Sunday, September 13, 2020
Friday, September 11, 2020
My Secret Journey
As I come to the end of my travels, I'm reflecting on how far I've come. Not geographically--my true journey is not the one that you can see illustrated on the map below.
I embarked upon this principally and primarily in search of God: in search of answers to questions and petitions; of spiritual, psychic, and physical healing, of change, and of direction for the future. I gave up everything comfortable, safe, and familiar in my life in pursuit of Him. Here is the map of my spiritual journey, as I see it looking back upon it.
1) I met Carolina. After my last encounter with the other girl and the consequent altering of the path I had started on at the Catholic church and looking for a new house closer to Charlottesville, I prayed earnestly for something in my life. Not necessarily a girlfriend or a lover, but just something. Someone. Some purpose and meaning in my life--I couldn't take the emptiness anymore. And there she was, a divine appointment and miraculous meeting. And for the first time in my life I knew what it was to be loved--and it changed my life. It healed things that had been there so long and went so deep that I didn't even know the extent of it. She brought me back to life. And God was in it every step of the way. Except of course in the parts where we strayed from his will. But his grace covered us even in that.
2) Adina died. And I had to choose which way I was going to take: faith, trust, surrender, and forgiveness, or bitterness, anger, despair and revenge. The first thing I did when I got the news was kneel down and pray, thanking and praising God, and although I still struggled, that set the tone for everything that followed. I was tested, like Job, whether I was really able to surrender EVERYTHING to the Lord. I still struggle with it sometimes, and I'll never be "over it", but overall, I'm okay.
3) I embarked upon amazing travels with a young Italian model who loved and adored me. That may not sound like a very spiritual thing, but for me it was a very emotionally significant thing. I'd never had a real love affair. Never had a honeymoon. Never had a good long-term relationship. Never known the joy of just having someone with me who genuinely liked me. We healed each other--we both say so. Or rather, God healed us through each other. And also, the tourist things we did were only part of our journey, less than half, really. The main thing was spiritual: we visited churches where the Holy Spirit was reputed to be present in power (He was), went to mass at different Catholic and Anglican parishes, visited a monastery and talked with someone I had always looked up to as a spiritual father, and we prayed together. A lot. It was the best part of our relationship--we both still say so, and the very last time we talked, when we both knew it was the last time, we ended it with one final prayer.
4) I was told I had cancer. And almost simultaneously, my relationship with her ended. No, she didn't leave me because of that; it was already ending--in fact, she almost stayed just to take care of me. But end it did, and I was left alone, with the death of my daughter still fresh in my heart, to face my own probable end (as I thought at the time). I was not saddened at all by the thought of passing into the next life. But I was heartbroken at not having done more with this life nor fulfilled my purpose. It was a very dark time, and as it happened, I passed it in the very place where I used to live in Arizona long ago--where Adina's life began. Again, I had to choose, and I chose to keep seeking and believing in God. It ended, or began to end, with the revelation of Light and Joy which I wrote about here.
5) I continued on my journey, alone now. Saddened by my losses, and by her absence, but still determined to reach the end of my quest. And I think now that this is the way it had to be--this part, I had to do alone.
Interestingly, when I first met her and she was trying to convince me to have a relationship with her, she made up a little story for me: I was a knight, on a quest, to a tower and a princess or whatever, and she was a fairy whom I met in the forest. And she would help me along my way as far as she could, would even cut off her own wings for me to heal me, and then would let me go along my way when she could no longer accompany me. And so it turned out, in the end. Exactly so.
Anyway, I did the worst part of the trip--southern California--without her, with all that had happened still swirling around me, and made my way to my final destination in northern California: the place where the presence of the Holy Spirit was most powerful. The other places I'd been had been places where there'd been an outpouring, but it had largely subsided, although there was still a lingering Presence. But here it was in its fullness still, and when I walked in the door the first time, I was filled with an overwhelming sense of His speaking to me. That I had completed my quest, that He saw and honored all that I'd done and sacrificed to come and find Him, and that he had many, many blessings in store for me.
6) Then, after I'd attended that church 2 or 3 times, the quarantine came, and it shut down. And I was left alone again, waiting it out in a strange place very far from home, unable to even move because all the RV parks were closed. And it was here that the final stage of my spiritual journey became apparent to me. I saw, or rather was shown, that the root of all my interior problems was a deep, dark, ancient core of anxiety, going all the way back to early childhood, which I'd suppressed and denied all my life. And I had to deal with that. And in order to deal with it, I had to first acknowledge it, then let it come out and work through it, meaning I had to actually feel the anxiety, which I'd never let myself do before--I'd always diverted my attention from it to some distraction, and that was the reason I couldn't get past certain things; they were my hiding place from the deep well of fear that was at the core of my soul.
