"a vision softly creeping…"

"Hello darkness,
my old friend.
I've come to talk with you, again..."

Something about Nouela's cover of Simon & Garfunkels' "Sound of Silence perfectly captures the tone of my most recent night-ponderings.

Last week, an encounter with persistent, acute pain afforded a wonderful opportunity to explore my beliefs - and what I thought I understood - about the nature of pain. I didn't back away from the lesson, nor did I try to just "get it over with." I walked right into the invitation to probe perplexing questions more thoughtfully.

Doubt tried to hijack many moments of genuine peace. "What if the pain really did have meaning, and I was foolishly ignoring it? What if it never ended, and I could never, ever think a truly peaceful thought again?" And most aggressively, "What if the pain was really part of me, and had taken up residence in my body -- like a noisy tenant?"

But as I was pondering these questions, another thought quietly invited me to consider its veracity. If pain actually has meaning -- if it means that there is something amiss at the site of the discomfort -- how do you reconcile that, with the concept of phantom pain?

Phantom pain, is pain that one feels at the site of a limb that has been amputated. Discomfort that seems to come from a body part that no longer exists. Many amputees report feeling sensations of movement, tingling, or pain in an arm or leg that was surgically removed.

I had never given this much thought until this recent injury left me in acute pain. Everything tried to say, "This pain means something about your body. Pain is a message, and you need to heed its meaning. You should take it easy, or have it examined to find the root cause -- so that it can be addressed and treated."

But then I thought about phantom pain. When an amputee feels discomfort in a limb that no longer exists, he/she quickly dismisses it as "phantom pain," with no meaning. They know that there is no injured leg to be diagnosed or treated -- and so there is no need for alarm. They don't need to go get the arm checked out.  There is no arm to examine.  They aren't fearful or impressed.

Why then, do we think that pain has a direct correlation to the site where the sensation is seemingly occurring? Why do we think that pain is a reliable or infallible indicator of our state of health? Why -- when we feel pain in our hand -- do we go and have the hand checked for injury or disease? Why do we react to discomfort in any location by having an examination, to see if there is something wrong? All of these questions flooded my consciousness, sweeping away any concern that I'd been harboring.  Concern that pain had information for me.  Washed away in a coursing river of timeless Truth.

Or, more subtly, we think pain is telling us something about its location -- something that can help us heal it "spiritually." For example, we are feeling discomfort in our elbow. Well, an elbow is a joint. A joint is the coming together of two parts of our arm. Hmmm -- this must have something to do with a relationship. Well yes, I have been having a challenge with that colleague. So, I think I will look up every spiritual article I can find about healing a joint. Gotcha!

We have to be alert to what we think is informing us. We aren't led to healing truths -- or testimonies about healing -- by a shared localization of pain or the details of a problem. We are attracted to spiritual statements of Truth, because of what they are reminding us about God - His love for us, and our trust in Him. Not because of a shared experience with localized pain, fear, disease, or injury.

I am starting to see that all pain, is phantom pain. Just as the pain in an amputated limb is not in the limb, any discomfort we feel is not localized. It has no localized cause, and therefore, a cause - or solution - can't be found by examining the site to find the point of origin, in order to fix it or treat it.

And it's the same with phantom anger, or phantom frustration. Phantom resentment, or phantom fear. We think we feel fear, frustration, anger, or doubt, and then we try to trace it back to a locus of origin. If I feel angry after a visit to the grocery store - where I had a long wait in line -- it must be that I am an impatient person. Then I go after my impatience as if it were the real cause, of my real anger. But it's not. That anger, is just a sensation. One that is trying to get me to look for a cause -- other than divine Love -- as the source, and condition, of my angry identity.

I don't have to fix the anger to become a patient person. I am a patient person because that is the way that God made me. I am not self-created, self-determinted, self-diagnosed, or self-fixed.

Here's what often seems to happen with physical discomfort. Perhaps I feel pain when touching a spot on my arm.  I wonder what caused it.  It's a subtle invitation to think back, and trace it to a recent time when I may have stumbled in the middle of the night, and put my arm in direct contact with the doorjamb. Well then, I conclude, I must be clumsy, vulnerable, and easily bruised -- arm, feelings, human history. Or perhaps I'm stumbling in the middle of the night because I'm getting older and losing a nimble sense of balance and recovery. Or, what if I am getting up in the middle of the night too often? What if…. Soon I am spiraling down a vast vortex of self cross-questioning.

But, all pain, is phantom pain.

Just as darkness cannot fully eradicate the presence of light, but only suggest its absence. So pain tries to convince us that there is an absence of peace -- of God, good. And that, perhaps, this absence is localized, and connected to a particular bodily location. And because we now believe that there could ever be a spot where good is absent, we are left feeling vulnerable, exposed to the possibility that we could even further capitulate into disease, doubt and despair.

But these suggestions of pain are phantoms. They have no location. They are causeless. Peace, however, (the opposite of pain) is a self-assertive power that cannot be limited, contained, or localized. It is All-in-all and therefore indicates the presence of all that is impartial and universal -- Spirit, God, good, harmony, peace, joy.

In her primary work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy states:

We are sometimes led to believe
that darkness is as real as light;
but Science affirms darkness
to be only a mortal sense
of the absence of light,
at the coming of which
darkness loses the appearance
of reality.

So sin and sorrow, disease and death,
are the suppositional absence of Life, God,
and flee as phantoms of error
before truth and love."
 

Something about this insight - into the phantom nature of pain, anger, frustration, and doubt - has left me feeling alive to our inalienable right to feel free from the lie that pain holds information or meaning about our lives, our bodies, and our hopes.

