Beginning Again…with Dying

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After Christmas I travelled through a thaw fog to visit my father who is dying of cancer. Spiritually we often speak of death and rebirth…but how often do we speak of simply dying? Perhaps I could cope with death, but I can’t cope with dying. I can’t cope with it in my own life, nor with being with the suffering of a beloved other. I wish I could write about the power of compassionate witness, but sometimes I simply struggle and ‘awareness’ sounds like ‘a good idea I heard somewhere but can’t remember what it means just now’…

As we moved into the ‘New Year’ I was utterly disheartened to have to acknowledge that I was still going through the dying of my marriage (and still not divorced), the dying of my career as a christian priest, the dying of my material and financial life… Just how many years does this have to go on for? When does one get to be just plain dead to something and have a chance for beginning again?

Quite a number of good folks wrote to me over Christmas and New Year. They were experiencing their aloneness at a time when the pressure is on to be happy with others….or dealing with cataclysmic shock waves moving through their selves or their families. I wanted somehow to be able to show them how close we all were in our depths and struggles… and how much they helped me by telling the truth. As the year turned and bloggers were sending out ‘best of 2010’ messages and new year resolutions, I felt like the grumpy old hag of blogdom, as all I wanted to write about was shame or despair or waking up in the night again worried sick about paying the bills…

yes…I’m the rabbit…

I remember a story motif from time with the westcountry school of myth of ‘riding on the back of the wolf’ because getting up in the morning feels like that…it’s another wild day of feeling terrified and vulnerable. Strangely, when I take hold of painful reality, it’s full of power and fierce life and it finally comes home to me again that I’m having to just ride with it and begin again…with dying…