This Ignatian Life

Secret Beach

Originally uploaded by Undine74

If there has been any consistent theme in my life the past several months, it has been of “vulnerability.” Who hasn’t heard ad nauseam that wise adage that there is “strength in being weak”? Yes, yes, we all know this, don’t we? We hear the great wisdom of it recycled endlessly in the New Testament; in fact, it’s one of the primary messages of the gospels. Lambs are weak; Christians are sufferers; rich people must become poor; adults are to be like children; God is strong and we are helpless without Him. I think that maybe I have heard and read about this relationship between strength and weakness so unrelentingly throughout my life that I have utterly forgotten the latent power and significance of its truth. I have often dismissed it rather than engage it as an intelligent way of being in the world, but perhaps that is because I’ve been in need of a re-definition of weakness as an important kind of vulnerability—because being vulnerable, I have found, is not to be weak, but rather, to be open and trusting. Maybe the adage should more commonly be expressed as: “There is strength in vulnerability,” instead, since the word “weak” has such an unappealing ring to it, culturally speaking…

I was drawn into meditations upon this topic while on a plane several weeks ago. I was in the air, flying over the Pacific, thinking, “God, this is tremendous! I have the ability to fly over an ocean, to pick up and travel, to go explore, to be free! What blessing! What power! What exhilaration!” I was sitting there, staring out the window and imagining myself a seabird, gliding over the water to a remote island where I would have time to rest and rejuvenate and begin the process of deep awakening of something I knew had been asleep inside of me. I think I closed my eyes for a time to indulge in the feeling of liberation, but this reverie was quickly broken by an attack of anxiety: I was hundreds of miles above the ocean in a plane with a limited amount of fuel and there was no land in sight in any direction. There was limited food available, limited drink, limited everything. Quickly, my initial feelings of liberation and freedom turned to musings about the gross fragility of my existence, of my utter powerlessness as I was propelled through thin air, above enormous banks of clouds, miles above what surely seemed an endless stretch of depthless water…

I looked around and saw that everything for me relied upon these people I had agreed to entrust myself with—I had asked them to take care of me, to take me to the place I wanted to get to, and I assumed that they would treat me with the level of respect and dignity I felt I deserved.

* * *

All of these fears spurred me to return to my reflections on freedom, and I began to add into my initial equation the unavoidable dependence of my “liberation” upon other people, other factors. In order to reach that island I was after—that place where I felt I would be able to begin some serious work of healing and growth—rejuvenation and renewal—I would first have to place myself utterly in the hands of the universe—the environment, governments, laws, the goodwill and help of other people, God—and hope that they could make good on their delivery of me to my destination. But then I realized, of course, that there is never a single moment I am in actual control of anything, no matter how hard I belabor my illusion of it.

As if by synchronicity, for the duration of that entire trip, I was shown repeatedly how much it was, really, that I’m always floating in deep water that might, at any unexpected moment, sweep me out to sea. But every time I placed myself in the middle of uncertainty and possibility, unbelievable things happened to me; and places that had been locked up inside me began to finally open.

* * *

Perhaps my most valued moment—my most treasured experience that trip that taught me something more about vulnerability was the morning I found myself far out in deeper water than I had ever swam in before, equipped with a mere snorkeling mask, and turning circle after circle, looking down and out and up—to make sure there were no sharks approaching… I was waiting for the dolphins that were still another several hundred feet out to come back in… they were playful and had been swimming near the shore and back out for hours. I knew that if I didn’t wait for them out there, though, I might never get another chance to swim with them. I knew I couldn’t make them come to me, though I did try to call to them. I watched and waded, and kept putting my head under to survey the deep waters I was plumb in the middle of without protection. I started to feel so tiny—like a microscopic fish just sitting there, waiting to get eaten. The dolphins were still out too far for me to safely swim, and I was growing disconcerted. Just as I was about to turn around and swim back to shore, too afraid of being prey to whatever might choose to prey upon me, I remembered that dolphins look out for other creatures around them. In fact, they are known for encircling humans who are being closed in upon by sharks…and they fight off these deadly predators. I thought again about my vulnerability, and I looked again at those gorgeous, happy dolphins shooting themselves like slippery silver twirling torpedoes from out of the waves—out there, beyond me yet…

and I stayed.

My choice, in that moment, opened something up utterly inside me—I sensed a freedom, an exhilaration, a sense of fullness of being unlike anything I could remember having experienced, at least not in a long time… The choice to stay and trust, knowing the likelihood of my becoming mere meat weren’t enormous, filled me with a strength I desperately needed. This time, rather than putting my trust in people, I entrusted my potential safety and vulnerability to another species. For me, it was a powerful revelation.

