Journal of Sacred Work

Note: The following meditation is by Karen York, a Vice President with Nashville’s Alive Hospice.

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura

ché la diritta via era smarrita.

In the middle of the road of my life

I awoke in a dark wood

where the true way was wholly lost.
—Dante Alighieri “The Commedia”

   Upon reading these words for the first time, I imagined being lost in the dark woods and became fearful. I remember as a child losing sight of my mother in a department store.  I was afraid because all that was safe and secure and love in my world was not in sight. What if she never found me?  The sense of being totally lost is perhaps one of the loneliest and most frightening feelings we can experience.  None of us likes to be lost…

   We insulate our lives to the degree that we carry mapquest
on our PDA’s and GPS in our cars so we always know where we are and what path
to take. The flipside is that we run the risk of insulating ourselves to the
point where we are no longer willing to take any risks. We become complacent
and settle into the dangerous pit of being too comfortable. Our sense of
adventure has long sense been extinguished and we no longer venture into the
great unknown.
In his poem entitled “Sweet Darkness”, David Whyte describes
our growing tired of ourselves and coming into relationship with the unknown. 

When your eyes are tired / the world is tired also. /
When your vision has gone / no part of the world can find you. 

   We tend to go about our daily routines to the degree that we
no longer see the complexities and the richness of life that surrounds us. We
become bored and unfulfilled. I have discovered that when I’m not paying
attention, there isn’t anything coming toward me to find me. There is no more
sense of belonging to this world. It
isn’t that reality has removed itself from me. But without paying any
attention, there is no one or nothing to be found. It’s as if my identity
depends upon how much I pay attention to the world. If I’m not looking, hearing, seeing, tasting,
there is nothing on the horizon and no one to have conversation with. I bore
myself and fall asleep in what could be the best part of my life.

Time to go into the dark / Where the night has eyes / to
recognize its own. /There you can be sure / you are not beyond love. /The dark will be your
home / tonight. / The night will give you a horizon / further than you can
see. 

   When things become stale and dull, we often stay trapped
inside this never-ending cycle. That’s
when it is time to go out the door into the natural world to set ourselves
right. Take a walk in the woods or
around the lake. There is a place of
spaciousness that awaits us just outside our current reality. The only thing we
have to do is to begin the conversation with the outer world. Our greatest truths are often revealed by
removing ourselves from the noise of our surroundings so that we can hear our
inner voice and rediscover what makes us who we are. The darkness will envelope us and provide a
refuge that is not perceptible in the light of day and inconceivable in the
midst of the lists and tasks to be done. 

You must learn one
thing. / The world was made to be free in. / Give up all the other worlds /
except the one to which you belong. / Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
/ confinement of your aloneness / to learn /anything or anyone / that does not
bring you alive / is too small for you. 

   Sometimes even the most precious things in our lives don’t
bring us alive. Sometimes, our children, whom we love desperately, begin to
feel like a burden. The work that we
have chosen, for which we have sacrificed and studied, no longer brings us
joy. It’s too comfortable to move. Or
we’re afraid of changing because we think so much is at stake. When we find ourselves here, we have to ask
ourselves these questions – “How did I make this too small for me? What is it
that stops the exquisite from reaching me? Why is life no longer a surprise?”
   As Whyte says, it’s time to go into the dark where the night
has eyes to recognize its own. It’s time
to have a conversation with ourselves and in a sense, to grow tired of
ourselves. It’s time for a reawakening
of our souls.
   Dante’s opening lines to “The Commedia” describe a sense of
vulnerability that we reach when we are open to throwing away our sense of
self, of no longer relying on our all-knowing competencies. When we stop
telling ourselves all the things we’ve been telling ourselves. When we stop
needing to know all the things we think we need to know. In that place,
darkness is palpable and fills the void. The way isn’t clear. We see only the
ground under our feet and maybe one step ahead. When we start paying attention
to things as they seem to be we begin to hear our own voices once again. When we cultivate a relationship with the
unknown and look for what might be possible around the corner, we open
ourselves for radical possibilities.
   Now, reading again the opening lines of this meditation, I hear
a different meaning. Dante is not afraid of being lost. He is celebrating
the great quest of life, the great unknown that is yet to be discovered. I hope for all of us that we seek
opportunities to go into the dark to discover a new path so that we experience
life and love to its fullest.