Zero Karma

The psychiatrist told me that I was 90% sane also said something else that sticks in my mind and gives me pause to think at times when my mind turns hostile on me.  He said “Look, it isn’t like you killed anybody.”  I think about that often.  No, I didn’t kill anyone.  I’ve hurt people badly, but they still live.  Because the degree of anguish I feel related to my guilt is so great at times, I often wonder how people who accidentally or unintentionally committed manslaughter find a way to survive.  If they are feeling a degree of remorse that is consistent with their crime, I feel compassion for them, which in no way is meant to minimize the pain and grief of loss felt by the families of the victims.   About a year or so ago I read “The Hour I First Believed” by Wally Lamb.  It tells the story of a woman who commits vehicular manslaughter while under the influence of prescription narcotics, which she became addicted to after her experience in the Columbine shooting.  She became stuck in her mental anguish, the guilt and terror crippled her.  Instead of redeeming herself, she slowly drowned in her own despair, never compensating for the wrong she committed.

I think of that novel and the fact that scenarios like that play out all the time.  What good does feeling guilty and remorseful do if I simply wallow in fear and self pity?  If I fail to act, if I fail to become a better, stronger, more thoughtful, compassionate person, then I’m not redeeming myself, I’m not doing the world a service.  Perhaps I speak of Karma. Maybe it really does exist.  When I went to that psychic, and I hesitate to even reference it, but she said my Karmic level was zero, my lesson in this life is free will.   For a while I tried to figure out what a level of zero meant.  With no success I finally gave up and decided that the whole concept was in contrast to the Catholic faith and decided just to put it all out of my mind.  But, the other day at work I was speaking with the Indian friend I know.  He practices Buddhism and is a Hare Krishna and he mentioned Karma to me.  So I asked him what it meant.  He looked at me and said “You have no Karma left.  You’ve used up all your good Karma.”   My stomach dropped the way it would on the down hill slope of a roller coaster.  I felt sick to my stomach.  I had thought before that at least it meant I didn’t have any bad Karma, but the way he worded it made me feel sick.   Who ever I’ve been, what ever I’ve done, in this life or in the past, must have been pretty lousy and bad.

If I believe that we sign up for the burdens in our life and if I believe that my life lesson is free will, then it makes sense that I’d have a Karmic level of zero.  “Here you go” says life, “You get a clean slate to choose who you want to be, but your life will be challenging, you will suffer pain with no good Karma to buffer it, but no bad Karma to make it worse.  Live your life and decide who you want to be…then be it.”  But isn’t that what we are all supposed to do any way?

Again the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi floods into my mind.  “Lord, make me a channel of your peace.  Where there is hatred, let me sow love…”  The self control and commitment to be that person, the person who responds to anger with kindness and love, who puts their hurts and sadness aside to comfort the pain of others is the antithesis of who I’ve been through out my life.  I feel the weight of the shame and the sorrow that accompanies this realization, but it doesn’t change what I must do or who I want to be.  As I start my day I think…Lord, make me an instrument of your peace, let me sow love Lord, please grant me the courage and strength to accomplish that task.

Say a Prayer From Heaven

I wonder if Mother Theresa looks down from Heaven and believes in the true goodness that came from her existence and the labors of her work?  Does she finally feel as if her life and spirit form a chord of harmony,  aligning in a way that was so painfully absent when she walked amongst us  in her human form?   I wonder if her soul is finally at peace?  The more I read about her spiritual darkness, the more fondly my heart grows for her.

From where I sit, I know her. I understand her plight.  Yet, I recognize the arrogance in making such a statement as one might conceive I am making a comparison between us. I  do not mean to insinuate such  an arrogant thing.  But simply, I embrace the comfort in knowing the degree of inner dissonance she suffered.  The more that she succeeded the more distraught she became.  I know her fear.  The fear that if the world knew of the true  torture  her soul endured, that knowledge would negate the good that she had done, that others would doubt her and in doing so doubt God.  But, oh! how this knowledge brings me hope and courage of my own, for she kept on trying to cling to her faith and to Christ’s love, even through the decades where she felt abandoned by him.  Stumbling and fallible she always carried on, a true testament to devotion that inspires faith.

