Connection Is Lost

Good morning…

“Connection is lost,” said the computer just as I went to send you our completed post in the early morning hours. “Connection is lost,” halted, disrupted, severed us from our normal timing. Yet our computer’s “Connection is lost” message provided a perfect, unexpected analogy for today’s tidbits of truth.

In each of our classes this week, we have been discussing Chapter 4, “Crisis As Opportunity,” in Sue Monk Kidd’s When The Heart Waits. The following five quotes teach us more deeply that, with every life-altering crisis, a beloved “connection is lost” and we are forced into an unfamiliar, uncomfortable place of dark waiting. Waiting not knowing. Waiting not seeing. Waiting not understanding. Only in God’s slow time and in God’s gracious way, new connections are quietly found and formed, eventually expanding the True Self in our soul.

“The word crisis derives from the Greek words krisis and krino, which mean ‘a separating.’ The very root of the word implies that our crises are times of severing from old ways and states of being.” (87)
“Crisis is a separation, but it’s equally a time of opportunity. The Chinese word for crisis is composed of two characters. On top is the sign for danger, beneath is the sign for opportunity.” (87-88)
“I found myself staring at the chrysalis, at this lump of brown silence. It overwhelmed me with its simple truth. A creature can separate from an old way of existence, enter a time of metamorphosis, and emerge to a new level of being.” (78)
“The life of the soul evolves and grows as we move through these three cycles. The process isn’t a one-time experience but a spiraling journey that we undertake throughout life. Life is full of cocoons. We die and are reborn again and again. By repeatedly entering the spiral of separation, transformation, and emergence, we’re brought closer each time to wholeness and the True Self.” (78)
“I picked up my Bible and turned the pages, becoming aware of how God had revealed this ageless process in its stories. I pored over the Old Testament story of the Hebrew’s exodus from Egypt. I read it not only as a chronicle of salvation history but as the story of an inner journey taking place in the landscape of one’s soul. Egypt, wilderness, and promised land are comparable to interior states of being: larva, cocoon, and butterfly. In both journeys – inward and outward – there’s first a movement of separation, then a holding environment where transformation happens, and finally an emergence into a new existence.” (78)