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Spirituality
Stars on the blackest night
By JONI WOELFEL
In July 1999 I wrote in my diary, after publishing my first book,
Tall in Spirit: How will it change me? What burdens and joys will
it bring? Am I being commissioned as a gatekeeper or guardian of words? I
remember pausing and sensing a vague, fleeting feeling like a dark cloud
passing over, before I continued: Perhaps when people come home to their
hearts, it is then that they are filled with a passion to serve.
Little did I know how prophetic that last entry would be. Just a
week later, on Aug. 7, our 17-year-old son, Mic, was found dead by probable
suicide. Our sweet boy who loved life, nature, our family, his friends and who
once told me grinning (when I was worried about him growing up too fast),
Ah, Ma, Ill always be your little Mic.
The insanity and horror of those days defy description. We did not
think we would survive. Coming home to my heart meant carrying an enormous
grief that was nearly unbearable. What sustained me somehow was the faith that
he was always, always with me in a mysterious way that only a parent can know.
If there was any gift in the grief, that was it.
Judy Osgood, who also lost a son and has dedicated her life to
struggle and grief ministry, wrote me recently: God never promised that
our lives would be free of pain and grief if we believed. The promise is,
I will be with you always. Even when that pain is so great that we
feel utterly deserted.
Making sense of struggle only makes sense when we put things in a
faith perspective. Someone once told me: We are spiritual beings on a
human journey, not human beings on a spiritual journey. This has helped
me. In my journey with grief, I found that no matter how comforting or
inspirational peoples words to me were, I couldnt absorb them. I
felt as though I had one teaspoon of clay to cover an entire skeleton. Words
couldnt reach me. I needed to fling my soul on the beaches of those close
to me who had the capacity to withstand the waves of my despair. I look back
with deep gratitude to those who stood bravely while those early emotions
battered them.
Every day, and sometimes many times a day, I entreated God,
Please somehow find a way to send comfort my way. As time went on,
I found God did indeed answer those prayers, in large and small ways. As my
prayers moved from pleading to more confident ones, I realized that a miracle
had taken place.
I found also that images welled up in me, needing release as one
after another they revealed themselves. I bought myself a giant box full of
crayons and a sketchbook. I created a visual journal filled with more than 40
images and symbols that portrayed my questions and struggle. In this journal,
which I called Jonis Map of the Heart, I learned to follow
the poet Rainer Maria Rilkes words: Be patient toward all that is
unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves.
I began working with a life coach and found my questions becoming
real spiritual quests. What draws me rather than pushes me? What is life-giving
in my experiences? These questions transformed themselves into concrete belief
statements that sustained me. I began to realize I was accountable for my
spiritual journey, and that reality, rather than being heavy or burdensome, was
a freedom.
Many dreams and memorable incidents came to me in those days. My
husband and I were driving along the Minnesota River bottom where winding,
narrow gravel roads took us through green woodlands. We take those drives often
to find comfort in nature. We came to a special place where the trees bend over
the road like a canopy. We came to a hollow there where thousands of migrating
monarch butterflies had gathered. They filled the trees, the sky, the air.
Spellbound, we stopped to watch. If I stepped out of the car, I felt as though
I could spread my arms and they would gather me up. A sacred hush had fallen as
still and golden as a prayer. The gift of that moment stayed with me. Those
butterflies did gather me up.
A big part of learning from ones struggles is the process of
letting go. I dont know where my life journey will take me. Recently, I
had a cardiac test at the hospital that involved the use of a medication that
speeds up the heart rate so it can be viewed on an EKG. I was scared, because
it meant surrendering control of my very heartbeat. Every time the doctor asked
me how I was doing, I said in a small voice, Afraid! These sorts of
experiences come to all of us frequently. We have to learn to trust; that is
part of this spirituality of struggle.
As we were driving home from the hospital that day, we noticed fog
had settled in on a nearby lake. Mesmerized by the pure white, drifting shapes,
I thought the fog looked like a community of hope gatherers. It reminded me of
the poem that accompanies Mary Southards painting called
Womans Song of Peace:
She sings the song of lifes seasons, rhythms of
birth and death ... She sings a gentle song of listening and hope ... Her
song is compassion, her song is love. If nations would be healed,
womans song must be sung. If there would be peace, womans song
must be heard.
Times of struggle, while wrenching, carry this profound potential.
When we come home to our hearts through adversity, clarity survives and a
desire to live for others and to make a difference in the world.
The other day an image came to me via e-mail. Taken by a
firefighter in Montana with a digital camera, the photo showed a mountainside
blazing for miles as golden bursts of flame shot skyward through pine and
underbrush. In the center of the photo, standing in what appeared to be a small
lake, stood the silhouettes of a pair of deer, seemingly unafraid and serene
while fire flared like a mighty tempest all around them.
Since the beginning of time, fire has been linked with initiation.
In many societies and religious traditions, initiates went through symbolic
purification by fire symbolized as ashes. When we face struggles, we are being
initiated into new ways of thinking, living and loving. Struggles are rites of
passage that bring faith gifts, profound ones that emerge like stars on the
blackest night. In the words of the poet Rumi: Let us be known by the
scars of love that mark our faces, as we take our rightful places on the
journey of hope.
Joni Woelfel is author of Tall in the Spirit, Meditations
for the Chronically Ill. A second book, The Light Within: A Womans
Book of Solace, will be out in January 2001. Both are from ACTA
Publications. Her e-mail address is woel@rconnect.com
National Catholic Reporter, December 8,
2000
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