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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.
Week Eight – Lesson Eight – Love, Service, Compassion
Lesson Eight – Love, Service, Compassion
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Prelude
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.1 Corinthians 13:4-7
The year was 1974. I was flying back to India from consultations at CIA Headquarters where I was assigned.
My next post was to be Beirut and I was asked to spend a week there before continuing on to New Delhi.
The Civil war of 1975 had not yet erupted and arrangements were made for me to stay in a hotel located on the Corniche – the road that skirted the Mediterranean Sea.
What stands out in my mind after all these years were not the briefings, the walks throughout what was once a fashionable city – The Paris of the Middle East, but the above quote that I came upon as if for the first time in my hotel room one evening.
There in less than sixty words was a prescription to follow in matters of the heart.
By that time, I had been married ten years and I was shocked to learn that I still had much to learn.
Rereading the words now I see a direct application to the healing process, as I remind myself when I encounter loss – even the grief that rushes through my life on a memory – to be patient, kind, not envious, boastful, or proud, but authentic, not rude, self-seeking, self-serving, or self-absorbed, slow to anger, forgiving, rejoicing in the truth, protective of those in need, trusting, hopeful, and persevering to the end.
So what of love . . .
Part One – Power of Love
Some day, after we have mastered the wind,
The waves, the tides, and gravity,
We shall harness for God the energies of Love.
Then for the second time in the history of the world,
We will have discovered fire.
I found this quote of Tielhard de Chardin in the foreword of Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist many years ago.
Earlier I had read Tielhard ’s The Phenomenon of Man.
I was attracted to Tielhard, a Jesuit priest, for his independent thought, a characteristic I had come to admire among the Jesuits who taught me at Fordham University.
Teilhard challenged the established order with creative approaches to scholarship and with his bold assertions.
So I turn to a celibate Jesuit priest for an insight concerning the mystery of love.
What is there in a human relationship with another that stays with us so long?
Do you encounter a rekindling of the mystery of love in your dreams, or during a site visited previously, or seeing a bottle of wine, or in a familiar smile?
Could it be that the Divine gives us a hint of eternity in the relationships we cultivate and pursue in this life—even those that do not last?
Perhaps love for another – an intimate partner, a friend, a child, a mentor – occurs when we also grasp for the first time, or at least at a deeper level, the Divine in terms that we can understand.
But most of us need to miss the love received before we truly appreciate the love present—that which we experience right now, perhaps in a partner, but surely in friends, children, and grandchildren, if so blessed.
However, once missed, doesn’t it seem that we become more capable in expressing genuine love generously and without inhibition?
* * * *
With strangers do you discover or rediscover love in the journey they share with you and you with them?
During a snow storm on our way home from work, my wife and I took shelter in a restaurant with another couple unknown to us until we sat at the same table.
In the course of several hours we shared what was important to us and they did likewise.
We left to head home, with a deeper sense of the power of love from strangers whom we were never to meet again.
Consider the power of love in your life – past, present, and unfolding.
How has it affected you in the choices you made, in the relationships expanded, in professional interests, in creative pursuits – the source of deep healing?
Spend a moment reflecting on these questions and others that come to mind.
Make note of what you want to reserve for further consideration.
Part Two – The Wonder of Love
Let’s explore the wonder of love.
The poet Juan Ramon Jimenez expressed the same with these lines.
I should say that when I was searching for these lines, I seemed to recall that he was writing about an older fellow falling in love or wonder with a much younger woman.
Oh, how my failing memory sought to accommodate my apparent bias.
And she was fifty and I thirty—how could it be that I feel a love I could not explain—ageless, passionate and an eternal fire.
Grief doesn’t operate in linear time, nor does love. In fact, both can operate alongside each other in a mystery that brings love lost to interact with new love discovered.
True, one who grieves might be considered vulnerable to an emerging relationship, seeking at one level relief from grief’s tedium.
So here I was, wrestling with grief and loneliness, being counseled by friends and adult children, and experiencing the wonder of a budding relationship, if not love.
If I followed the rule book I inherited from my father, I would have ignored the wonder as being unfaithful to my spouse.
Instead I concluded that there was nothing I could do to further my relationship with my deceased spouse, a truth that I shared with my loved ones, and remained open to the possibility of new relationships.
In the process of pulling back from those who would have me follow their gentle though persistent guidance, I began the process of restoring balance, harmony, and independence in my life that reflected who I was, not what others would have me be.
But it all begins with acknowledging the power and healing qualities of love.
Experiencing again the wonder of love, I discovered not a replacement for my soul-partner who passed on, but rather another dimension of the love than I experienced previously.
What is this wonder of love?
Can you paint it with words – with colors, or perhaps with a melody that haunts your heart?
How do you explain its spontaneity, unfolding, generosity, selflessness, freshness, trust?
Take a moment and describe the wonder of love you have experienced and miss sorely.
Who knows, your efforts here might put out a call to the universe that will be heard.
At minimum, you will have a better understanding of this wonder called love.
Part Three – Service of Love
Let us consider how service converts into a healing energy, a healing balm, for a heart once bereft of joy.
