Check out my new 'World Reflections" Section
Interesting stories and anecdotes that reach into insights I have gained abroad.
Healing Grief, On-line Course, by Terry Douglas.
You are invited to participate in an 8-
week, on-line course, entitled
Healing Grief Page that captures a journey of healing following deep loss.
The Question
Posted on Sunday, December 24th, 2006
Have you ever been asked by a child – what if when you die there is nothing? I have, most recently last night when my eleven year came tumbling up the stairs to my bedroom and climbed into my bed with his ninety pound white Shepherd.
“Suppose there is nothing, Dad, when we die?” he asked. I did my best to wake from a sound sleep to respond to his deeply felt theological question.
Aside from saying that I have asked that question as well, I would be disingenuous if I attempted to reconstruct the conversation from the fog of last night. But I can say that we talked for fifteen minutes or so and he seemed satisfied. In the course of our discussion, I told him that I would be the first to beat through the crowd ready to greet him when it came his turn to pass over to the other side. How do I know he was at ease? He and the dog fell into a deep sleep alongside me.
Reflecting upon our talk last night, how blessed I am for someone to have the confidence to ask me such a weighty question – to bring that deep-seated fear into the light, no longer allowing it to range freely in the interior. And those of you who grieve over loss will discover that your new found depth will do much to ease the anxieties of the little people – and the not so little people – about life and death and life.
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The Godfather
Posted on Saturday, December 23rd, 2006
What if the Godfather was not trying to hold together and prosper a criminal syndicate, but rather share the wisdom gained sometimes at great price during a lifetime of turmoil. I encountered one such individual in literature – Zorba – about whom Nikos Kanzantzakis wrote in Zorba The Greek. He caught my attention when I was in my early 30’s and he is my companion even now.
He sits with me in the early morning as I reflect upon life and loss. He especially influences me in my relationships, reminding me of those special moments spent with family, friends, and strangers that over the course of time cannot be repeated. When I begin to take life too seriously, he nudges me, and encourages me to join him, arms raised as he dances with abandon across the sand. You see, Zorba is mad in the finest sense of the word.
I wrote this poem to honor Zorba some years ago when I was trying to establish myself as a husband, father, and a career intelligence officer. At the time we were residing in Warsaw.
“Zorba”
Who is that fool with arms outstretch
Above black-haired ankles – pale bare feet?
Whose smile mocks himself no less that those,
Who trudge uphill – dull face to neck.
Why does loose earth remember
His shuffling embrace,
And hum the measured steps
Of the wise?
Does he build bridges?
The column must have begun – now.
Maybe it will end – when?
He has colored it
With his white worn pants
And blue-beached shirt.
His dance is seen and sure for him
Because there is a column.
Your neck is before my face
Because of his madness.
When I was a spy, I used to prepare for a meeting with an agent as if it were to be our last meeting. In this season of family reunions, consider the special gift granted you to enjoy once again the love of family and friends without the distraction of those daily priorities that seem to self generate in an idle heart.
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Praying Fingertips
Posted on Saturday, December 16th, 2006
Between my sophomore and junior year of high school, my mother suggested that I take a typing course during the summer at the local public high school in the Bronx, NY. I did, and thank the memory of my mother frequently. Not only did this skill of touch-typing serve me professionally, it has contributed to my prayer life as well.
In the stillness of the morning, long before the sun has risen, I have become accustomed to spend some time reading scripture, meditating on the words, and then seating myself before the keyboard of my notebook. In response to my request for clarification of the particular scripture I find the Holy Spirit flowing through my fingertips.
The process brings me to an increasingly familiar place of further still where peace reigns and deep loss and grief no longer hold sway on my emotions and inner calm. Let me offer a recent example of praying fingertips for you to consider.
I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, first for the Jew, and then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written. “The righteous will live by faith.” Romans 1:16-17
Prayer: Please tell me more about the power revealed in the gospel.
Response: The power is like entering a beautiful well-lit home or palace that is bare of furniture and ornament, only rugs on the floor, and pulling back one of the rugs is revealed a trap-door down into the interior.
The gospel takes you down into the interior to reveal a magnificent treasure that is impossible to contemplate in terms of variety and numbers because all is revealed in a union, in a unity.
And what is revealed? A roar of power that resounds the deeper one descends. And that roar is for some just a faint echo of what they hear in their hearts. It is the “Ah [...]
The Seven Storey Mountain
Posted on Wednesday, December 13th, 2006
Aside from the significance of the opening lines of Dante’s Divine Comedy to me, as cited in Rule #4, Thomas Merton’s Seven Storey Mountain — imagery also taken from Dante’s work — served in my early spiritual development.
As a seventeen year old I read Merton’s autobiographical account of his conversion and decision to enter the Trappist Monastery after a wild youth with full attention. The story made such an impact that when I purchased a copy in Warsaw ten years later, I could tell exactly who I was and what I was thinking ten years earlier. Not many books have affected me similarly.
Merton and his voluminous writings served to introduce me to contemplative prayer and extended my appreciation and respect for Eastern spirituality that has sustained and enriched me to this day. If you have not known of Merton, let me whet your appetite with a short quote from the epilogue to Seven Storey Mountain.
Whether you teach or live in the cloister or nurse the sick, whether you are in religion or out of it, married or single, no matter who you are or what you are, you are called to the summit of perfection: you are called to a deep interior life perhaps even to mystical prayer, and to pass the fruits of your contemplation on to others. And if you cannot do so by word, then by example.
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On Marriage and Trekking in the Himalayas
Posted on Tuesday, December 12th, 2006
As the holidays approach and we savor the company of family, I want to share an essay I wrote about marriage and presented to one of my daughters on the eve of her marriage. I say savor because isn’t life about being on an adventure with someone who wants to be with you as you with her/him and experiencing the full dimension of life — even its loss?
On Marriage and Trekking in the Himalayas
Many years ago, I journeyed with a friend from Delhi, India to Pokhara, Nepal for a trek in the Himalayas to fifteen thousand feet and the base camp of Doulagiri, a towering twenty-five-thousand foot peak in Western Nepal. Reflecting upon the experience now, I find the trek as a symbol of marriage – at least my marriage – and perhaps you will discover similarities in your own unfolding relationship.
In preparation for the trek, I exercised rigorously, increasing my distance and speed running in a wilderness near the President’s polo grounds where they worked the ponies – not far from the U.S. embassy compound. I purchased a pair of boots – which I still have – a couple of weeks before our departure and wore them each day to condition my feet to the stiff leather, since I was not sure that the leather would soften sufficiently before our departure.
Our ride in the Land Rover was not uneventful. Though the Indian map indicated that the major highway led directly to the Nepalese border, we discovered otherwise. We reached a river in Northern India and pulled up to a toll station – not to cross a bridge, but to drive onto a raft not much longer than the vehicle. In mid-stream, the widest of four we had to cross, the burly river boat men insisted that we give them more money else we would not reach the other side.
I remember now with a smile the anxiety I felt when I heard my companion shout “punch, punch.” I was inside the vehicle freeing the wrench of [...]
