Faith

When I was in my twenties and struggling during a particular time of my life, I had a dream about my grandfather who’d passed at the young age of sixty-five when I was sixteen surrounded by his entire family as he took his last breath. He’d been a foundational figure in my life, an Obstetrician-Gynecologist who’d been revered by his community in the small city in Virginia where I’d come of age. He was instrumental in the formation of a public library where there had only been a private library open to Caucasian patrons prior to that. He stood for love, unity, and for basic human rights.  

              In the dream he was laying on a table as he was dying. His spirit stood up from his body and faced me. He peered into my eyes and said, “It’s like diamonds in the sky.” He then walked over to a spiral staircase beyond which I couldn’t see. He ascended the staircase and as he stood at the top about to go through the ceiling beyond which was obscured from view, he peered deeply into my eyes again and said, “All you have to do is have faith.”

              Twenty years later I sit with those words from him. During uncertainty when things feel difficult, when that which arises feels like an ocean of sadness teetering on the edge of engulfing me, there is a millennial old deeply ingrained habitual mental pattern that at times has me questioning myself, saying “what’s wrong with me?” The older wiser one in me knows that in fact nothing is wrong with me. It knows that the sadness, the grief, asks for deep surrender, for a willingness to feel it without constraint. That by turning toward it without resistance or hint of “it shouldn’t be this way”, it is able to unfurl, to alchemize itself into the richly woven tapestry of being, into wisdom, and ultimately serve as the compost for joy as deep.

At times it feels like an awfully big ask. Surrendering, however, unwinds the “what’s wrong with me?” from my DNA, from that of my ancestors before me, and from future generations as my reaction to it isn’t then woven blindly into the web of existence. The older wiser one knows that resistance to it further contracts it and buries it more deeply into my being. The wise one, the one who has traversed the ages, holds a tender space and presence for the raw younger one in there who still doubts herself and her connection to the vast ocean from which she arose, the one who ever felt she traveled alone. It holds the same kind of soft presence that you would for a frightened infant.

I recently had a dream from which I awoke with a faceless voice saying to me, “There are many holy beings in the night sky.” As I lay my head to rest at night, I turn my awareness, my attention to the heavens, to the bright stars twinkling their aliveness, and I remember to have faith as I recall the intense light they shine into the darkness like diamonds in the sky, and the benevolent mystery of what lies beyond.  

I leave you with this poem I wrote several years back entitled Now…

That sadness there in your chest,
that doubt in your heart,
that sigh of disillusionment,
doesn’t make you less perfect,
less spiritual, or less profound.
It makes you human.

The goal isn't happiness.
Happiness is an experience,
like anger, grief, and uncertainty.
It was never a place of permanence.

If we stop chasing happiness
like a dog chasing its tail,
And give space for what actually is—
whatever that state may be—
what actually is will relax from the contracted grip of resistance and open up,
reveal itself into our understanding,
our wisdom.

May we stop the madness of
chasing ourselves out of the
Now that is our salvation.
Right Now is the teacher, the guide, the spiritual adviser, the priest.
Surrender to it.

Make room for the feelings
in your belly, in your chest.
Make contact with the sensations
that are there.
Be that courageous.

In silence, in stillness,
without analysis or explanation,
just let it be.
Breathe into it.
Cry with it.
It never wasn’t perfect,
and it is the key to our salvation.

Now is all that will ever exist.
Put the past and future aside,
and be the same stuff that
birthed Eternity.
Be the same sacred stuff
that burns the sun,
hurls stars through space,
and swallows galaxies.

Birth and destruction are inherent within us.
We are that Mystery.
Only by allowing what is Now,
allowing all of it
with open-hearted invitation and vulnerability,
will that joy you seek flourish from the compost
of your terrain.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for…