During an assignment to Afghanistan, in my off-duty time I visited Aschiana, a center for working children in Kabul .
My visit coincided with the presentation of new athletic shoes for the six hundred children who attended school there. The shoes were purchased with funds donated by CIA personnel assigned to Kabul.
On an increasingly cold, wet, rainy day the children lined up on a modest playing field in front of a portable covered stage.
The girls – aged from six years to sixteen years old – stood in order on the left and the boys on the right.
The shoe boxes had been carried earlier from the storage area to the stage and arranged according to size and sex.
The distribution process began with the booming voice of the principal, a dark-complexioned man in his mid-forties who was dressed in what is called a shawaka mis—the mis being the loose pants.
Referring to a roster, the principal would call a name, beginning with the boys, and follow each name with a shoe size previously provided.
The children would approach the stage one at a time, and accept the box of shoes as if he or she was being presented an award.
After the girls had received their boxes and were returning to their places, some would open the boxes to show their friends, receiving admiring glances in return.
After the ceremony, some of the children rushed off to the residence-turned-school, removing their shoes before entering, but bringing the shoe boxes inside.
Others surrounded me in the frigid rain to practice their English, telling me about their experience in painting.
Any self-absorption that depression might have caused earlier quickly evaporated.
Part Four – Love in Reflection
Well, we are coming to the end of the beginning of a long journey in the middle of our life where we found ourselves lost in grief.
Yes, we were at a crossroads, stunned – surprised at the sudden turn of events in our lives.
We are beginning to take those first steps into the second half of our lives – if we have not already been underway for some time.
No journey can take place with your eyes closed.
So I ask that you look intently into the eyes of those that accompany you or whom you encounter. For it is in the eyes that you will see the reflection of love.
Begin by looking into the mirror just after rising but before you take time to alter your appearance.
Who do you see looking back at you?
Surely, it is not the same person that woke up the day before your loss was suffered and stared back at you.
Take time, perhaps, over coffee to describe what you observed.
Perhaps, you noticed a depth, perhaps wisdom, even sadness, or new found optimism or hope, but no doubt strength, determination. Whatever greeted you capture the sense in your journal.
Next, starting this day, look intently into the eyes of those around you – children, relatives, friends – old or newly developing.
Catch their spirit. See what they are saying with their eyes. Make a note of what you gather.
Next, look at the strangers you meet – those sitting opposite in a restaurant, serving or taking your order for a meal, the shop keeper, even the usher at church who you have never looked at directly.
See the distraction, the longing, the fear, the joy, hope, despair – and most importantly the love expressed in their eyes and made manifest in their gestures.
Now with a network of those with who you are in contact, even casual contact, probe the power of love in this reflection.
See for yourself how love measures against success, victory, speed, salary, achievement, time; and go further and decide if there is any aspect of yourself that prevents you from loving more deeply than before your loss and the grief that settled in.
Hopefully, you arrived at a resounding NO!
Now, write in your journal as to what inhibits you from giving freely of your love with no thought of a response even when you catch a clip of sadness in your voice, a hesitation in your step, lines around your eyes that weren’t there earlier, or even eyes that don’t meet your own.
Finally, here’s a question for you as we come to the conclusion of this course, are you able to hear through the silence?
Part Five
The concluding exercises and continuing activities follow.
- Exercise #18 – Song
Relax as you listen to Sinead O’Connor and read at the same time the lyrics to Only You from the film Young Victoria.
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=8Q629eoZiW4#t=11
Only You
My love
Your love
Has opened up a world I’ve never known
All hope
Was found
A place I never dreamed I would go
Feels like only yesterday
I had locked my heart away
Safe behind a castle of stone
Sure I’d always be alone
Only you know how
To hear me through the silence
You reach a part of me that no one else can see
Forever true there’s only me and only you
Only me and you
In your fate I trust
With you beside me I am standing strong
One truth
Two hearts
You took my life and made it beautiful
So you dared to let me shine
Even walk a step behind
Willingly you give yourself to me
Knowing who I was born to be
Only you know how
To hear me through the silence
You reach a part of me that no one else can see
Forever true there’s only me and only you
Only me and you
Only you know how
To hear me through the silence
You reach a part of me that no one else can see
Forever true there’s only me and only you
Only me and you
Perhaps instead of asking what do you hear in the silence, I should have asked: What do you hear about love, grieving, loss, healing, and new love in the silence?
Here are a couple of suggestions for you to follow starting in Week #9:
- Check in with the matrix that you created in Lesson One.
- Measure your progress just as you have these last eight weeks. You might want to check the matrix every month or so for as long as you think the exercise is fruitful.
- Review the Creative Journeys offered, focusing on one or more that could make a difference in your healing – remembering in creativity you experience healing.
- Keep current your journal of healing, highlighting the light that is entering your life.
In the meantime, I raise my prayer or glass –
To your healing,
To cherishing past love,
To hearing through the silence,
To finding new love,
To healing others as you are healed,
To laughter, joy, and celebration
Until we meet again –
Terry Douglas
Click on this link for more information on Aschiana: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrq34cRS79E