It's time to disconnect pain from having cause, location, meaning.  Refusing it any power to alarm us. Pain is phantom, disembodied -- without a body or a home. It throws its voice like a ventriloquist. But it doesn't have the power to take up residence or even gain entrance into the kingdom of God -- within us.

offered with Love,
Kate

The overturning of the "soul"...

“Sow in the morn Thy seed,
At eve hold not Thy hand;
To doubt and fear give Thou no heed;
Broadcast it o’er the land…”
- John Montgomery

So as promised, here is a continuation of Monday’s discussion with my girlfriends at the college (scroll down to see the Tuesday's post) and some of the ways this conversation about “feelings” has sparked a deep dialogue within my own heart.

So there we were talking about redeeming feelings that at one time in our lives or another had defined themselves as negative: fear, worry, depression…and reclaiming them for God…the ONLY Cause and Creator in our lives, and the subject of discomfort came up.  What about those feelings of discomfort, hurt and pain.  Are those redeemable?

Hmm…as I sat there thinking about my own experiences with these feelings, I could not help but have those questions land smack in the middle of the environment of my spiritual study from that morning.  I had been pondering, again…as it happens to be a long-time favorite of mine…Jesus’ parable of the man, the householder, who sows good seed in his field and up springs not only the intended wheat, but also tares…weeds. 

I was in an agrarian state of mind.  My thought was full of farming metaphors and analogies.  Everything was translating into fields, pastures, seed, rakes, hoes, shovels, weeds….and so this question about feelings of discomfort was plopped right into the middle of that thinking.

And what came so naturally to thought…right as we were talking…was the question, “How comfortable must it be for the earth, the ground that comprises the garden, to have a shovel poked into it’s nice quiet, winter fallow soil?”  It is probably pretty unsettling, quite flip-floppying to have a hoe come along and lift up the topsoil and dig down deep.  I bet it’s comfortable to just lie there, undisturbed and quiet in the warm Spring sunshine.  I know how much I like it when I can lie completely still under my quilts and not move the slightest…drifting in and out of slumber and dreaming.  I don’t like it when someone rips those nice warm quilts, worn and soft from years of snuggling, right off my dreamy self and I have to get up and get to work.

But without that letting go of our comforts…that turning over of the soil…the garden will not take new seed, it will continue to lie fallow, the seed will be washed away by the first Spring rain, and the water will just become run-off, not able to penetrate the hard compacted earth.  The earth, which has all the potential to become a garden…will remain a dry, weed infested (because that is all that can survive in fallow soil) plot.  But with the hoeing, turning, plowing…they earth can accept the seed, it can hold the water and then the flowers, fruits and vegetables can grow... providing beauty and sustenance for the community.

I became so excited about sharing this metaphor with my friends that it all just spilled in a rush..  How many times had my life been turned upside down just before I had learned new lessons, taken exciting new steps, or found unexpected beauty and grace in my life or in the kindness of others.  How often had the precursor to deep spiritual insights felt like pain, fear, uncertainty, a profound and utter shaking up of my comfort.  Had these feelings really been the hoeing of my heart readying it for new seed, greater harvest gifts that could...and would... feed a waiting world.

Had I merely interpreted them as pain, sorrow, fear…when really they were the first lispings of God’s unimaginable promise.

All of a sudden my life shifted into greater focus.  Almost as if I suddenly could see that the prophecy from John was being delivered directly to me:

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, That ye shall weep and lament,
but the world shall rejoice: and ye shall be sorrowful,
but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. 
A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow,
because her hour is come:
but as soon as she is delivered of the child,
she remembereth no more the anguish,
for joy that a man is born into the world.”

For me this suddenly made sense.  If I were in labor with a child, the onset of that labor would mean something so wonderful and sweet.  I could love and embrace those feelings of discomfort, with joy. 

I realized that I could do this with the feelings of loneliness, fear, sorrow, doubt…that had been the onset of my own labor in birthing (or unselfing) a better sense of “self”…one that recognizes God as its only Cause and Creator…the only I AM that ever will be.  I could just as easily define those “feelings” as excitement, promise, the anticipation of great growth. 

I remember when I was little (and I was little…4’6” as a freshman in high school) I was so happy when my shoes became too tight and were uncomfortable.  This meant that I was growing.  I didn’t want to be a “little person”… I wanted to be tall enough to dance with a ballet company.  And 4’6” dancers didn't present the optimum visual aesthetic for Balanchine ballerinas in the 1960s.  That discomfort made me happy.  I wanted to outgrow those old shoes.

Today I want to outgrow old garments of behavior and thinking that no longer fits.  I want the discomfort of no longer being self-satisfied with that old view of myself…and others.  I long for the great Farmer to dig in his hoe and break through any hard, fallow thinking I may have become satisfied or comfortable with…and prepare my heart for His seed.

Bring it on!

So…these were the ideas we shared, as well as some others I have been cherishing this week. 

As my grandmother once said, “You don’t long for the Comforter…when you are comfortable”.  It’s true...when the temperature in my house is comfortable…I’m not as inclined to go searching for my comforter…and when my life is comfortable…I’m not as hungry for The Comforter. 

So…I think I am going to take those feelings of being unsettled, worried, uncertain…and reclaim them for God.  I will allow my spiritually longing self to redefine them.  These are now feelings of being shaken from a fallow rut…thank you God, of being hungry for the real sustenance of knowing His ever-present care rather than confidence in my own ability to “survive”…thank you God, of a deep desire to feel the peace that comes from surrender rather than control…thank you God. 

And thanks to my friends for a great conversation on Monday morning.

“A grateful heart a garden is
Where there is always room
For every perfect God-like grace
To come to perfect bloom…”
- Ethel Wasgatt Dennis

With Love,
Kate (still missing Jeff's editing)