Chapter 56. This too

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.  
- Mary Oliver

I started writing my “story” after a crises had ended, and that big event felt like it needed recording. Or, likely more accurately, I felt like a horrible injustice had been done to me and I wanted some recognition for having made it through.

Maybe that recognition was to be primarily from myself.

It also seemed then as if possibly the recounting of what happening, and how we navigated through some tough times, may be of interest someday to others. I have my kids mostly in mind, since they traveled through the rough waters with us (albeit indirectly), and possibly have a few similar tendencies in relating to another (due to both nature and nurture).

The perspective in my writing has changed over the years. I was still quite raw – emotionally bleeding even – in the first five years or so. At the end of a decade post, time had given me distance and I could write with greater understanding for all the players in my drama. Now, in the two decade mark beyond the affair, I have a different stance of grace: looking back over my years I can bring compassion and acceptance to many more of the moments.

“If we do not fill our minds with guilt and self-recriminations, 

we will recognize our incompleteness as a kind of spaciousness into which we can welcome the flow of grace.” 

– Gerald May

The theme that emerged for me at the beginning of recounting my story was dark vs. light: I was keenly aware of considerable internal resistance to the loss of my tidy black-and-white belief system and so many emerging greys. It was shattering to have had such abhorrent treatment by husband and friend, and though I knew on some level that the universe was not so straightforward as to only give me good outcomes for good behavior, I still wanted to never let go of that world-as-predictable illusion. What about “we reap what we sow”? And karma? I recall wondering why God hadn’t held up his end of the deal: I’d tried hard, my WHOLE life, to be good and do good. 

My identity was steeped in being Miss DO-GOODER. How could crap like this happen to me? Though I was resistant and confused, I still had a subconscious recognition that life is not merely dark OR light, black or white, good or bad, but that there is some sort of mysterious comingling. Darkness IS AS light, says the Psalmist. Not sure what that means, but even so, in my confusion let the hauntingly intriguing concept swirl around within. 

Because every story needs a theme (doesn’t it?), mystery was the next focus that I thought I’d rally around. Life’s happenings are ultimately or often un-understandable. Paradoxes abound. Must let the universe pry my dualistic thinking from my clenched fists. Lean into the white fire of mystery that can be dazzling.

The Ponds

Still, what I want in my life

Is to be willing

To be dazzled –

To cast aside the weight of facts

And maybe even

To float a little

Above this difficult world.

I want to believe I am looking

Into the white fire of a great mystery.

I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing –

That the light is everything – that it is more than the sum

Of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

– Mary Oliver, excerpts of The Pond, from House of Light

And now, in my late 50s, I come to a theme of acceptance – the next, maybe supreme, lesson for my life.  The Wisdom of the Enneagram says,

“The key word Ones need in order to heal is acceptance… if I really want to be in the service of good, I have to work with what is. For Ones to accept reality is also to accept themselves by learning the quality of allowing – allowing people to be, including themselves.”

Acceptance for me means letting go of the constant criticizing, judging, or trying to make it all better (it being me, any other, my surroundings, any situation). 

Acceptance allows, even encourages, understanding and compassion.

“Acceptance opens doors, both inner and outer. People instinctively respond to healthy Ones precisely because Ones make them feel that their concerns are understood and that they are accepted.”  

-  Wisdom of the Enneagram, p 123

Yep, holding a baby alligator. Why not?

“Spare me perfection. 
Give me instead the wholeness that comes from embracing the full reality of who I am, 

just as I am. 

Paradoxically, it is this whole self that is most perfect.”

– David Benner

My thinking has evolved, certainly. Rohr talks about evolved consciousness in the daily emails of early 2016: 

"Observe how we gradually let God grow up. God does not change, but our knowledge of God surely evolves."

It brings to mind stages of growth. 

Janet Hagberg, in The Critical Journey, first introduced me to this idea of stages in spiritual development. This awareness has been a comfort as my beliefs and outlook have changed: change can be good, ‘tis good to grow up. Growth is never in a straight line, but a general direction as we age may look something like this:

-          we discover “God” (or, sans God, begin to discover what ‘life’ or ‘love’ is about),

-          we learn more about God and how to fit into the tribe of other followers (or find whatever group or path for belonging), then

-          we step into working for God (or the tribe or mission), next

-          we journey inward as we rediscover God/Meaning/Love with that process nurtured through difficulties, then

-          we journey outward in surrender to God or what is, with an ultimate landing place of living a life of Love and reflecting God/Goodness.

“It’s no use to go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.”

– Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Rohr frames it this way: "Another way to look at this is a series of 

Order > Disorder > Reorder.

Most conservatives get trapped in the first step and most liberals get stuck in the second. Healthy religion is all about getting you to the third. Reorder. You must learn the wisdom of both the first and second stages before moving on."

Paula D’Archy succinctly and rather humorously condenses a stage theory this way

o   In our 20s we’re all about saving the world and making a difference;

o   our 30s are about saving coupons and figuring out how to make our days work,

o   our 40s are about saving relationships and telling our story;

o   in our 50s we’re about saving ourselves and exploring neglected parts of self; and finally in

o   in our 60s we’re about saving the world again, but with wisdom and knowledge, giving back out of love and beauty.

Love and beauty. 

Maybe, hopefully, I’m moving more that direction. Maybe I’m becoming more lovingly nurturing and beauty aware.  I want that.

“Above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you,

because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places.

Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”

-Roald Dahl, The Minpins