Saturday, October 16, 2010

Time Stand Still

Wow! My first post in many months and I have only begun to think about why I haven't written. I am not even ready to really, truly express it. I only know that for 16 months or so a powerful, spiritual experience gripped my life and made it impossible not to see some very amazing, sad, meaningful, dark, light, deep and penetrating things. Now, as that experience has slipped away, I find myself in a kind of even darker void.

I know I'm tired of the answers that were so definitively thrown at me, and I abhor the notion that somehow everything will always end up perfect because of a supreme being that, depending on our ability or goodness, will sometimes rescue the miners of this Earth and sometimes won't! I know some would say it is my failure that I don't feel simply wonderful. (By the way, I do feel ok at times.) The truth is that I am ignorant.....I don't understand, and I fear the judgement of people who look down on those in a Night Sea Journey!

A night sea journey would not be a night sea journey if it ended quickly. It is by nature a long lasting "rupture" to use Thomas Moore's words "in your very being." Most people want you to be OK, so in turn they can feel OK, and thus life and it's gifts are avoided. I think most religion has at least some element of this avoidance, which prevents experience and growth. Just like the alcoholic that must be able to stand and say, Hi my name is_____. I am an alcoholic, a dark night "pares life down to the bare essentials and helps you to get a new start." The alcoholic, now no longer in denial, has freedom to explore the depths of themselves that would not be possible in denial. The dark night may never be truly over, and as TM says, "its contributions may be what it does for others and not what it does for you!"

Dark nights may not always end happily, but that doesn't mean it didn't have value along the journey. So be careful in negative judgement of people who have entered this other-worldly place, where opportunity exists for transformation to some degree. Sometimes life requires us to go deep in a place that is not full of that religious bright light, but instead takes you to less illuminated places.

I heard this song this morning and it has reverberations (maybe) of that journey on the sea.
The video sucks, but then again Rush was, and is about the music! Remember these are my stream of consciousness ramblings and not any form of declaration of knowing much of anything!

4 comments:

  1. I expect you will keep on the journey no matter where it takes. You continue to be in my thoughts and prayer while I respect your distance.

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  2. I am delighted to "see" you "back", Steve. Your posting reminds me a lot of C.S. Lewis, who was exactly where you were and are and for the same reason, decades ago. He wrote a magnificent book called "A Grief Observed" (sometimes titled "A Grief Portrayed") and he sure laid it out.

    You speak very powerfully of your situation, I think because you are a very real person. It will get better, somehow, somewhen. In the meantime, you and Bailey are in my prayers.

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  3. Check out the incredible film version with Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger: Shadowlands. Pure grace...

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  4. Thanks guys! Very much appreciated!

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