The Only Honest Way Forward

An update from my personal growth edge + a prayer for the witness to tragedy

“You have to develop an ego before you can let go of it. Maybe that is why Jesus just lived thirty years before he started talking.” —Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs

Back in January I took an 8-week class on Practical Liberation Theology at our local Quaker Meetinghouse. When the class ended, some of us decided to keep meeting which we have done once a month since March. Last night I sat cross-legged with the facilitator of the group and one other friend, the three of us forming a wide triangle in the downstairs meeting room. We talked about many different things but of course they were all connected, circling around the way of Jesus and our deepening understanding it, of him.

For about 18 months I’ve been working with a somatic experiencing practitioner to learn the language of my nervous system and increase my tolerance for distress.¹ It’s been slow, exploratory work and I often feel way in over my head which may actually be the point. It may be the most profound work I’ve ever done and also the most subtle, the most slow, the least manipulatable.

Two weeks ago I went to my first hot yoga class and spent the first twenty minutes trying to talk myself out of a panic attack. Did you know it’s like, really hot in there? That the air doesn’t move? That you sweat just standing on the mat? That everyone acts like choosing to be in a 100 degree enclosed room in the middle of actual July is completely normal?

Logically I knew I was safe and if I needed to leave the room, I could. But as it turns out, my brain was not able to talk my body into not freaking out. Instead, I had to let my body inform my brain of some things and that’s when I started to calm.

The last few years of parenting, writing, and living have brought more change to my body and soul than perhaps the entire decade before. In places where I used to only occasionally visit my own growth edge, now it seems I’ve built a house right there on the cliff with no plans to move further inland. My comfort zone is a mile away but when the fog clears, the view from here is mostly spectacular. Just don’t look down.

My daughter asked me yesterday what I was going to do when we no longer had kids living at home. She’s twenty-one and a rising senior in college (along with her twin). They live year-round in their college towns and our son will move in to his dorm five ridiculously short weeks from now, commencing a new chapter in our parenting lives. I had a million and also zero answers because who really knows for sure? We have some travel plans, some wonderings, some hopes for our time, but mostly we have full hearts brimming over with grief and possibility.

What I know for sure is that being a beginner is the only honest way forward. This has always been true.

The harshest and most shocking reality of life is we don’t get to pick or prepare for those places where we are invited (forced?) to be a beginner. Heavy on my heart this week is those of you who are navigating grief and loss in the aftermath of the floods in Texas. It is all impossible and I’m so sorry you can’t click away from it.

These are all of the things on my mind on this July morning: aging, parenting, loss, learning, and being a beginner again and again. I wonder what’s on your mind today?

As always, I’m glad you’re here.

epf

P.S. A podcast listener reminded me this week of a prayer I shared on the podcast after a mass shooting in 2017. I’ve updated some of the language of that prayer and will include it here as we hold those of you in Texas and also anywhere else, bearing witness to unbearable things.²

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A prayer for the one bearing witness to tragedy

For the one who has witnessed the kind of scenes that could haunt for a lifetime, we pray for a sanctified memory and a holy imagination.

For the one who begins to shake when the low light of evening sends shadows long across the yard, we pray for comfort.

For the one whose sadness feels sharp like fear, smooth the jagged edges and bring relief for now.

For the one who waits in the darkness, groping for answers and finding only more questions, we pray for peace.

For the one who has experienced loss and carries an ill-placed sense of responsibility, who can’t shake the unexplained guilt that lingers in the air around them, we pray for the chaos to calm and their heart to awaken to love.

One day in the future, some may begin to feel like they should be over it by now. They may grow tired of going through the whole thing again, or feel pressure to heal already. For these, we pray for courage to let grief do her sacred invisible work.

We recognize the many layers of sadness present among us, both the kind that settles like a cloud over a nation after terrible loss, and the kind that bursts un-welcomed into our homes.

May your Divine Presence fill in the gaping holes left in the wake of tragedy.

Release us from the haunting.

Hold us in the darkness.

Make haste with the light.

Amen.

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1. I don’t share the names or contacts of my own practitioners but if you’re interested in Somatic Coaching / Experiencing I suggest you google that term plus the name of your own town and you will likely find a list of therapists/coaches who integrate body-awareness in their work.

2. Here is a post that inspired the podcast episode 09: Moving Forward After Tragedy. This one is called How Being Specific is Changing the World.