Good morning…
Last Monday our class had a “Cousin Itt” experience with Paula D’Arcy’s Seeking With All My Heart. Overwhelmed by wild-haired emotions and immersed in concepts way over our heads, we could not see truth with our individual eyes, so collectively we expressed, “I did not get that chapter at all.” “Paula’s understanding is way beyond mine.” “I read it three times and still do not know what she is saying.” I feel sorry for you subscribers in different cities, states, and countries who got this book upon my recommendation (the sequel to Paula’s Gift Of The Red Bird) as you also experience your own “Cousin Itt-ness.”
So for our Friday morning class, which is studying the same book, God helped me grab a handful of strands from each of this week’s four, short chapters and, after I read aloud segments of profound wisdom, we began loosely braided together their shiny, smooth meaning. Along with the words I shared in yesterday’s post, Our Whole Head of Emotions, these are some of the quotes we wove over and under, over and under, over and under.
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Excerpts from Paula D’Arcy’s Seeking With All My Heart
“I remembered anew that life is a continuing cycle of encounters, none of them insignificant, all of them possessing a certain power. Something large and beautiful can always happen, or everything that might be gloriously born may never come to be at all.” (17)
“In August 2002, I marked the twenty-seventh anniversary of the automobile accident in which my husband and oldest daughter were killed, which has defined so much of my life. The milestone felt significant because I was twenty-seven years old when the heartache occurred. For months I told friends, ‘I’ve now lived as many years past that moment as I lived before it.’ The statistic seemed to herald a final closing of the event, a putting it firmly and fully behind me.” (18)
“When the lights turned green I hesitated for a moment, and then pulled forward. My next sensation was of a driver to my left coming through his red light and smashing into my door. It was an exact repeat of the way we’d been hit twenty-seven years before…on the same date…at almost exactly the same time of day. In the moments that followed, I felt as if someone had torn away a protective shield. Strong emotions took me over as if the initial grief had just happened; re-experiencing the impact pushed me back in time. It was inconceivable that the same event could repeat itself on the same day. It was too terribly coincidental for words, and it was impossible not to question whether or not there was meaning in this recurrence. (19)
“No effort seemed to reinstate solid footing under me. I walked around stunned, in the grip of a frightening vulnerability. The fact that the world can change in a moment was once again immediate reality, not theory. …But just as in 1975, my outward appearance hid a very turbulent inner sea. Nothing felt safe or anchored. Around every corner I suspected another shock.” (21-22)
“We were all silent until she made a surprising remark. ‘I think it’s about love,’ she said softly. I looked at her quizzically. She went on, wondering aloud whether anything we’ve deeply experience is ever finished. Particularly the grief, which had been, since 1975, a continual source of learning and growth for me. It had given birth to new awareness and carried the seeds of a growing openness and trust. It had exposed a light that guided me. And even though that light was inseparable from searing pain, it had prevailed. It had proven to be greater.
‘In your resolve to put the hurt behind you and never speak of it again,’ Bea went on, ‘maybe there was something precious you were unwittingly dismissing. If you were unwilling to be reacquainted with those days, you might also be walking away from the light within those events – a light that penetrated your darkness, teaching you the full reach of Love.’
…The moment Bea spoke, I knew she was right. The crippling fear began to diminish, and a sense of well-being returned. The recently heightened sensitivity to every hurt and sadness started to wane. Now emotions could once again pass through me without owning me; I was no longer in their grip. I’d heard what I needed to hear. I’d been strongly reminded to turn, always, toward Love, even if it is revealed by pain.” (23-24)
“There was a guiding purpose, a destiny. …Is the human being, the true image, charged with lifting this world back to God? Is that the plan? Are we charged with manifesting the divine in matter and bringing forth the Spirit that lies embedded in all things? Is this our function? Is this ‘becoming’ our purpose, though not yet realized?” (29)
We live and move in him, can’t get away from him! (Acts 17:28, MSG).
“The path we each walk, the movement of the soul toward awakening, is ablaze with light. We never take a step apart from light. By light we are held and defined. But on the path itself, day to day, we seldom, if ever, glimpse light. We’re more likely to see difficulty, adversity, and sorrow. We often feel alone, not held. There is no sense of a life-sustaining embrace. There is the sense that life is an incomprehensible puzzle, which often goes in a direction we would never consciously choose. Far from seeing light, we perceive darkness. …Sometimes there has been light only in hindsight.” (33-34)
The life you see me living is not mine (Galatians 2:20, MSG).
“‘You choose each day whether or not your life will be given over to fear,’ offered my friend Juan. …’Most people live in fear, but there is another reality. There is a force from within, much greater than fear, which waits to make its full presence known. And it is able to change us, if only we’ll be changed, if only we’ll know that it’s there.’ …If only we didn’t forever hesitate on the brink of our lives. If only we’d fall into God and finally recognize who we are. My friend Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest and esteemed speaker and writer, insists that we’ll never give ourselves over to the greater Spirit, the force within, the force that surrounds us and inhabits us, until we get the ‘who we are’ part right. Until we can say, with Paul, ‘It is no longer I who live…’” (39-40)
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Together we lift our loosely braided heads above the whirling waters of deep, dark wisdom. Giving ourselves over to the greater Spirit within, we are buoyed to become the light of Love. Stepping over the brink into our destiny, we are empowered to lift the world back to God.
…Sue…