So I spent the months of quarantine feeling that fear. And giving it up to the Lord. I saw that part of it was just general anxiety, but the most significant part was a massive, debilitating, overwhelming social anxiety, bordering on agoraphobia. And that this was the reason and explanation for all the parts of my personality and behavior that I'd never fully understood, couldn't control or change, and didn't like. It was the reason I'd reacted the way I had to so many things in my life, like the events at my graduate school and at my former church. It was why I couldn't stand certain things, things that should really only have been irritations, but to me were unbearable. Like a neighbor listing to bad music loudly, or a restaurant full of TVs blasting inane nonsense. They should have only been minor aggravations, but to me they felt like bugs crawling on my soul.
This continued until after I got back to Virginia. And then suddenly, one day, out of nowhere, it went away. And I found peace.
7) So now, here I am. I'm in my new house, and I'm ready to actually live. Everything before seemed impossible to me, because of that knot of anxiety. It's why I couldn't write, or focus, or concentrate. Why I couldn't bear tense social situations. Why most of the things in my life were disordered as they were. But now, I feel differently. I still like and dislike the same things, but I can bear them. I feel like I actually can write now, and intend to start in earnest as soon as I'm settled in here and am done with all the things that have to be done. I feel possibilities, and hope. I feel like I could actually have a fully functional relationship, or rather relationships, not just with a woman, but with friends and family. I am healed.
Certainly, there are still more things that have to be worked on. There's always improvement to be made. But I am certain that I've crested the hill or rounded the corner from my old life to my new one. I didn't find all the physical healing I went looking for, though I still hope to. But I found the interior healing I needed, beyond what I even recognized that I needed. I'm thinking that maybe, in a few years, when I've recovered financially from this trip, the funeral, and the purchase of this house, and once the whole crazy virus thing has passed, I'll still do that Camino de Santiago, Fatima, Lourdes, Medjugorie trip I was planning (but without selling my house this time; just a six or eight week trip), and maybe there I'll find the rest of my healing.
"Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits; who forgiveth all thy sins and healeth all thine infirmities."
I embarked upon this principally and primarily in search of God: in search of answers to questions and petitions; of spiritual, psychic, and physical healing, of change, and of direction for the future. I gave up everything comfortable, safe, and familiar in my life in pursuit of Him. Here is the map of my spiritual journey, as I see it looking back upon it.
1) I met Carolina. After my last encounter with the other girl and the consequent altering of the path I had started on at the Catholic church and looking for a new house closer to Charlottesville, I prayed earnestly for something in my life. Not necessarily a girlfriend or a lover, but just something. Someone. Some purpose and meaning in my life--I couldn't take the emptiness anymore. And there she was, a divine appointment and miraculous meeting. And for the first time in my life I knew what it was to be loved--and it changed my life. It healed things that had been there so long and went so deep that I didn't even know the extent of it. She brought me back to life. And God was in it every step of the way. Except of course in the parts where we strayed from his will. But his grace covered us even in that.
2) Adina died. And I had to choose which way I was going to take: faith, trust, surrender, and forgiveness, or bitterness, anger, despair and revenge. The first thing I did when I got the news was kneel down and pray, thanking and praising God, and although I still struggled, that set the tone for everything that followed. I was tested, like Job, whether I was really able to surrender EVERYTHING to the Lord. I still struggle with it sometimes, and I'll never be "over it", but overall, I'm okay.
3) I embarked upon amazing travels with a young Italian model who loved and adored me. That may not sound like a very spiritual thing, but for me it was a very emotionally significant thing. I'd never had a real love affair. Never had a honeymoon. Never had a good long-term relationship. Never known the joy of just having someone with me who genuinely liked me. We healed each other--we both say so. Or rather, God healed us through each other. And also, the tourist things we did were only part of our journey, less than half, really. The main thing was spiritual: we visited churches where the Holy Spirit was reputed to be present in power (He was), went to mass at different Catholic and Anglican parishes, visited a monastery and talked with someone I had always looked up to as a spiritual father, and we prayed together. A lot. It was the best part of our relationship--we both still say so, and the very last time we talked, when we both knew it was the last time, we ended it with one final prayer.
