Opening Doors

The last six months have been intense and challenging.  It is difficult to have decades worth of identity and habits changed.  Even with a focus over the last few years to unlock my identity from my job, I was still "attached" to it.  I had limited energy or freedom to explore new possibilities. 

When I told others about my job situation, many offered their belief that I would get a better job and be happier.  While I appreciated their desire to cheer and encourage me, I could not feel the hope they were offering.  My standard response was, "I may get there someday, but I am not there now."  Even now, on an important and exciting new journey, I am not there.

There is an excellent animated video on the Power of Empathy on Brené Brown's Blog.  It contrasts the difference between sympathy and empathy, how empathy involves connection.  Much of my training in Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) has been focused on developing skills of empathic listening, which is not easy. We prefer to sympathize, because that keeps a safe distance from the pain of the person suffering.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

For the last several years I have been experiencing a dark night of the soul.  I have been wondering why God has not been responding to my deep desire to move into a more direct form of ministry.  I felt ready, but nothing was happening.  Over those years, I wondered where God was, and struggled with my need for God to respond. 

As I noted in the last blog, In Transition, What is God asking me to consider?  Will I need let go of more than what has already been taken away?  Yes, God has asked me to consider something entirely new. Unexpected doors have been placed in front of me.  It has been up to me whether to open, and step through those doors, into whatever lies on the other side.  I had to learn to trust in God again, that God was indeed inviting me into a new, unexpected direction. I had to let go of much more than I expected, which has been painful, confusing and full of grief.  Yet, there has been the outrageous promise of a new possibility.

The list of all the opened doors would be long, so here are a few of them.  As I drove home the day I was told I no longer had a job, I decided to volunteer with the Calvert Hospice.  I also followed a lead in my network and met with a hospice chaplain who advised I get CPE training.  I worked on my application during a long vacation in July.  Returning in early August, I sent my application to the program at Goodwin House, expecting to get into the Winter unit starting in January.  Just minutes before arriving for a meeting with the volunteer coordinator at Calvert Hospice, I received a phone call from Dan Duggan inviting me to interview for the Fall unit, starting in a few weeks.  He also arranged my clinical time as a volunteer chaplain with Capital Caring in their Washington, DC office.

The experience has been challenging and encouraging.  Within the CPE group I found myself dealing with the still unresolved grief of my lost job.  While they provided a safe place for me to work through it, I was pushed to go deeper.  Issues I would have put off until later were brought to the surface.  Connections with previous losses were exposed. 

Chaplains at Capital Caring also have been very supportive.  They took time to let me shadow them as they visited clients and answered my many questions.

This holiday time is giving me time to sort through and absorb what I have been learning.  I wonder what new doors will become available in the new year?


 

Life in Journals Past

The fireworks in Washington, DC for the 4th of July have always been spectacular.  This year I tried a new location, sitting near the Jefferson Memorial, looking across the Tidal Basin to the spot on the National Mall where they are launched.  It was not crowded, with many families and kids. A delightful spot.  Of all the pictures, I like this shot the best, where you can see the shadow of a duck at the bottom.    

For the last few weeks I have been reading through old journals.  I am looking for material to use in an article I have been invited to write for a magazine, but that is a story for a later time.  My purpose is to scan through all of the last 12 years of journals, quickly, in order to identify the relevant entries.  Everything needs to be checked, but only some is relevant to what I will be writing, and those sections need to be marked and indexed. 

Many times before, I have gone back to read specific sections or periods of time.  Usually it was to explore, and sometimes process, something that had happened earlier.  Or, the journal included a significant trip abroad or conference/training notes. 

So, scanning through many, many pages of old material is a new experience.  It is a bit like fast forwarding through a movie - looking for specific details, while also gaining a perspective over the whole story.

Some things I expected.  Since I usually journal when I am upset, maybe angry about what is happening, struggling to get unstuck, or bored with my paying job, the amount of negative and depressed entries doesn't surprise me.  In one journal, I actually warned anyone reading it in the future that what I have written about is only a small part of my life.  Life has been much better than the journal would seem to indicate.

What has been startling are the times when months or years before I could even know about something good in the future, I wrote or dreamed in anticipation of that event or change.  Deep desires and urges came to fruition. Not that there wasn't lots of thrashing around, trying out different options and paths, only to have them fail or lead to nowhere. Both were mixed up together.

There are also times when intense conflict or struggle broke through into letting go of something old and opening up to something new.  Going forward, the one piece of advice would be to take courage, to face into the conflict, to be as honest as possible, and keep writing. 

Often I recorded during the hard times how hard it was to write, because writing led directly into the conflict.  The practice and intentionality of doing the writing has been important in building up my courage, giving the capacity to challenge myself, strengthening self-awareness and trying-out new understandings. 

There are a number of times when I recorded spectacular fireworks, within myself, and in relationship with others.  Those fireworks don't happen very often, and when they do, the experience is from within.  Imagine the experience of sitting in a firework shell, as it blasted off the ground, feeling the acceleration, the noise, the bright light and the streaming of burning fire.  It is scary rather than exciting. 

Reading about those explosions now, it is interesting to be on the outside.   Fireworks are fun to watch if you are a safe distance from them.  That may change with the more recent journals?

Reluctant Mystic

Kerry Walters notes in Soul Wilderness: A Desert Spirituality that a “Mystic yearns for an immediate encounter with the Divine, for an unfiltered experience of the replete nothingness of God.” This deep sense of an intimate need to know God without all of the layers and protections that shield our frail humanity from the dangers of direct encounter with God are both a gift and a curse. One’s yearning cannot be completely banished out of mind once its epiphany has been noted. Nor can it be put away without the soul noting its removal and recording its hiddenness. The yearning waits quietly and patiently, looking for the next opportunity to become known and to be acted upon.

When starting down the spiritual path, no one can provide a map that outlines the upcoming choices that must be faced. But the yearning keeps driving the seeker down the path, searching for a sense of God even though that sense is never found by one’s own volition. Yet, there is the continued hope for something will lead to deeper answers.

There is the need to understand more even as that which is being understood becomes incredibly more complex. As more is learned and comprehended by the soul, the difficulty of describing or explaining becomes logarithmically complex. One turns to poetry, paradox, and absurdity because language and description inevitably reduce the clarity of what is being described.

This sense of the inexpressible confronts an intellect that is trained to be articulate, to know and use the right words. If only that which is yearned for, that which is of God, were of this world. Then it would permit a clear, even scientific description of who and what it is. But the yearning pushes into the clouded, fog filled areas of seeing and understanding. The groping to understand cannot be gained through the five body senses. Those senses may begin to note some of the shape of that terrain, but it is unable to be described by sight, sound, taste, smell and touch.

In admitting that yearning, confessing the desire to be in a much deeper relationship with God, I must admit that I am becoming such a mystic. Yet I am reluctant both in allowing others to see it and in fully owning that label. What good is a mystic, so separated from the world with a head in the fog, with more questions than answers? Or, perhaps my feet are solidly standing on the ground and I am just seeing the world in a new way?