“If I ever become a Saint — I will surely be one of ‘darkness.’ I will continually be absent from Heaven — to [light] the light of those in darkness on earth” she wrote.  Oh, Dear Theresa please come and visit me and know that those of us who share the dark night that you felt, need a saint to guide us, one who knows our plight, one who brings us comfort through compassion and understanding instead of a sense of inadequacy as their holy perfection only amplifies our guilt and sorrow, self-inflicted through our awful sins that have served to demoralize and leaden the pain within our souls.    Oh Dear Theresa, I think I’ve found a friend…Come, please be with me, be my guiding light and when you can not share your company with me,  please say a prayer from Heaven.

 

 

 

Searching for Place Beyond the Rainbow

I am searching, but I don’t know what it is that I am seeking.  It seems as though I am always chasing rainbows, even if only in the hope that I will find that somewhere just beyond, praying that upon arrival it will be familiar and I will instinctively know I have found the place where I belong.  I imagine that once I find it,  my feet will land on solid ground and life will feel real.

Often I feel as if I am suffocating, as if this spirit within me has expanded past the confines of my physical body, like there is some pulsating force that is bursting at the seams, aching to get out and roam free.  Much like the way it feels when you remove a pair of uncomfortable shoes and walk barefoot in the sand, freeing them, letting  your toes expand and stretch, breathing deeply as the warm sand gently gives way to their weight, massaging and embracing them tenderly, softening and soothing them instead of constricting and containing them and causing aches and pain.  I seek to find my way some how by straddling this tangible and physical world that is so concrete and apparent, tethering me down like a needed anchor and the weightless external realm that is just beyond the limits of my ordinary sight, who’s  expansiveness is confined only by the vastness of my sightless vision, where there is no gravity allowing me float away.  The dissonance is painful, living in two worlds.  I spend so much time retreating inward to avoid pain and discomfort, but yet the door way in is really an exit so someplace else, some place larger.  I perceive the dimensions and multiple layers of the world around me, as if there were several three dimensional cubed grids stacked on top of each other. The images I envision through my mind’s eye are both vibrant and crisp yet fluid and vaporous, always teasing and taunting my emotions through the notion of a peaceful, soothing realm that tantalizes my mind with the hopes that alternative realm and lives exist. And that I can touch them by just extending my hand, allowing me to feel their air, their weight and coolness, the same way I can feel the wetness when I break the surface of a clear pool of water and reach for the bottom, diving deep enough that I eventually find some solid ground.

I hear my pragmatic, rational voice speak, “For crying out loud Leigh, you are talking crazy again,” the chastisement causing me to shrink within myself, but then it is answered by the dissociative, creative, imaginative self  who replies “Am I? Perhaps… maybe… but then again….. whooo aaaam Iiiii?”  with a tone and rhythm that sounds more like the hookah smoking caterpillar from Alice In  Wonderland than anything I perceive myself to be.   Every thing feeling so real and yet elusive, consistent yet conflicting…never the right size. Too large to fit through the first door but too small to reach the key.  I am constantly expanding and contracting instead of simply being whoever I’m meant to be.  Yet now  I wonder, if like Alice in her Wonderland or Dorothy while in Oz,  I should seek my authentic and original self and if I find it will I feel at home no matter where I am?

Thoughts on Suffering

The other day I watched a documentary called “Brides of Christ,” it was an episode of Our America with Lisa Ling.  The documentary weaves together the story line of a young women who chooses to become a nun while another woman chose to leave her religious order and enter the secular world.  The host spoke of Christ calling lives into the religious vocation and reminded the viewer that sometimes Christ calls them away as well.  That thought had never occurred to me, that Christ would call someone to no longer be a priest or nun.

For years I have explored various religions and believed that often individuals of devout and simple faith must be happier, more content and at peace than me.  I often fantasized about joining a religious order, or even simply going away for a week retreat in a monastery.  People do it all the time, just give up the secular world and enter a religious life.  I had always assumed that once a person adjusted to the structure and the routine that the emotional demands of daily life in the secular world would simply fade away, that the confinement of monastic life would actually be an expansion for the soul and that once you figured that out you’d experience peace and contentment.  But now I realize that even people who devote their lives to Christ still suffer. I had not seen it before because I so badly sought the escape from the emotional angst that has plagued me throughout my life.

