The hunger that is unsatiable

There is a crater inside me now that is insatiable.  Everyday is a practice of delayed gratification.  My deepest longing can never be fulfilled in this lifetime.  Heiko, my child, my future, is not coming back.  The hunger to have him returned to me is fierce.  To co-exist with this hunger is my daily practice.  The pain and suffering of it are like sand-paper on the course edges of my unconscious self.  Every day that passes is an opportunity to look directly at the longing and to resist the urge to fill it up – with food, with TV, or with negative, self-absorbed thoughts.  The urge is to go back to sleep, to yearn for the easy days of “getting and spending” that used to be my life.  But this is a flagrant disregard for the gift Heiko gave to me.  It is the narrow view of a tiny, hurting “me”.  What is being called out of “me” is to loosen the grip on my life, to just let it be, to allow it to take me where it wants to go rather than the other way around.  Just beyond (and below) the very human emotions and thoughts of desire and longing (the outcome of dissatisfaction with life in all its forms) is the realm of peace – where everything is as it should be.  It is Heiko’s realm: where love is the air, the future, the ground.  Do you know this place inside you? Have you been there?  It is always available to each of us.  Why do we go there so infrequently, or sometimes not at all?  I think it is because it requires us to let go of our Selves, to morph into the vastness, and lose our distinction.  How antithetical to the majority of our time which is spent differentiating ourselves, trying to get ahead, trying to “make it”, choreographing our lives to feed the hunger, salve the longings.  I have been resisting meditation for months now.  It demands me to watch my thoughts, to slow down, to unwind.  My mind tells me there is too much to do to waste it in meditation.  And then I sit in front of the TV for an hour.  My mind tells me I am too tired, too overworked, need some rest and relaxation, not more “work”.  There is major resistance to letting go of the human realm of thoughts.  Meditation is a kind of mini-death to the Self.  It is also a place that leaves us no where to hide.  No wonder I’m having a hard time finding time for it! It is like anything else that is worthwhile, it takes discipline, patience and willingness to hang on through setbacks to reap the benefits.

Today I have taken the day off from work.  The house is gloriously empty after two months of chaotic renovation.  The weather is cool and I can feel myself itching to go for a walk now that the heat is gone and I can breathe again.  I might, just might, also find some time to sit down and meditate.  You?

Read Full Post »

September 3, 2010

I haven’t written here since August 18th.  What does that say? Have I been well? Have I been despondent? I know I am feeling unsure about writing here.  What is there to say anymore?

One part of my experience right now is feeling like I am suffocating on the sorrow that wells up in me like water in a spring.  My whole being is yearning for a fulfilling resolution to the physcial ripping away that happened on January 3, 2008.  A part of me is screaming: “Haven’t I suffered enough? Can’t I have my baby back ?!”  It is a primal and primitive part of my brain that is still bargaining for a happy ending.  Somehow God is like Santa Claus bestowing gifts on those who have been nice.  And punishing those who have been naughty.  No part of the conscious me believes this of course.  But at some level, the begging, the pleading, the bargaining continues.

I wrote last time that life has carried me forward but in the centre of my being I am waiting in desperation to be whole again.  The best I can describe it is like an addict waiting out the effects of a drug that she can no longer have.  This is the desperate kind of yearning I hold down everyday even as the life force pulls me forward.

In the midst of this I am trying to make a decision about returning to choir at my church.  Choir used to be the highlight of my week.  I looked forward to it and was immensely satisfied by joining my voice with others to create beautiful harmonies that captured all the pain, depth, joy and awe of human existence.  All summer long I have said to myself that come September I will return.  Yesterday I had my hand on the phone to call my choir director and let him know I will be there for the first rehearsal.  “Tomorrow, I’ll call him”, I said to myself as I hung it back up.

What is going on here?  Don is emphatic: “You love singing.  You have always loved singing. You should go back.”  William suggests I go back to church but not join  the choir, he suggest I be a free agent with no commitments.  Sue suggests I go back once, sit in the pew and see how I feel.  I think I can do that and then I feel this uncomfortable feeling inside when I imagine myself there.  I think of all the people that I will have to meet, the eyes that will meet mine and the ones that will turn away.  I will feel the prick of humiliation and shame as the sermon or the hymn or the prayers mentions loss and death.

Humiliation and shame.  Some of you may read those words and protest.  What do they have to do with anything? I ask myself the same question and yet there it is.

I have made such progress but a central part of me that I can’t seem to reach, feels broken, and irrepairably so.  Being at church makes me feel exposed, like the mask I work so hard to put on for work, in the grocery store, on the sidewalk becomes transparent and my brokenness is there for everyone to see.

I make my living by caring for the words and wisdom of Henri Nouwen, a Christian spiritual writer.  Brokenness is what he talks about the most.  I know from him that being broken is the human condition and it is by being broken that we discover our true selves and perhaps most importantly we find the Love that undergirds everything.

Why then can I not accept my own scars, my own state of profound loss?  I am the “poor in Spirit” the scriptures refer to.  We are all the “poor” in some way or another, at some point in our lives – some just hide it better.

Writing this has, as usual, helped me to see why I have an aversion to church and choir that has a power over me that overrides my desire for music, community and friends.  I don’t want to risk rejection.

I was listening to Rabbi Harold Kushner on Tapestry last Sunday on the CBC.  He was talking about fear.  Rejection, he said, is the number one fear of most people – not death, not illness, not physical pain, but rejection.  What fragile creatures we are! The thing we call “me” is always looking for affirmation, to be understood (what are most marriage conflicts about really?).

Losing Heiko, and so publically, has had the inadvertent effect of exposing the little, scared “me” for the whole world to see.  I have become the poster child for the human condition.  Losing Heiko exposes me (and you) as vulnerable and powerless.  No wonder I feel like retreating to a cave most days!

In the past couple of weeks the depression has returned, dragging me down into despair and despondency once again.  What happens is I start to allow my thoughts to focus on “what if”.  “If Heiko was alive right now I’d set up the sprinkler in the backyard for him to run through.” “If Heiko were alive right now I wouldn’t feel so lonely.” “If Heiko were alive right now I’d take him to the lake.”  Heiko’s absence starts to grow exponentially until all I can feel, see, hear is what is not.

Last time I wrote, I tried to articulate what happens when I stop focussing on what is missing and turn my attention instead to what is present.  It is like putting on different glasses that can suddenly “see” through the dark.  The proverbial veil lifts and I am thunderstruck by the vastness of the invisible.  I am overwhelmed by Love.  At these times, Heiko is not missing.  Heiko is close – as close as my own heart.

It appears I am caught in the tension of living between these poles – both real, both with their own spinning axis that pulls me towards them.  I am always choosing.  We are always choosing.  Are the most peaceful among us simply more practised at choosing Love? It is a discipline.  It is a practise.

Ronald Rohlheiser writes in his book “The Holy Longing” that as a culture we are too quick to resolve tension.  I can resonate with this.  Tension, being tense, is an uncomfortable state to be in.  We almost naturally work towards resolution.  But what if we could allow tension, to stay with tension.  How much wiser we would be! How much less restless and impulsive! How much more peaceful!

When I think about it, life itself is a tension between the poles of birth and death.  We can fill our days with attempts to free the tension or we can stop fighting it and wait it out – fully awake to our condition, but not at war with it.  How different our lives would be.

After writing this morning I almost want to pick up the phone and call my Music Director and say “I’ll be there”.  On the other hand, I may need to live in the tension between my old life and the new one a little longer.

Read Full Post »