Fire in the Sky

Originally uploaded by pinkcigarette

Yesterday the sun was out and wind was up, whistling and jostling its way through the morning and early afternoon—the air slightly chilled and invigorating. I stuck my head outside for a moment and felt at once the cumulative prick of thousands of moisture particles, a soft spritz that woke up my skin—made it lively, alert. A dark aroma of warming earth was everywhere circulating: and I thought how perfect it was, this roaring spring day, in sight, by feel, in sound. The squirrels were occupied in a game of chase, and the birds were chirpy and sportive. It was a benign and delightful environment, and I was reminded of William Wordsworth’s “Lines Written in Early Spring”:

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:–
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

Though the day had a touch of restless anxiety about it, and by late afternoon, the foreboding clouds of spring began to accumulate in the south, and I couldn’t decide whether to deem them as unfortunate blotches upon perfection, or the logical conclusion of it, or, rather, simply as perfection’s origin…

After about thirty minutes of rapid cloud piling, the tornado sirens began an earnest blare. The sky was big-bellied and ominous, with hues of charcoal, yellow, and green. The first big storm of the season moaned around our windows and whistled sharply at the corners of our house, barreling quickly through the city. I spent a good hour in the basement, trying to calm down my three and a half year-old, assuring her that she would not be blown away, that lightning would not strike her, that a tornado would not shred our house to bits…And of course, all the while I was speaking sage words of reason and wisdom to her, my heart did trill a bit harder than usual, alarmed and on edge (though I worked to keep this deception from her).

While I adore a good, meaty storm, tornados terrify me—they’re chaos unbound, fury and irrationality incarnate—or Mother Nature in the throws of birth pangs, perhaps. When she’s a virago, there’s nothing to be done but yield to her. So I waited, and listened, quietly watching. I bid her peace, I bid her well (hoping she’d notice). And I fell prey, on and off, as I tend to do while I observe her darker moods, to moments of despair as my mind irresistibly flashed with images of the house splintering; or filled with the imagined, rushing sound of an oncoming train; or caved, for a just mere second, to the imagination of utter terror at having a child get sucked from my arms… (over-active imagination? yes, unfortunately. Probably worse than a three-year-old’s). And so the question of why always lingers…why has the world been made this way? One moment so mild and full of a kind of benign poetry seemingly meant to please and delight me—the next, turned radically volatile, unpredictable, and ambivalent as to whether I, or anyone, lived or died. Perhaps it’s the oldest of questions, or the most problematic for those who have come to believe in a loving and benign God. William Blake famously delineated the paradox in “The Tiger” in his Songs of Innocence and Experience–

Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

…When the stars threw down their spears,
And water`d heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

In time, the sky quieted. My daughter removed her hands from over her ears. I said, “I told you so.” We ate the pizza we’d been cooking (before the electricity went out (presumably), though it never did). Life resumed its usual course. I checked my email (truth be told, I checked my facebook page). While I was typing, though, I noticed that one of my hands was lit up beautifully with the brightest of sunbeams—and then another beam bounced its way across one eye. My other hand remained in shade, indeed one side of my body did—the windows to my right and left revealed two very different skies: one dark with the menacing leavings of unstable cumulonimbus clouds, the other radiant with a benign light coursing out from a vast rent between them. This was a rarer kind of intensity, indeed, and it filled me with wonder. I closed my laptop and stood at the window for some time, thinking about the strangeness of it, and about how fragile this line is between calmness and aggression; between nurture and destruction; between despair and exultation. In fact, there barely seemed a line at all. Perhaps there wasn’t or isn’t and never can be. And I didn’t want one. I couldn’t think Nature’s aggression was any kind of sin. Neither her unpredicatibilty nor her volatility were mars upon her perfection, at least not to me; rather, they were, strangely, enhancements. Though I fear them, yes. I respect and marvel at them.

Though, perhaps Emily Dickenson was right, too, in pointing out the madness of trying to make sense of it—this chaos that accompanies the transitions of seasons, or the pain that accompanies birth, or the dangerous instability and threat that lies at the heart of perfection, and that indeed increases perfection:

A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King,
But God be with the Clown —
Who ponders this tremendous scene —
This whole Experiment of Green —
As if it were his own!

Because somehow, it works. Somehow God is present in it all. Creation manages to be loving yet unrelenting; joyful yet desolate. Somehow, it feels right—we recognize it as wholeness. And we deem it the pinnacle of beauty.

I’ve long regarded myself as an intensely hungry person, though not in the physical sense. I don’t care inordinately about my dinner, save that it is healthy; yet, I’ve always experienced the world itself—the concept of it, the vast beauty and mystery of it, as something I desperately long to bring nearer in order to incorporate it into my(S)elf. I experience this longing as hunger to be spiritually and emotionally intimate with the world by “consuming” it—by “feeding upon infinity,” as William Wordsworth might say, as if my mind and heart were a great, hungry belly ready to fill itself with the cosmos.