No apostle writes of suffering more than Paul.  One of Paul’s writings was read at Mass this weekend,  “And to keep me from being too elated by the abundance of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I besought the Lord about this, that it should leave me; but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’…For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).  Pope John Paul II explained that Paul found salvation through his suffering, that in experiencing loss and anguish he shares in the passion of the Christ.

Perhaps it was a coincidence that Sunday morning before Mass I spent some time reading about Mother Theresa because I was curious about what inspired her, her early life, and wondered what it was that made her great. Perhaps it wasn’t.  While reading about her, I was surprised to discover that there was such harsh criticism of her and her practice of her faith.  And the controversy surrounded her belief that suffering could bring people closer to Christ, suggesting that this belief resulted in the delivery of neglectful medical care in her hospitals.  Then I went to Mass and heard Paul’s readings, an undercurrent of meaning and purpose has begun to unfold.

I suppose, at least for this moment, I accept that suffering can not be avoided. It is so much easier to wrap myself in self-pity and despair and forget that there is no escape than to accept that I must simply endure.  But didn’t God also suffer when he sacrificed his son?  To seek the avoidance of pain is to aspire to be greater than God, and thus is not for me to do.  So if I can not seek the avoidance of pain, how do I survive and grow from it?

St. Paul writes that when we allow ourselves to learn from pain then suffering serves it’s purpose,  “to bind you together in love and to stir your minds, so that your understanding may come to full development” (Col. 2:2). I wonder if this is true.  If we allow it can suffering really help love grow?  Can it make us kinder, soften our hardened core?  If we see it as an opportunity to grow can we embrace the pain more fully without the fear of going mad and becoming lost in it?  Just as our earth journeys around the sun, rotating in a pattern, turning day into night and then back to day again, will we cycle in and out of suffering and pain?  Perhaps somethings are meant to hurt and that’s where faith comes in.  Just as a bandage does not heal a wound but simply assists and brings comfort along the way, faith will not prevent or take away our suffering, but simply helps us find the strength, courage, and endurance so we can survive.

The Mighty Oak

With pebbles and driftwood collected from the banks of a mighty river to the north and tanned deer hide from the mountain forests to the east, my friend’s husband, a practitioner of Native American Shamanism crafted a rattle made specifically for me.  In Shamanism, rattles are  an instrument of both music and control as they help guide the relationships between our realm and the spiritual realm.  Some shamans will spiritually journey into each stone they place with in the rattle to ensure that it is filled with a spiritual  animal helper, a guide or an ancestor. Rattles are of great importance to their spiritual belief and the symbolic gesture of his gift is indescribably profound.  Intentionally journeying into the spirit realm, my friends husband then sought my spiritual guides.  He retrieved them and secured them in a small clear bottle, encasing them in their tomb by sealing it with natural wax, and secured it with the straps of hide from the same deer used for the rattle.

He did all this unbeknownst to me and gave them to me a few days before I was scheduled for surgery.  This occurred at the time I was just beginning to meditate.  I had slowly begun to embrace Buddhist thought, practiced yoga and walking chant and began to explore Reiki.  The story of my surgery, or rather my miraculous recovery from it, is one I’ll save for another day, because if you are a skeptic, it might it make you question your lack of belief in the power of the mind, the will, and prayer and it deserves a telling of its own.  But, I preface the story I’m about to share with a reference to it, because these gifts that I received were offered because I was preparing for something that I knew would be a bigger fight than what was expected, during a time in my life when the world seemed full of darkness and mortal danger around me.  I had been battling mental demons in the months leading up to the operation and spirituality became my main defensive weapon. The medical problems seemed to be just one more front upon which the darkness attacked me.   The build up to this story is meant to honor the time, the thought, the danger, the effort that was  devoted to the creation of a powerful gift for me.  How do you thank someone when they go to such lengths to give you a gift?  As I write this I pause and am humbled by the number of times in my life I have been treated by kindness and generosity from others and am humbled by my naivety and ignorance of the magnitude of love and goodness that truly exists in the world.  I can fixate on the hurt and negativity I have experienced and it will only discolor and taint the glorious world around me, or I can focus my thoughts and visions on those people whom I know that extol the power of love. Those who love have seen the face of God.  I  wonder how to thank them and know I simply can’t, but instead I need to walk in their footsteps and that is why I constantly strive to be a better person and give of myself to others, to pay their kindness forward.

So, I was given an indescribably sacred and special gift to help me with my pending battle and was incapable of expressing the gratitude I felt for his profound gesture, until his wife bore a son and I had a chance to offer a gift to them myself.   But what gift do you offer to the first-born son of a vegan shaman who practices Reiki? Some how a box of diapers or a pair of booties doesn’t hold muster.   I realized that what ever I offered would have to be created through a journey I traveled myself.  Eventually I decided that I wanted to give the boy a tree, one that could be planted and grow along with him.  I began to research the symbolic meaning for each type of tree that grew in our climate and decided upon the mighty oak for it stands for honor, family, life, wisdom, strength and power.  If I could give a child any gift it would be all of these and love.

My search for the oak tree began in April, the child was not due until summer.  I began to look for acorns that I could plant for him in hopes that if planted, they would sprout around the time of his birth.   I walked through the winding path of the local park where I spent so many hours meditating and well, crying.  As April turned to May and trees began to blossom, I walked the three-mile path searching the ground and trees for discarded acorns, yet none were to be found.  I had planned to harvest some acorns from the oak tree in my yard but one day came home to find it as a stump, never to produce acorns again.  Discouraged and frustrated,  I engaged some help from friends who had trouble bearing a child of their own.  The husband traveled to his childhood home and gathered acorns from an oak tree that was planted by his father, who is now since long deceased.  I planted them lovingly, but they never grew.  At the same time I continued to search along the path that wandered through the wooded park because I truly wanted to give the child a gift that I had found.  One day, full of sun and warmth I could feel the energy of life and the electricity permeated the air so strongly that my skin began to tingle.  Lost in thought and meditation I had journeyed farther than I realized and stumbled upon the first of the mighty oaks that I always searched.  Under its massive branches sat an old stone and wooden bench where I often sat and simply cried, sometimes wailing vehemently as it seemed impossible to expel the pain and darkness that consumed and blanketed me.  I had long given up hope of ever finding an acorn on or around this tree, for I had searched for one dozens of times before.  There were none growing on its branches, none upon the ground. Yet, I knew the true gift was in my journey and the effort I put forth for this anticipated child.  As I approached the bench my head tipped upwards towards the sky and with one large stride I raised myself upon the bench and began searching the branches of this ancient tree, finding what I expected, an absence of acorns.  I stepped off the bench and turned my gaze down to its roots and began to search the soft brown earth beneath my feet.  I circled around the base of the old tree in vain, still with no success.  With an audible sigh of frustration I plopped myself down, sitting on the bench.  Sitting in silent disappointment, I was flooded by visions and memories flashing through my mind as if it were traveling through time and space re-experiencing the floods of tears I’ve released upon that bench.  Burdened with a heavy fatigue my arms drooped down beside me, with my hand falling upon the wooden slab of the bench.  Instead of feeling a flat solid board my hand landed on something lying on the wood.   I looked down to my left hand and gently tipped it to the side, uncovering a single acorn that had not been there several moments before when I stood upon the bench searching through the branches.  My mind flipped rapidly through its mental channels while the energy around me began to pop and crackle.  I will never know if the acorn simply just appeared or whether it was there but I simply hadn’t seen it.  But sometimes I think that some how, in another life, or in another realm, I left the it there for myself.

My reservoir of hope renewed and armed with an acorn,  I planted it in a clay pot and placed it on the sill above my kitchen sink.  Days and weeks went by and nothing sprouted.  Then I researched how to grow saplings only to discover that it required a green and fresh acorn, that brown and dried acorns were not fertile seeds.   This meant that I now needed to wait at least three months before I could harvest anything.  I decided that since patience is not a strength of mine, the process of me waiting meant this gift would be all the more meaningful to the boy and his family.  So I waited, walking the path still several times a week looking for acorns on the branches so I could pluck them off some day.  But still, I could none.  My summer became filled with daily searches for oak trees to no avail.   August came and went and I had not a single acorn.  I began to despair and finally gave up in discouragement.

