You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘terror’ tag.
I sit in my wing-back chair, the Jerusalem Bible open upon my lap.
Earlier, I shuddered with media reports of Russians firing long range missiles at Kyiv, Karkiv, and Mariupol and more killing of civilians; with phone conversations blistering the wires between France’s Macron and Putin and between Biden and Xi Jinping.
Still another day of Russian mind control: the existence of biolabs and Nazis in Ukraine that justifies their aggression.
Yet, another day of Ukrainian resistance remains in place, with its demands for security guarantees from Russia, should it not join NATO.
Such terror-rhetoric glistens with menace, its intent to foist global panic: Ukrainians’ devastation could become the lot of other nations, including our own.
Such issues scathe my depths like zillions of flashing daggers. If unaddressed, psychic dismemberment occurs. I choose not to go there.
Instead, I enter within the psalmist’s imperative, Seek his face (27:8)—a redirection toward Spirit where, alone, faith stirs and stretches tall.
Like gardeners harvesting seeds of spent flowers, I collect my scattered energies and focus upon the present moment in which the face of God abounds. Today, I pray to be teachable, to live with events, terrifying and unpredictable as they unfold, fraught by Evil’s illusion.
We’re in good hands and always have been.
“I thirst,” said the Russian tank officer, leaning against the turret, blood oozing from his shoulder onto his jacket.
“I thirst,” said the Ukrainian soldier tightening a tourniquet above his ankle seeping blood, his mouth twisted in anguish.
“I thirst,” said the scarved grandmother holding her toddler’s hand, watchful of potholes lest she fall.
“I thirst,” said the battle-terrified youth seeking a means to desert within the mayhem of the next explosion.
“I thirst,” said the field reporter, dismayed by her empty thermos bottle and too far from the station to replenish it.
“I thirst,” said the teenager sheltering a puppy in his hooded coat as he shivered in the cold, his village just strafed by mortar shells.
Many also thirst far beyond the war zone: those tending the supply lines, those strategizing the next strike, those searching casualty lists, those suturing new wounds, those listening for glimmers of hope, those praying from arroyo-like depths.
And there was Another who cried, “I thirst!” who shares our thirst.
At 6:A.M., I woke with this corrective dream from my personal unconscious:
It was winter, several inches of snow covered the ground. Headlights from a car swept the corners of my bedroom and turned into my driveway. It was my ride. I stirred under my comforter, anxious. I was supposed to be ready. I dressed hurriedly. Because I had no boots, I grabbed a handful of blue rubber gloves in the box on my dresser to cover my stocking feet. The gloves were mashed together and impossible to separate. My anxiety escalated into rage. Alone, I sat on the floor.
Winter, several inches of snow covered the ground of my psyche suggesting anger’s stranglehold of my spiritual faculties: Anger of monstrous proportions distorts each image in the dream.
My ride corresponds to my actual helper, well schooled in my needs, daily, since last September. In this dream, though, she does not appear but her taking care of me suggests the loss of my independence. I still don’t like it, even after these months.
My having no boots suggests an unsuitable foundation upon which to stand: I was off balance, dizzy. Desperate, I sought a substitute, anything to protect my feet from the snow-covered driveway.
The blue rubber gloves in the box on my dresser used by my helper when tending to my personal needs and the preparation of meals come to mind. In the dream, I grab a handful of the gloves but fail in separating them. It did not occur to me to ask for help, a lifelong pattern that ill-serves me, even now.
Despite frequent blogs alluding to acceptance of my terminal illness, this anger dream reveals another scenario unfolding within my depths. Only denial keeps me at bay from its full terror, and that’s as it should be, for now. Occasionally, however, breakthroughs do occur that wash over me until the next one, usually in the evening.
I still plead with the Psalmist, “Create, O God, a clean heart within me!”
Heart Whisperings 