A Candlelit Path

19 Monday Apr 2010

Posted by in Prayer, Soul Care

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“Give me a candle of the Spirit, O God,
as I go down into the deep of my own being.
Show me the hidden things.
Take me down to the spring of my life,
and tell me my nature and my name.
Give me freedom to grow so that I may become my true self –
the fulfillment of the seed which you planted in me at my making.
Out of the deep, I cry unto thee, O God.”   Amen
— George Appleton

Sitting on a hard plastic chair that night, in the basement of St. Luke’s Methodist Church, I did not know that I had ‘signed up’ to uncover my true self.    I had no particular interest in that bit of fact-finding.   My purpose was much simpler:  I came to pray.  That’s all.  I came to pray and to meet people who also desired nothing more than to pray.

As with most of everyday life, we get more or less than we bargain for.  In my experience as a student at HeartPaths Spirituality Centre, I received more.   It began that first night, reciting that first printed prayer of George Appleton’s with a few others — a small community of students and two leaders — from the first of many handouts I would come to receive as a student at HeartPaths.

Every HeartPaths session begins by lighting a candle.  The lit candle symbolizes the light of God.   Candlelight shimmers soft and invites confidences.  Never is it harsh and circling like a  penetrating searchlight.   Instead, everyone and everything looks better in candlelight.

Candlelight slows life down.  When traveling by candlelight, we tread carefully.  Not every bump in the road is illuminated.  It requires us to sometimes retrace our steps for a missed turn.  Like life itself, candlelight will not clearly define answers  or destinations.  Yet, candlelight bids us forward into the darkness.  As we step in, questions previously covered by darkness grow into recognizable shapes of answers and if not destinations, that at least rest stops along the way.

I have not arrived at my destination of becoming my true self.   The prayer I recited that first night in class is not yet fully answered.  Paradoxically, the more I know about myself, the more I find there is to know.  Does anyone ever arrive at Xanadu?

Yet, with the help of prayer by candlelight, I do know myself better than I did four years ago.  I’ve uncovered both warts and beauty spots.  And in the topsy-turvy truth of life, traits I once viewed as warts I’ve since come to know as beauty spots — and yes, some of those areas I once called beauty spots I’ve found to be nothing more than worldly warts.   But here, I get ahead of myself, as I am apt to do.

Backing up to the start, I see that self-knowledge (and self-acceptance) is where true growth begins.  And as it happens, along the way, I’ve learned that prayer is no more than being yourself before God.

Fancy that.  Looks like I got exactly what I signed up for.  And more.  In worldly terms, this candlelit path was a true bargain.

Irish Sensibility

17 Saturday Apr 2010

Posted by in In the Garden, Life at Home, Soul Care, The Great Outdoors

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I listen to wet tires whoosh down Walker Avenue.  I hear soft rain piddle its tune upon wet stone.  They are bits of grace,  from a soft Irish rain falling outside my window.

A rain like this always soothes my spirit.  It makes me drowsy.  It makes me long for the comfort of my soft bed.  And even though it’s on the cool side — mid-fifties, I think  —  I’m going to crack my bedside window and cuddle up in warm blankets.

It has been a dry Spring.  The parched dirt must be quenching its thirst with this lovely Irish blessing.  The garden glistens like glass.  Twenty-four hours of straight rain has made my garden happy and plump with wet green.

What is it about a gentle rain that fills me with hope?  It makes me think baptism.  I feel wash cleaned.  Fresh.  The rain makes all things new.  The rain is holy, like that dove that swept down from heaven, all those years ago.

Perhaps a small drop will cure my spider bite scar, that even a week later, is still warm and tender with fever.  Or better yet, maybe it could wipe away Daddy’s pneumonia.  The nurse is worried about “Pappy.”  That’s her name for my father — who in younger days, was a more respectful ‘Mr. Pappas.’

Pappy, indeed.  The nurse says it’s hard for the elderly to bounce back.  Is she trying to prepare me?  Or herself?  I should have told her, if anyone can bounce back, my father can.  Doesn’t that sound just like a child, bragging about what her daddy can do?

Do raindrops taste as good as when I was a child?  Back then, I didn’t care whether I stayed dry or got wet.  Before I ‘got’  better sense, I would turn my small face up to the sky.  Open my mouth.  Wide.   Wider.   And catch raindrops with my tongue.   Sweet success.

I was  a young thirsty flower with no need for doctors or tongue depressors to tell me to say “Ahh.”  I knew good medicine when it hit me in the face.

Out of Service

12 Monday Apr 2010

Posted by in Life at Home

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Sometimes I ignore the messages my body is sending.  Especially when the word “STOP!” is part of the communication.

Like yesterday, for example, when I had plans to pick up my brother and visit Dad.  And when, on the way to Dad’s, my brother and I were stopping in to help Christi finish sifting through the final boxes of our parent’s lives.  After five dumpsters, we are all ready to call this phase of our work ‘done.’

So what if I’d contracted a nasty insect bite on Saturday, that caused me to lose sleep, my face to swell up like a red toad, and my entire body to flush pink heat?  And what did I care about the lovely purplish-black, hard-as-a rock swelling on my upper right thigh, that even now throbs to let me know it’s there.

The bite site looks as if the culprit may have been a Brown Recluse Spider — though the doctor thought it might also be the work of a Black Widow Spider.  Either loves darkness and thrives in cluttered spaces.

I thought I had learned these lessons in my Master Gardening training.  But somehow, out of the classroom, and immersed up to my eyeballs in the stuff of my sister’s scary inheritance, I forgot everything I thought I knew.

I hate to be ill, to be less than one hundred percent, especially when there’s much to do — so much I want to do. So yesterday, when I began to feel somewhat better after taking a couple of Advil, I called my brother.  And he told me I sounded disoriented and that we should stay home —  something about how it’s not good to drive while disoriented.  Then I called my sister and she too, offered me an out.  Then she upped my brother’s ante by telling me I needed to check in with Kate and Glen — our family’s resident medical community — for further advice.

Boy, I really did not want to call my daughter and son-in-law.  Perhaps because I knew I needed to get myself looked at by an expert?

Of course, they advised me to go the Emergency Room; and after I slightly balked at that, we settled on an Urgent Care facility.  Do I need to say that I went like a sheep to the slaughter?

But to my pleasant surprise, I found it rather painless, as far as doctor’s visits go.   A short thirty minute sentence allowed me to walk out with two prescriptions in hand and a standard recommendation to follow-up with my primary physician.

So here’s the test:  What have I learned from all of this? Just this.  Everyday life offers many lessons.  Sometimes I think I’ve learned them.  And other times I  don’t even bother fooling myself.  And in this one tiny compartment of my life, I know myself too well — I will always balk at seeking medical care, unless I’m pushed to go.  It definitely helps to be surrounded by safety valves.

However, some areas of my life need little pushing.  Lessons aside, I’m hoping to be back in service Wednesday.  Because I have a really hot date with a paintbrush and the outside of my sister’s house.