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Around 4 A.M., I awoke with two illness dreams:
I am dressed but very unwell. I sit next to another woman, also with symptoms, anxious and self-absorbed. We wait for the delivery of medicine.
I am weak, can barely stand as another holds me from behind so that I can receive communion. Everything blurs before me.
This is the first time I remember appearing ill in my dreams, and significantly so, on my eighty-sixth birthday. My psyche reveals major distress. I’m powerless, depressed, barely alive. Only the compassion of others can sustain this onslaught of diseases that envelope my entire being.
On a deeper level, I search for understanding. True, I’ve had problems with my word processor and have been unable to compose for several days. Such focus, alone, establishes communion with Higher Power; without it, I become disconnected, abandoned, and anxious. True, more signs of aging, apart from my terminal illness, are appearing in my old body. And perhaps I’m still trying to fix myself.
Certainly, deeper acceptance is called for. Denial has no place here. It’s only moving forward, twenty-four hours at a time, supported by CPA’s Twelve Steps and the spiritual fellowship. And certainly, deeper emotional honesty is called for, as well. My eighty-six years of life feel like a heavy mantle over my shoulders, and only Higher Power can bring about its acceptance and deliverance.
So like a flickering candle-flame, I wait in the darkness for the next dream and its direction …
We come from God and we return to God.
I do not remember first learning this truth, but it’s been integral with the furnishings in my psyche for a long time. Online research found this saying proclaimed in the Judaic, Christian, and Islamic scriptures, each affording glimpses into the mystery of creation. Such wisdom shivers my timbers, some of which I hope to share in this blog.
It begins with We, the approximately 7.8 billion persons living on planet Earth today, given fluctuations of daily births and deaths. Focusing upon such numbers staggers comprehension, evokes wonder, replicates variety, and fashions communities from barren tracks of land—Human life seems afire with its mandate to evolve.
Early on, however, time with its limits, crimps innate freedoms, but if properly understood, leave residues of honesty and humility in their wake—the attitude critical to approaching the sacred mystery of creation. We are not God. There is another. With more passing of time, we taste the dregs of mortality. Then what … to whom do we turn?
To the Giver of Life, within the grace of cleansing, itself a new creation—such is where I find myself today. The process resonates with the Hebrew word shuv that turns to Creator God for conversion of heart. Such is impossible on my own. Never have I been so awake to this development, one I’ve witnessed in loved ones, but now my lot to experience. Once complete, this turning will bring me home. Until then, my new education continues, within the constraints of time.
Like a centipede, each foot laced inside steel-toes-work boots, so drags the remaining hours before the onset of a New Year. Everyone feels it, whether partying in glitzy bars, chanting in monasteries, setting off fireworks, or tossing atop rumpled sheets.
Before us looms the mystery of spent time with its missed opportunities and moral failures. Offsetting this sorry state, however, yawns future change with its disequilibrium or pain, either consciously embraced or forced upon us.
For those with faith, it’s about glimpsing the Unseen Hand shaping our psyches, moving us toward the actualization of our birthright. Admittedly, our sojourn in this life is brief as compared with multiple civilizations before us. History and literature and the arts are replete with stories of how others have done their lives, not without suffering.
Such deep thoughts, of necessity, plunge us within our sacred depths; therein, we learn to listen for direction, to seek counsel when perplexed, and to obey with the heart as we tread into the tomorrows of our lives.
We are not alone and never have been.
Heart Whisperings 