On a dark secret night,
starving for love and deep in flame...
St. John of the Cross (1542-1591)
For more than a year now, a dear friend of mine has been "starving for love and deep in flame." For he has been enduring, simultaneously, the pain of a divorce and the threat of financial ruin. His wife has left him for another. He has been struggling to deal with this loss while facing the risk of bankruptcy.
Finally, he says he is emerging from his darkness. I asked him how he saw the world now compared to before his time of trial. I wondered if he had become bitter. His answer was deeply illuminating…
"I appreciate each moment now," he told me. "I used to hop up every
morning and race off to work like a mad man. Now, I rise gradually.
Before I go to work, I take a cup of coffee, go out on the porch with
my cats, breathe the air, feel the surroundings. I never would have
done this before."
My friend has harvested a great flower from a
field that looked completely barren. He has an appreciation of life
that, interestingly, his estranged wife has not yet found.
As caring people, each of us has experienced many painful loses in our lives. I wonder what each of us learns from loss? For loss is terribly expensive. And when we endure it, we know it will hold many gifts for us if only we will learn to unwrap them.
Here is a spiritual exercise I have designed for you and me.
- Think about a loss you have experienced. There may have been several. Pick one.
- What did you learn through that loss?
- To what degree do you still practice what you learned?
Noted cancer expert Dr. Bernie Segal 9left) says that none of us ever make major changes unless we experience a traumatic event. Do you believe this is true? If so, why is it that some people fail to change after loss or experience bitterness instead of a major life improvement?
There are at least three general pathways out of every loss. The first is the path of bitterness. Along this path, we nurture resentment toward whatever it is outside of us that we believe caused the loss. If it was an accident, we may blame the person who caused it. If it was a divorce, we may blame the spouse.
The second pathway (and the strangest) runs straight ahead and is marked by, essentially, no apparent change in our lives. This happens when people are so hurt by a loss that they fail to absorb it. I see this, sometimes, in people who have been fired. Instead of accepting their termination as a time of darkness from which learning may come, they anesthetize themselves from the loss and march forward as if nothing happened.
The third pathway is the one my friend is on now. After months of agony, he has decided that this experience will inform his life and make it richer. He is spending more, and better, time with his teenage children. In his mid-forties, he has won a whole new outlook. In his new world, life holds promise. He has discovered a whole new foundation for his life and now walks forward more at peace than he has ever been.
It seems certain that you are on one of these paths yourself.
- Are you walking in the direction you believe is best?
- If you wanted to change your pathway, how would you do that?
- When will you do that?
-Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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