I freely admit that I am fearful about taking and making a very big change in my life. Back in 1997, everything seemed so simple...and I wonder if I have forgotten why I took this path in the first place. I keep thinking about what someone said, on that Tuesday of last week...I recall his movement, and it felt definitely of God. So just maybe...it is time.
I chose my word for this retreat, that will begin on Thursday: Birth. Birth does not come without great pain...not because what it happening is bad, but because change hurts. Turning toward another direction changes the wind, the water, the fire and the earth. Birth requires a stretching of a path, to make is straight and ready for life to walk through it. It may cause sickness and sadness. What was so comfortable has now become uncomfortable, because I have outgrown the space that once held me so nicely. Now it is time to move out into the cold, into the unknown, into the light...where the protection I had grown so fond of cannot serve me anymore.
Moving through the birth canal is the most dangerous part of being born...a baby can die there. I remember how, once I knew my child was moving out of the womb, even though I was exhausted, this was the most important work I had, to get them through this place and into the world...I pressed as hard as I could, not really knowing if I was making a difference, if I was helping...
My daughter came out without any trouble...two ounces less than 10 pounds...and no drugs. She was beautiful. On the second child, I opted for some painkillers, which made the pushing difficult. The doctor got impatient and pulled my son out with forceps...the most horrible feeling in the world, to have my son removed from me so harshly...but alive. I will never forgive myself for choosing the drugs. They might have cost him his life.
The lesson, for me, here is that, when it is time to move on...one should move on. Scary as it is, it is best to do it awake, alert, attentive to the experience. I fear I have grown almost too big to move out of this womb. I look for an easy way, a life line, a distraction...something or someone to ease the pain.
So I go into this retreat knowing that I will soon become a traveler again...wandering down a path to places I've never seen...wondering even if I will still be a Catholic when it is done...and knowing that it doesn't matter, as long as I am following God as best I can. This birth will signal the end of one thing and the beginning of another.
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More test results back, no real bad news. Good news is that my blood is starting to look like real blood again. Energy levels comtinue to increase. So, if my sentence is to live...what shall I do with my life now?
Beautiful conversations were had this last week. I am getting close to understanding something new. With every death comes new life.(That's not the new thing) I looked at a recent photo of my son. The child seems to have disappeared...and the man has taken over completely. And the man looks like a good one. I guess I want to say, when his father died, I can see that part of the father's soul has been left behind in his son. I always heard that a man truly becomes fully a man when his father dies. Before that, he is still waiting for something.
There are so many births and deaths in one lifetime. Only one of them takes the body away. I just don't know how to explain it very well. I look into my son's eyes in that photo, the one that his wife captured so beautifully...and I see wisdom and calmness, understanding and acceptance, sadness and hope. I see someone perfectly beautiful...husband, father, carpenter, provider, theologian, shepherd...and I feel a great peace...that I have given something back to this world that will bring goodness and promise...
Last night, there was a little discussion about the Sacraments: should I speak about them, or should we get a deacon or priest to do the work. I explained that it didn't matter to me, but that, if I was asked, I needed to prepare...and that they should know, I would not speak to or of the Sacraments as technical things listed and carefully defined in the Catechism, I would speak of them as a story...about how one lives out a life in Christ.
We have:
Baptism
Reconciliation
Communion
Confirmation
Marriage/Holy Orders
Sickness/Death
The Church calls them The Seven Sacraments. I see the Sacrament of Marriage and the Sacrament of Holy Orders as co-equals in that we choose how we shall live out our faith in relationship with one, or with many. But this great and holy work that I am allowed to participate in now is much like these Sacraments. Oddly, or not so oddly, I titled my Credo for my Systematics class "Life as Sacrament." At a Protestant Divinity School, no less. For me, life is a sacrament. The world is a sacrament. Everything in this world is some reflection of God.
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I told my friend, that if I had a nickle for every swear word I said in conversation to a priest this week, I would be a rich woman today. He made me really angry...and it was so very spiritually healing. I know I had a conversation like this with a Methodist minister about 15 years ago, and I'm pretty sure I scared the hell out of him...but this was the right priest at the right time...and it was a different form of anger. It was a kind of sacrament, in my mind, I was given the freedom to speak about my feelings of loss and rejection and loneliness and grief and sadness and hatred...to be heard in a gentle way, all my noise rattling around in my head, to kind of vomit it out...and having done so, to proclaim in surprise, "I feel better now." And to have the priest honor my anger, not by judging it, but by really hearing it. And me, knowing that I needed that little tantrum to get unstuck, to move closer to understanding what love really looks like. I feel better now.
That dead stuff
That was stuck in my throat
Is emptied
And the passageway to breathe
Is finally cleared
A bit.
Enough anyway to let
Just a hint of the idea
That I might be lovable
Into my heart.
This is ministry. This is sacrament. This is baptism and forgiveness and communion and affirmation and union and sickness and death...all done in the same moments...
we enter into family
through water and blood
we share food
and shelter
we define who we are
and who we will be
we promise
to protect
to serve
to heal
to bring together the good
to relieve the burdens
of our sisters and brothers
to protect the innocent
to cure the sick
release the captives
to reconcile
and to bury
while lifting up
into new life.....
all the while listening
and telling
our stories.
Love, Cindy
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