Several months later I was on holiday spending a weekend in a mountain retreat with my husband when I saw a little basket on the counter as we checked out.  It was filled with sterling silver acorns.  I quickly bought an acorn and immediately knew what I was to do, although it was not until the following spring that my plan came to fruition.   I composed the story of my search for the seedling of the mighty oak.  I wrote to the child that he should ask his father to tell his own story of the gesture that prompted my response, for I thought that was something that should be shared some day.  I explained why I chose the oak tree for him and how I wished those gifts for him and then I described the months of searching for the precious seed of life.  I purchased a small child size shovel and garden tools and attached a gift card to a local tree nursery and wrapped a ribbon around these gifts, threading it through the eye hole of the silver acorn and gave the gift to his mother.

As I type I wonder what brought this story into my mind this morning.  Perhaps it is because I’ve spent so much time dwelling on all the mistakes I’ve made and need to be reminded that sometimes I get it right.  Perhaps it is because I need to be reminded of my ability to persevere or that if you truly believe in something you can make it happen.  Maybe I needed the reassurance that I am able to commit to things and see them through until their successful end.  Maybe I need the perspective that often when we search too hard for things and we lose sight of the importance of journey while our narrowed lens limits our ability to see the bigger picture.   Maybe I need the reminder that we are never alone and that there really could be other realms beyond us, ones that bring us comfort.  Or maybe I am just supposed to sit and think about the way this memory feels, the warmth and light that surrounds it and comforts me, penetrating my flesh, shining rays of hope into the dark crevices within me.

The Unknown

Have you ever had a story to share that you were afraid too?  One that could either show your courage or make you seem insane?  One that frightens you to know it so you try to repress, but one that you know someone needs to hear?  I have that story and though I don’t want to share, I am going to tell it.

Elizabeth Gilbert begins her book “Eat, Pray, Love” describing a life changing moment “almost like one of those crazy astronomical super-events when a planet flips over in outer space for no reason whatsoever, and it’s molten core shifts, relocating its poles and altering its shape radically, such that the whole mass of the planet suddenly becomes oblong instead of spherical.”  She describes a dark November night where her world came crashing down upon her and she simply wanted to live and so she began to pray and plead  to God and to her surprise he answered her.

I start with that story to buffer the insanity of mine, because it is similar yet a little more dramatic, but the theme is simple all the same.  We are not alone and there are things more powerful than us.

I should start by saying I’ve been on a journey of spiritual reflection trying to find some peace and comfort in my life.  It’s been a long and drawn out one that has explored religion, mindfulness, and Buddhist meditation.  But in the end I’ve settled into the practice of my youth, as my friend the priest has said, it’s always best to start with what you know, it’s where our roots begin.  So I go to Catholic Mass and pray the “Our Father,”  I take communion and try to find my peace.

But sometimes weird things happen that confuse and frighten me.  Before my last crisis I was attending mass and saw what I thought was a swallow, swooping past my vision in a dark and rapid blur.  It struck me as odd that no one else saw it and for a moment I thought I was crazy.  And even now I wonder if it was insanity, but recent events have made me wonder if it was something different.

I once went to a psychic to get my past lives read.  I thought that maybe if I did she could unlock some mystery of why I feel so stuck in life.  I thought that if she could tell me what my lesson in life was that she could somehow help me fix all that hinders me.  And what I got was frightening and left me believing that there is something more and that there are dark forces that we should not dabble with.  Now, I don’t claim to be psychic but sometimes I just see and know things and I don’t know why.  I’ve met people who radiate heat and some who emanate light, and others who claim they can feel the warmth disseminated from others.   I don’t think that just because you believe in these things it makes you crazy, but this is one of those areas where my boundaries start to blur and I’ve always been afraid that my exploration, my questions and the things I see are just a part of my insanity.

