When I first wrote about this experience, I began with the words, “This was difficult to write” but it wasn't. Writing it wasn't the hard part. Starting it was.
I'd been carrying around some big slippery feelings; feelings I hadn't been able to wrangle into stillness long enough to really see what they were. Then something happened that gave me the necessary glimpse of clarity around one aspect, and I knew, it was now or never to begin to put words to paper.
I share this particular personal struggle with the hope that I will not be wasting anyone's time. I admit that the exploration of thoughts through writing is what I do in an attempt to grab hold of something that has been elusively bouncing around, kind of like a big beach ball at a rock concert.
I can rarely say for sure what gets me where I land. This particular landing happened after a string of conversations with patients at the hospital, as well as encounters with friends and colleagues, that allowed me to see that I was dancing delicately around something that felt important, but because it was so unidentified I was apprehensive about opening a true discussion around it; which seems nuts because another epiphany I had around this was that it is exactly what I believe we are here to do........
To share, explore, flush out aspects of ourselves we aren't sure of ~ those things that elude us, tease us with their possibilities; those things, that wake us up in the middle of the night.
I think one of the glues that helps create intimacy is when we show vulnerability through sharing deeply personal and perhaps unresolved struggles. Which I am about to do.
My own spiritual path is old in some ways and also young and tender in other ways. When I was in my first year of chaplaincy training, it was on the heels of almost 15 years of companioning very young children between 15 and 36 months old as a Montessori educator. What I didn't fully understand or appreciate at the time, but have come to a much greater understanding and appreciation of now, is how spiritual that time was; those years I spent with the children. Sacred time. But the truth of how connected to spirit I was through my connection to these very young children was lost on me until I started the program of chaplaincy training with the College of Pastoral Supervision and Psychotherapy.
Although I remained connected to my life as a Montessori educator only briefly after leaving the school the thing that followed me around was this question:
When we begin, to open space in our lives for something 'new', what is it exactly, that we're suppose to do with the old?
I'm not sure if I am articulating exactly what the question is because it isn't really just that. It was more like the idea of making room by releasing that which no longer actively served me or anyone else when I began my work in end of life.
It all started when I felt frustrated over not having room on my bookshelves for the books I was accumulating when I started exploring a Spiritual path in my work with people at end of life.
We have a bookcase at the top of the stairs on the way to the loft where Greg and I both have our computers. The one you can see as you climb the stairs, early on morphed into the one I kept my books on. Reference books, resource books, favorite books.
I would occasionally go through the shelves and maybe take a handful of books I felt 'finished' with to the local used bookstore or I might move them into the guest room where we have an entire wall of book cases filled with books. But during that period of time in my life, I was watching the piles of books stacked on the floor at the base of the bookcase at the top of the stairs, grow. And it was annoying me that I couldn't put them on shelves. Many of the books still occupying space on the shelves were books written by or about Maria Montessori. They were books that decades earlier held the same power for me that the books I now wanted to find room for did.
I know now that the attachment (and attachment is a very big word in all of this) the attachment I felt to all of those book was the representation they held as a major turning point in my life, most importantly as a mom and as a daughter.
On this one morning, as I came up the stairs I was suddenly drawn to start removing books; books from that period of my life that was now done. I was never going to go back to teaching Montessori, I was not going to study child development or parenting.
These were books I had been unable to remove because it felt like an amputation of my heart.
The years I had spent working in education had enriched and empowered and opened my life in so many ways.
But I realized I did not need those books in order to hold onto the memories of those years. And I knew, as an former educator of Montessori teachers that there were women, most of them probably young and some of them young moms who were finding their way to studying Montessori pedagogy; people who perhaps, cannot afford to buy the books they'd like to have or are required to have as part of their training. I knew what a gift it would be to donate these books to the Montessori Teacher Training Center in Boulder. That was the awareness that allowed me that day to begin the culling of the books. The awareness that by gifting them to the training center, I would be helping someone else.
Ok, So stay with me here because I'm kind of flying by the seat of my pants and I don't want to lose you, or myself, in the process.
So, there I am, pulling these books off the shelves; touching each one, and thumbing through each one of them before placing them in the boxes I had brought up from the basement. I was feeling very excited about the possibilities being created through finally doing this when I started thinking about all the ways this 'ritual of removal and release' was connected to all aspects of my life......and what does it all mean and is it even worth sharing with you, the listener, or am I just being way too weird.
And, I'm crying! It surprises me but also touches me because there is joy mixed in with sadness mixed in with confusion and I'm trying to name it and then I'm laughing at myself because I know in trying to name it I'm making it less than the whole experience and I'm thinking to myself,
“I have to share this. I have no idea what's happening but it feels really big and important and maybe someone else would want to hear about it.”
So, here's the thing. It was like a veil for something so much bigger; a metaphor, if you will, around attachment; self-identity and even, forgiveness.
It started with the need to 'make room' & 'create space' for books. It manifested initially around making room for books on my bookshelves. But it turned out to be so much more, And I am sure now, that I was making room for more than just books.
It was like a surge of unfolding, opening and expanding. It was a curious understanding that at some point, in order to bring in one more thing, we have to move something out. When we feel ready to do that, do we simply set aside what we no longer require in order to make room for that which we are drawn to inviting in?
Perhaps.
And maybe, it's also about how we liberate our hearts when we can set aside painful memories; when we can lift them up to the light and give them a good look, maybe even a little squeeze of gratitude for what they have allowed us to learn about ourselves; and then, we can leave them behind.
Or maybe it's about forgiving ourselves for a way we once behaved that was so much less than what we'd like to be remembered for.
Is this the end of the story? No, not really. Theres a tiny bit more ; and if you're still with me, you might as well see me through it......
The next morning, I looked at what I'd written about this experience and thought to myself' “Why was this feeling like such a big deal?”. I headed back over to the book shelf to continue the work of making space, and found myself almost immediately again overcome by this feeling of knowing something. I don't know what it is I am knowing but it's a sense that something new has come.... that there is plenty of room for it.... and...... that it is so so good.
We are all students of life. Students of awakening. Students of the light. I know we sometimes think we are something else, like nurses, chaplains, doctors, social workers, cooks, bus drivers but I'd like to offer that really what we all are is students; cleverly disguised as moms, dads, sisters, brothers and lovers. And as such, it is never so much what we know, or what we do, or what we have to offer, as it is our ability to show up as authentic beings.
In my work as a grief counselor it is much the same thing. The more familiar we become with simply being in the consciousness of any given moment with ourselves, the more easily we can be in compassionate consciousness with withanother in whatever state we find them, without the need to try to move them away from their pain, their confusion or their sorrow.
The space and time we spend in communion with each other in that state of compassionate consciousness is what, in my opinion, Spirituality boils down to.
Listening.....Being.......In stillness, in silence, and in truth.
One moment, of no thought, at a time...
Thank you, for walking through this with me. Thank you for listening to me process an awareness. As always, I hope this time feels well spent.
And, I hope you'll join me again, Where the Veil Grows Thin....