some words

this was going to be a brief reply in the comments box to Brook, but i found myself feeling like my head stayed above water today and i ended up having more to say than i thought i would...

so here's some words... thanks also to RD and ohchicken... and now i see as i go to post, from anon...

thanks for those kindnesses... i will add them to a little collection of messages and mails from folks that i am returning to as often as i can at the moment and just sitting with them and trying to connect with a feeling of anchoring... solidity...

anyways, here's my reply comment that kind of unfolded into something more like a posting...

::

Brook, i found your words helpful. thank you for the invitation to read your musings...
a friend of mine recently uttered the same line as Colbert and then pondered whether this past year's wine harvest was bad. we concluded it might be best to avoid the '08 vintage.

there's two really powerful testaments to community at the APM Speaking of Faith online archive. i may have mentioned them here before but they are well worth visiting and revisiting. i've been doing so today...

L'Arche: A Community of Brokenness
and
The Wisdom of Tenderness - an interview with Jean Vanier.

ever since my brother worked as an assitant at L'Arche, it has set the benchmark for me on what the grounding spirit of community should embody. Vanier speaks directly out of his experience of founding and living in the L'Arche community but his thoughts apply to all human relationship. it's *deeply* challenging stuff. and for as intellectual as Vanier is, he speaks completely from the heart and with a gentle but powerful commitment to finding God in the
fragility of human experience rather than in idea... i like that...
as with the SoF programmes, ::the soul in depression:: and the one on the twelves steps, ::The Sprirtuality of Addiction:: that i recommended recently, there is here again the theme of how in weakness that one finds strength and truth...

in a world of competition, of being big, powerful, full of knowledge, being winners, it is in truth in our weakness, our vulnerability, the dark places where we feel in exile, that we are closer to truth of what being human is really about...
it's not to choose to stay in or glorify that place of struggle or pain or suffering but to live in the reality that we are, by virtue of being human, always vulnerable. and dealing with that is how we find true strength... reason to feel joy and rejoice is not the suffering itself but it has to start with being present to reality... in the words of Andrew Solomon, the opposite of depression is not happiness but human vitality - a vitality that does not avoid pain... or in the words of Parker Palmer by seeing deep soul pain, "as the hand of a friend that will push us down to the ground on which it is safe to stand."

as is mentioned in ::The Soul in Depression:: insight is hard to find when one is in the throes of despair. but i have been reminded repeatedly in recent years to never lose total sight of the goodness, the joy, the pleasure one has felt before - to remain mindful of the tiniest moments of light, and to trust, if not hope, that if one was there before one can get back there again.
we have to hold onto that, although there have been far more days than not in recent months where that has been difficult... some days that's the battle, when one only has an abstract concept of oneself... to feel disconnected from oneself... as if one's true, strong inner being as climbed out and gone away... those days, those hours, those moments, are wretched...

and then comes a simple day like today where one feels more embodied... where one tries to rest in the aftermath and allow oneself to just be... not knowing if or when that disembodied sensation will return... and only being able to just stay in the present and cautiously allow oneself to breathe... but i am grateful for it...

i often call to mind Sarah's version of Psalm 139 from a good few years back,

"and the weak are somehow strong
and the lonely* do hold on"

and it is so often a mystery as to how that happens... but if i know that a deep part of me believes in that mystery, i also know there are others who, if i am struggling to hold on, are holding on to me...

community, committed to deep, intentional connectedness and committed to reality, is an embodiment of that mystery... like family at its best... i need it to move in the right direction... it helps create firm ground on which to step...

the best i can do right now is to keep my world small, or perhaps better... tight... what parker palmer describes as community hanging in there with you, holding out with the belief that you can come back round from the dark side of the moon... for if there are hours in which 'not feeling' the light, the solidness, the self makes the ordinary overwhelming, i know there are loving others that are feeling *for* me... and step by stumbling step i must test the ground, and pray that by mystery and courage i find that which is solid...

for as Palmer also notes, and indeed i remember my brother saying the exact same thing when he worked in L'Arche Daybreak, there is a place of pain where one's role in community to the other is not to invade or evade pain, but to be present to it...

in the exhaustion of struggling against darkness, i know there are those close to me who want nothing more from me to let them do that... let them close enough so they can be present, then i also right now need to be present to myself... and if there are moments when one cannot take steps, one just lets oneself lie on the solidity of the bottom, however small a patch of ground it seems... to rest rather than battle... to pause and see where the light is coming from, rather than trying to rush on or escape and thus miss the light or not allow oneself to feel the ground beneath...

i found myself resting on a little patch of solid ground today...


there... there were some words in me after all...rambling i'll admit, but i think there's something in there i need to be mindful of... or better still, heartful of...

when one's Bright Light feels like a barely there ember flickering to stay alight, then perhaps one needs to sit in shelter of the other and let the tiny glowing self be gently breathed upon...

LB.

* (or is it lowly? i've always heard it as lonely. works either way..)