But the day I saw the psychic was hot and oppressively humid, she seemed fatigued and just annoyed with the petulance of her endless stream of seekers.  I knew that she had some ability to give answers or to know things that were not from her because she had that radiant glow, the shine upon her skin and a white light surrounded her.  Until that day I had always thought that those who shined in that light were always on the side of right.  She began to review my number chart, I neither spoke nor gestured to give my story away.  It was automatic and seemed rote to her, but mid way through she stopped herself and said, almost to her own surprise “I don’t normally comment like this, but you certainly have a lot of bosses who try to micromanage you and you really wish they’d stop, as a matter of fact you probably dream about making them stop.  What brought you here today.”  There was no way that she could have known that.  At the time I was working as an executive for a Board of Directors in a job I dearly loved, but the Board tried to micromanage every move I made and the tension was untenable and the distress consumed me.  The psychic’s tone which once hinged on annoyance instantly became smooth and gentle, her harsh tone now dripped of honey.  “I don’t know what brought you here, but I’m glad you came, take my card before you leave and call me any time.” It was as if there was something whispering in her ear  “Get this one don’t let her go, engage her in some way.”  At the time I didn’t have the clarity I have now, for I was entranced by the fact of the things she knew.  She told me that my goal in this life comes down to the freedom of my choice…my life lesson was free will.

I have to admit that for a moment I thought I’d found the fountain of youth, that this woman had some special gift that she knew that I too possessed and she would teach me how to wield  it.  I gave great thought to approaching her again,  I didn’t know why or for what, I just thought that I could learn something from her.  The next day I began to reflect on how bizarre the experience was and I began to search for the woman on the internet, then I was afraid.  Why did I think I would find something different? Of course she practiced dark arts and various forms of witch craft.  The light she possessed was some facade.

The next day I met with a priest.  I began to divulge my story and asked God for forgiveness, as he prayed with me  he described St. Ignatius’s belief that some people possess the ability to discern dark spirits that mascaraed as light.  I then realize what I had just done  and it frightened me.  Since then I’ve not missed a mass nor visited a psychic, while I have stumbled and made mistakes I have not strayed from that commitment to never return to her but even then I still don’t know what I truly exposed myself too.

So now fast forward almost a year has passed and in recent weeks I have found myself in crisis like the one Elizabeth Gilbert describes, in a moment on the floor begging for forgiveness, pleading for redemption, groveling for my life.  Through sobs and gasps for air  and in pure desperation I simply prayed the “Our Father” all through the night.  In a frenzied chant I said it again and again.  As I wearied I then laid outstretched on the living room couch, almost in a trance repeating “Our Father, who art in Heaven….Our Father….Our Father…”  I thought of the book written by Mitch Albom,  Have a Little Faith.  In it he tells the story of a man named Henry who had been connected to murder other heinous crimes, who in a moment of crisis, plead to God to save his life.  And so I plead with God and said “If you saved Henry, God, then you can save me…please God Help me.”  And as my pain and panic, crying, and fear began to mount a strong thunderstorm began to intensify around me.  The lightning was so close I could hear it crackle and the thunder was instantaneous.  Within and around me there was a horrific storm.  And several times I felt a twitch, an involuntary spasm, as if I felt the electricity from the storm around me.  But it was different from any electricity  I’d felt before.  Instead of absorbing the energy in  me, it felt as if something had reached into the crown of my head and pulled something out of me, not once, but twice.  My body twitched and spasmed and I felt an electric shock, but in reverse. And as soon as that transpired a gale of wind blew through my house and three doors slammed shut.

Now, I know how that sounds and I know I have moments that will make you wonder if I imagined or hallucinated this.  Was this a moment of my 10% insanity?   I do not know.  But only seconds later my son was standing at the top of the stares sobbing in distress.  His bedroom door on the second floor had slammed shut and frightened him, as had all the bedroom doors on the first and second floors.   I ran and embraced my precious son, the miracle he is, and crawled into his bed and held him next to my heart, and simple continued to pray.   He fell back to sleep quickly and I went back down the stairs to carry on with my vigil that started on the couch.  But this time much less frenzied and with a little calm.

And since then it’s not that I haven’t struggled, my heart aches and I have pain.  But there is something different, I feel an inner calm, not mine per say, but a presence of mind that I simply need to just endure.  Although the storms continue to rage around me and I currently grieve for the challenges in my life, the answers are more simple. I have simply vowed my life to God and trust he’ll see me through.  Like  St. Paul who had a defining conversion moment, I think that I’ve had mine.

I don’t know what happened and don’t want to admit that I think there were dark forces hovering over me, but I recognize it’s not the type of thing that is worth gambling on.  Does it matter if what I described was real or a moment of temporary insanity?  Not really because it doesn’t change what I need to do, and that is simply be the type of person that God wants from me.  Elizabeth Gilbert says that when asked what type of God she believes in she always answers “I believe in a magnificent God”  and  I think she is right.

