LIGHT INSIDE

He was afraid of the dark. He cried and so his parents put a night light in his room.  With the warm glow of a few watts, he was comforted and went to sleep. From early childhood, we believe that if there is light coming into us,we will be OK. We somehow think that our sense of well-being comes from outside ourselves.

But Barbara Brown Taylor, in a recent article in the Christian Century, tells of a man who helped her see a deeper truth. In his book, And There Was Light, Jacques Lusseyran, a blind French resistance fighter during WWII, wrote about going blind as a child. Only 10 days after he went blind, he made a discovery that influenced the rest of his life. "I had completely lost the sight of my eyes; I could not see the light of the world anymore. Yet the light was still there. . . . The source of light is not in the outer world. We believe that is is only because of a common delusion. The light dwells where life also dwells: within ourselves." (The Christian Century, April 2, 2014)

"The light dwells where life also dwells: within ourselves." I sometimes lament how much time I have spent in my life expecting light to come from the outside of myself. How much time I have wasted waiting for someone else to affirm my worth? How many insights I have missed because I looked for others to give me answers to  my life's issues? How much energy have I spent seeking clarity from the lights that flash unrelentingly from culture's values?

Light dwells where life exists. And life exists within each of us. Life, in its glory and pain, in its delight and hurt, in it tenderness and roughness, plays itself out within our hearts and souls. If we take time to pay attention to that life, to the heartbeat of our soul, the light that illumines us will not go out when it get's dark around us. 

GOD'S EYES

“Do you know what those round balls are?” Michael asked me as we were standing at the hotel door beside the 12th century city hall which made up the front of the hotel.

He was referring to 2 beach ball sized spheres which each had blood shot looking eyes on the circumference.  The balls were hanging from the railing on one side of the kidney shaped crystal pool.  

“To keep the birds away?” 

“Right.  They think they are the eyes of a predator.  It scares them away from the pool.”

I wondered.  “How many times have I been scared away from something that I wanted to do because of the manufactured eyes of a predator?”

It doesn’t seem to matter if the eyes are blind or not.  It they appear to be watching, do I run from something that is potential nurturing?

And, I wondered, “How much of my early childhood was spent worrying about God’s eyes watching me as some predator who might do me harm?”  

I was raised in a family where the eyes of the divine were used to scare us into good behavior.  Did I believe God was a predator who could do me harm if I didn’t stay on the straight and narrow?  Or, were they simply dead eyes who were filled with power because of the imagination of a scared little boy who projected onto them the power to see and the strength to harm?

And how many times do I fail to act with bold brashness or courage because I believe there are eyes watching me and might do me harm if I act?  How many times do I fail to speak because someone might judge me or hurt me if they didn’t like what they saw or heard?

If God is our ultimate concern, then the sighted or blind eyes of what we care about most take on power to control our behavior.  And they keep us from trying the new, the risky, the unusual, the bazaar.   

So, I guess the theological question is, “Are God’s eyes just round beach balls with blood-shot pupils painted on the circumference which are designed to scare us away from an interesting and exciting life, or do they live with a sensing sensation, observing us with tender tears, feeling with us the ache and pain of mistakes and the delight and joy of love?”

I don’t know, but I wonder.

MEANING IN LIFE

I see lots of bumper stickers I don’t agree with. Occasionally I see one that makes me think.  The other day I saw this: “The meaning of life is to live it”. I had to ponder that one for a while.

And I don’t think I agree with it. I think the events of our lives are lived. But, I think the meaning of life is lived events storified. That is, I think events happen and we experience them. But what they mean is how we tell the stories of those events.

Stories are like pearls. Calcified life.  Life was lived and then we create stories of the lived experiences. Those stories are the way we want to remember what happened to us. They become the permanent containers for the events we have experienced.

And those stories get strung together like pearls on a string to create what we believe about ourselves. We remember and tell stories that give an image of who we are—both to ourselves and to others. Frequently, those stories are strung together in different ways depending on whether we are trying to tell ourselves who we are or if we are trying to communicate it to others.

The art we create by the stories we tell and the way we string them together is the meaning of our lives.

Now, when there is an event that interrupts the flow of the story—when the artful meaning we create with the way we string our stories together is disrupted by a major loss—we have to re-story our lives. We have to find a way to put that event in the flow to create a new meaning.

So, I think meaning of life is more about how we string together the stories of our lived experience than simply living life. 

TIME HEALS

You hear it whenever someone doesn't know what else to say.  "Time heals all wounds."  I am not sure this is true.

My experience indicates that some wounds cut deep.  The loss of someone who is signfiicant in your life creates a deep canyon in the heart of your soul.  While time may ease the pain, the scar will always be there.

What troubles me about this word that people speak to each other is that it has a passive implication.  One could gather from this statement that time will do the work and that all we have to do is wait for it to work.

Grieving loss is not a passive exercise.  It is really hard work.  And it is an opportunity.  For the tearing away of part of your life creates an opportunity for you to discover more about yourself.  To simply wait for time to heal causes you to miss the opportunity to learn more about your own life.

In my book, "Lose, Love, Live: The Spiritual Gifts of Loss and Change" I offer an active guide for persons to discover more of their life as they work through loss.  Grieving (learning to live again in the absence of someone or something significant) is an occasion to discover a fuller and deeper understanding of oneself.  It creates multiple opportuntities for growth and change.  

Time, coupled with the work of self discovery, can contribute to healing.  But, don't expect time to do all the work.