The Empty Chair

I’ve been working through a meditation course on Emotions with Oren Jay Sofer.  If you’re a meditator and you haven’t found him yet, I highly recommend him.  The long of the short is that he believes in the ABCs of emotions as you meditate.  Awareness, Balance, Curiosity and Strength.  As I meditated this morning, I became intensely aware that I am dragging a three stranded rope of emotions along with me: grief, sadness and guilt.

I am grieving the loss of Griffin.  It impacts so many things.  Things that are lost: my sense of self as a father, my family’s structure and dynamics, the loss of seeing him launch into the world, the feeling of having lost 22 years of time and investment in him.  And I have to remind myself that feelings are like the weather: they’re neither right nor wrong, they just are.

I am sad that I walk by his room and an empty wheelchair sits at his desk.  I am sad that I don’t get to answer 23 question he’d ask that just have easily could have Googled.  I am sad for Gretchen, that she carries a Mother’s burden which is undoubtedly much heavier than mine.

And guilt.  Here is the emotion that binds the rope together.  How could I have done better for him?  How could we have done better for him?  How did we not put the pieces together that his body was failing him over the past three years?  Multiple hospitalizations where he admitted with a BP of 60/35 and was septic from a bladder infection.  When your 19-year old has had 24 surgeries, hospitalizations somehow become a part of the noise of life.

And yet an inexplicable bladder perforation last year rang alarm bells, but not loudly.  Guilt that events like these frustrated me, have a sense that if only Griffin would take responsibility for his bowel and bladder regimen (which he wouldn’t and didn’t).  Guilt that we weren’t patient with Griff when he sleeps till noon, not complete the one chore we left for work asking him to do.  Guilt that we too often let our anger boil over into yelling at him.

So, I carry my rope of pain.  I choose to believe that I am carrying my rope for a reason.  I choose to believe that this rope will either be used to pull me to higher level of awareness and compassion, or to lower me into a deeper place of understanding myself and the holy.  Maybe it’s both at the same time.  I just don’t know.  So, for now, I am simply going to carry it.  Live into to it with spaciousness and balance.  Neither ignore it nor let it wrap itself around me and tie me up.  Examine it without trying to uncode it.  Allow my rope to be a source of gentle strength while I wait on the Almighty.

Pain's Lessons For Us

My favorite author at the moment, Richard Rohr, writes on "holding the pain". He says, "It is spiritually wise to stay with your pain--whatever it is--until you've learned its lessons.  We tend to want to fix it, make it go away or even try to understand it.

Holding our pain is one of the rare moments when we are open to change because our hearts are truly open and broken, splayed for all to see.  It's in this moment that God is able to teach us and we can receive it, if only because we don't have the energy to fight defensively for our sense of self.  The ego is too tired to wrestle and surrenders itself.  Our relationship with the holy deepens.

Pain's lesson for us only comes when we simply hold it, with equanimity and a spacious mind, until it has taught us its lesson.  Trying to understand our pain is like trying to understand a lecture before the professor has uttered a word.  Our pain will teach us in its own time, and if we will hold it gently, without judgement, it will draw us to a deeper place with God.

Wiping The Mirror

To stand at a distance
and take measure of myself
with an objective eye
my agenda, hidden even from me.

Such a stand requires either great courage or
utter desperation.
So I stand, trembling before myself
fearful of what I'll find.

Find I must what patterns I follow
what hidden hurts guide my path,
to wipe the mirror clean as I stand naked
my games, my tricks laid bare.

Not to know is no longer a refuge
Hiding from myself tires me
Ignorance robs me of thoughts and emotions
I don't have them, they have me.

Just This

Just this.

God is found in the interruptions. And this whole crisis has been one giant interruption. Have we found God? Or have we spent the entire past several weeks simply annoyed by our kids, our cramped quarters, the worry, anxiety, the new normal, the President? Okay, we is me.

Just this.

Just this moment. Just this call. Just this problem. Just this conversation or I will never find Him at all. Look inside. He's there, waiting for me to stop and find...

Just this.

He's in front of me, in the person I'm looking at.  Can I see that Joe or Sally sized slice of God standing there?  He's there, waiting for me in my next conversation.   Can I hear His voice? Am I willing to listen carefully enough?  Will I reply with God's voice, through me?

Not my words, Lord, but yours. Not my will, Lord, but yours.

Just this.