The Most Profound Spiritual Truth

It almost seems like I woke up one day and said, "Why am I old? Where did my dad go? Where did my mom go?  And who are these children who say they came from me?"  No, I'm not getting Alzheimers, at least I hope not.  I have been thinking and feeling lately, mostly feeling.  Once, a long time ago I was taught not to trust my feelings. I'm not so sure how great that instruction was.  I followed it though, and turned into a very jaded person believing  my feelings were a sort of enemy, something discipline could rule and control, if not destroy.



When I was a very little girl I had faith.  I would go to church and sit in awe of the mystery that I felt in the quiet of marble, carved images of the holy family with gleeming rings of gold around their heads, and large paintings of Jesus bloodied on the cross.







Later, after experiencing the death of a loved one, after letting life wear me down at  too young of an age, I was  told that, "God is good, all the time".  I so wanted to believe it! I would sing it, say it chant it.   I told myself over and over it was true.  But deep down in the secret places of my soul, the place where I crammed all those feelings I was advised not to trust, a cynical, old voice welled up and exclaimed with sarcasm, "Yeah, right!"  And the secret was out. The feelings that were trapped for decades escalated their way up the murky hallway of my heart and began crawling out. It wasn't pretty either.

At this point everything I came in contact with let me know it was time for change.  It was time to get really real!  As I started my ride an "aha" moment happened.  This quote says it:  For I do not do what I want to do, but the very thing I hate."  I was a Christian,  I knew that!  But the false security that I believed came with Christianity disappeared like pressing the delete button on a thousand page essay and losing all you had written.
  

To spare you  the gory details, let's just say I changed. Slowly.  I allowed my feelings their freedom (slowly) and my mind cooperated in accepting their messages.  With that, I realized I wasn't sure if God was so good after all.  Quite a heavy speculation since my faith was what I thought kept me from falling apart.  I gave up trying to hold on to security.  It was probably one of the scariest things I've ever done. However,  I did follow my belief that if truth is truth, nothing can destroy it. And truth is real.

At one point, I felt darkness enclosing me, starting to swallow me up.  It was really very odd and it's difficult to put into words.





 But if I wanted to embrace the truth, the truth about what I believed or didn't believe, I had to go to a very unfamiliar place, like it or not. What happened is that I realized, by going through a small, personal hell, God is indeed good.  It branded my soul with that truth.  I felt like and still feel like God has this integument over me; that he won't give up.  He will hang on to me....and he has.



“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.” 
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets




It's been quite a ride, I must say, from the day that I let go and decided to listen to my feelings.  I have learned by  reading, praying and analyzing that love is the truth.  That God really IS love.

 So, back to the beginning of this whole blog..I've been thinking and feeling a lot lately.  Mostly feeling.  Nostalgic, sad, happy, a constant ebb and tide of processing life, love and truth.  Yes, I'm old-ish.  Yes, I'm on the top of the family ladder. But I still think of my mother, my father as if they were a phone call away.  Sometimes even I forget that my mother isn't here. That doesn't happen so often anymore.  I have no idea why I miss them more at certain times, but I do.  Holidays, the quiet moments of a beautiful, sunny day.  Sometimes it gets lonely here at the top of the family ladder, but c'est la vie.

 I think my biggest fear is that my children, my children's children, won't remember my parents. That their lives won't matter any more.  That my father was this charming, honest, opinionated man who made his way from the ghetto to a successful entrepreneur, singer and actor. I'm resentful that even now, my grandkids really don't know that my mother was one of the most loving, giving, encouraging women of all time. That without her who knows where I'd be. I see small glimpses of their lives fading into oblivion  like everyone else that has gone on before. They are shadows, slowly disappearing. And I'm not willing to let that happen, just yet.

I don't feel like this adult that I see in the mirror, I don't feel the passing of time.  Truth is, I am an adult and time waits for no one.


“This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we're most sure that love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us, in the guise of our friends, and there it swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds.” 
― Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith