the life we once knew.  That life is gone forever because of our loss.  We want our dinner table to have the same faces around it — but someone is missing.  We want our self-confidence back after the loss of a job, and yet when we bump into a former co-worker at the grocery store, we turn down another aisle hoping that she hasn’t seen us.  We feel an urgency to make a friend more comfortable by reassuring him that we are just fine even though our sad eyes betray the lie.

I need someone who believes that the sun will rise again, but who does not fear my darkness.

Yes, I need someone who can allow my tears to flow.  I need someone who doesn’t feel the tug to cheer me up.  I need someone who can just hold me safely and firmly in a hug that lasts long enough for me to relax into it and trust the closeness.

I need someone who has faced the darkness of loss in their own life, who knows the pain is deep and real, and yet who knows — at a cellular level — that however long the darkness of grief lasts for me or for anyone, healing will follow, and I will laugh again.  It is only someone who has felt the numbness and darkness of loss suck them  into the dark, bottomless pit. . . one who has waited, longed to find, yearned for the path that travels toward light again . . . only that one can truly bear witness with their presence alongside another’s grief that joy will come with the morning (Psalm 30:5).

. . .Someone who can stand in thunder and watch the lightning and believe in a rainbow.

The path toward the light and toward life again is not backward toward restoring what was.  The path toward the light is a path toward a life that is different in some way.  Grief changes us.   Loss (whatever has been lost) has taken something from us.  Over time as healing comes, we can learn something about our resilience, creativity, faith, hope, love.  Love will connect us forever with what we have lost., if we wish that.  Memories will remain.  But we will need to move forward with our lives, looking for a way to use the lessons of loss and survival in ways that may help others.  We can create meaningful action from the hard won struggle that heals.

I pray that when we heal from our own losses, we may become persons who, having heard the thunder and seen the lightning, still watch for the rainbows.  May we be the ones who can be present in another’s darkness without fear, knowing the sunrise is just over the horizon.

Jane

 

 

 

 

Future Selves on the Path

Last week I attended a workshop on being open to one’s Future Self . . . a wiser, more self- and other-compassionate part of yourself who has already lived through whatever challenges you are currently experiencing.  While it may sound a bit woo-woo to some people, it is a concept of time that is endorsed by quantum physics which suggests (in a very broad interpretation) that time is fluid and that the past, present, and future are present in various streams in our present life.

Future self

Experiencing the future self through guided imagery with a trained therapist can provide a supportive, creative way to be open to multiple ways of coping with, healing from, enduring suffering.  I have adapted this experience for my students in classes I have taught by asking them to close their eyes and imagine that somewhere off in the future, there is a part of them that has already lived through whatever they are presently going through.  That part of themselves has wisdom that they haven’t yet discovered, has worked through the quandaries that students may be baffled by or are worrying about, and has lived through what students are presently facing.  I then ask them to let themselves feel a connection to their future self at their heartspace — perhaps a thread or a light running from their hearts to the heart of the future self even if the future self is not visible to them.  I ask them to “see” and feel that connection (perhaps putting their hands over their heart).  After a minute or so, I have them open their eyes and begin to write a letter to themselves from their loving, compassionate, wise future self telling them what they may need to know.  Once written, they seal their letter and address it to themselves in a place they know they will receive it over the next year.  I collect the letters and keep them.  At an unplanned time during the next 12 months, I mail the letters.

I don’t ask them to respond to me when they receive the letters from their future selves.  Nonetheless, between one-third and one-half of the students let me know that what was contained in the letter had come at “just the right time” and contained exactly what they needed to hear.  “How did you know when I needed to hear this?” several students have asked.  I didn’t know.  Their future selves did.

I don’t read the letters, so I don’t know what they contain, but I also participate in writing from my future self and mail my letter at the same time as theirs.  My letters have invariably addressed stresses that I didn’t know I would be facing at the time I wrote and lifted up for me some strengths and insights that helped engage my compassion and insight in a new way.  Yes, the words and sentences were mine, but in imagining and “becoming” my future self as I wrote, I actually could feel the comfort of a companion who could lift me up (or walk me forward) on my life’s path as a more whole person.

Our future selves are always with us.  We can tap into their wisdom, their life experience, their compassion — because it is actually ours.  They are who we become with just a few more steps on the path.  What is your future self saying?

Jane