Open Up Your Heart

“Let us endeavor to live that when we come to die even the undertake will be sorry”  (Mark Twain); what a poignant quote.  Let us live in such a meaningful way that a man who must become calloused to the emotional grief of death will be awakened from that mechanical slumber upon our own.   Who doesn’t want that?  I’m not referring to the attention of a large and grand funeral ceremony, but to have lived a purposeful and meaningful life, to have lived so profoundly that little pieces of us have been shared and dispersed and carry on the good that can truly be the core of our nature.

In Riding the Dragon,  author Robert Wicks says ” Too often in an effort to be a better person, we only wind up trying to be another person.”  How many of us are conscious of this when it happens?  I suspect that most often we are embarrassed and ashamed, we deny that it is what we’ve done, if we know at all.  But what would it mean if we knew it at the time and we did it any way?  Would it make us an obsessive stalker?  A fraud or just insane?  Is it something sinful or just kind of sad and pathetic all the same?  I can’t quite comprehend why my accomplished life was simply not enough for me, why I could only see the things I didn’t have.  Until recently I have been so fixated on all the hurt and pain that’s been done to me that I began to emulate the wrong things in this world.  While my heart was kind and always wanted to do right, I’ve been stuck in this false trance, going through these motions that perpetuate my pain.  I saw a person whom I admired greatly for the person that they are, for the way they raised their kids, and how they’ve built their home.  For how their home felt safe and warm and I wanted it . . . because it all seemed so perfectly, well normal.  And rather than creating those things for myself I simply fixated on feeling like someone else.  In hindsight I realize that it makes for a great horror movie, a person becoming obsessed with another being.  How is it that I’ve become that tragic villain that scares and victimizes a person they so admire?  An involuntary spasm just shuddered through my spine as I reflect on how warped and disturbed that sounds and I deeply exhale a breathe that begins in the sternum of my soul.  I feel such shame and remorse.

But, yet I know that I am not alone, that over the course of history others have erred this way.    In Eat Pray L0ve, Elizabeth Gilbert paraphrases the Bhagavad Gita: “It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody’ else’s life with perfection.”  Ohh . . . yeah . . . right.  I guess I missed that line.

Robert Wicks says it quite well, ” awareness is not possible if our hearts are filled with preoccupation, with the desire to control, or with worry about our image.  The beauty of nature and the simple gifts each day brings will go unnoticed of our minds are elsewhere.”

It is just finally time that I get life right.  I am tired and I am weary and I can not live this way.

But where does forgiveness and redemption start?

Once while eating Thai Pad noodles  with a Catholic priest, for I have the fortune of befriending one,  I began to gush.  And how he managed to remain kind and empathic as I blubbered and rambled on, a long oratory of all the things that have and are wrong and wounding me, he began to tell me about the apostle of Saint Paul, perhaps one of the most influential of them all.  The most educated of the disciples of Christ he had a sordid past as a fanatical zealot of the Jewish law.  He participated in murders, imprisoned Gentiles who followed Christian ways, with a fiery temper he left destruction in his path.  Then one day, on the road to Damascus, he met the risen Christ and as Joseph Callewaert explains  in The World of Saint Paul “just as an earthquake can change the course of a river or a stream, so too the apparition of the Risen Savior completely changed the life of Paul of Tarsus.”

The scriptures read that for three days after his meeting with the Risen Christ, Paul could not see and he neither ate nor drank, and I imagine why.  Filled with grief and sorrow, remorse, and with shame, I’m sure that he was battling the demons within himself.

Then when Paul began anew, on the side of right, those who’d known him as Saul doubted and didn’t trust him.  They’d seen what he was capable of, the damage he had caused, they despised and questioned the sincerity and loyalty of his transformation.  God simply explained ” he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and Kings and the sons of Israel; for I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:13-16).

Redemption has its price.  So I am learning.  And others will learn this too.  Redemption has its price.

For those of you who find yourself in a position like mine, I offer one bit of parting advise, just remember this  “being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage ” (Lao Tzu)…so don’t hold back, open up your heart and let yourself feel love.