4) I was told I had cancer. And almost simultaneously, my relationship with her ended. No, she didn't leave me because of that; it was already ending--in fact, she almost stayed just to take care of me. But end it did, and I was left alone, with the death of my daughter still fresh in my heart, to face my own probable end (as I thought at the time). I was not saddened at all by the thought of passing into the next life. But I was heartbroken at not having done more with this life nor fulfilled my purpose. It was a very dark time, and as it happened, I passed it in the very place where I used to live in Arizona long ago--where Adina's life began. Again, I had to choose, and I chose to keep seeking and believing in God. It ended, or began to end, with the revelation of Light and Joy which I wrote about here.
5) I continued on my journey, alone now. Saddened by my losses, and by her absence, but still determined to reach the end of my quest. And I think now that this is the way it had to be--this part, I had to do alone.
Interestingly, when I first met her and she was trying to convince me to have a relationship with her, she made up a little story for me: I was a knight, on a quest, to a tower and a princess or whatever, and she was a fairy whom I met in the forest. And she would help me along my way as far as she could, would even cut off her own wings for me to heal me, and then would let me go along my way when she could no longer accompany me. And so it turned out, in the end. Exactly so.
Anyway, I did the worst part of the trip--southern California--without her, with all that had happened still swirling around me, and made my way to my final destination in northern California: the place where the presence of the Holy Spirit was most powerful. The other places I'd been had been places where there'd been an outpouring, but it had largely subsided, although there was still a lingering Presence. But here it was in its fullness still, and when I walked in the door the first time, I was filled with an overwhelming sense of His speaking to me. That I had completed my quest, that He saw and honored all that I'd done and sacrificed to come and find Him, and that he had many, many blessings in store for me.
6) Then, after I'd attended that church 2 or 3 times, the quarantine came, and it shut down. And I was left alone again, waiting it out in a strange place very far from home, unable to even move because all the RV parks were closed. And it was here that the final stage of my spiritual journey became apparent to me. I saw, or rather was shown, that the root of all my interior problems was a deep, dark, ancient core of anxiety, going all the way back to early childhood, which I'd suppressed and denied all my life. And I had to deal with that. And in order to deal with it, I had to first acknowledge it, then let it come out and work through it, meaning I had to actually feel the anxiety, which I'd never let myself do before--I'd always diverted my attention from it to some distraction, and that was the reason I couldn't get past certain things; they were my hiding place from the deep well of fear that was at the core of my soul.
So I spent the months of quarantine feeling that fear. And giving it up to the Lord. I saw that part of it was just general anxiety, but the most significant part was a massive, debilitating, overwhelming social anxiety, bordering on agoraphobia. And that this was the reason and explanation for all the parts of my personality and behavior that I'd never fully understood, couldn't control or change, and didn't like. It was the reason I'd reacted the way I had to so many things in my life, like the events at my graduate school and at my former church. It was why I couldn't stand certain things, things that should really only have been irritations, but to me were unbearable. Like a neighbor listing to bad music loudly, or a restaurant full of TVs blasting inane nonsense. They should have only been minor aggravations, but to me they felt like bugs crawling on my soul.
This continued until after I got back to Virginia. And then suddenly, one day, out of nowhere, it went away. And I found peace.
7) So now, here I am. I'm in my new house, and I'm ready to actually live. Everything before seemed impossible to me, because of that knot of anxiety. It's why I couldn't write, or focus, or concentrate. Why I couldn't bear tense social situations. Why most of the things in my life were disordered as they were. But now, I feel differently. I still like and dislike the same things, but I can bear them. I feel like I actually can write now, and intend to start in earnest as soon as I'm settled in here and am done with all the things that have to be done. I feel possibilities, and hope. I feel like I could actually have a fully functional relationship, or rather relationships, not just with a woman, but with friends and family. I am healed.
Certainly, there are still more things that have to be worked on. There's always improvement to be made. But I am certain that I've crested the hill or rounded the corner from my old life to my new one. I didn't find all the physical healing I went looking for, though I still hope to. But I found the interior healing I needed, beyond what I even recognized that I needed. I'm thinking that maybe, in a few years, when I've recovered financially from this trip, the funeral, and the purchase of this house, and once the whole crazy virus thing has passed, I'll still do that Camino de Santiago, Fatima, Lourdes, Medjugorie trip I was planning (but without selling my house this time; just a six or eight week trip), and maybe there I'll find the rest of my healing.
"Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits; who forgiveth all thy sins and healeth all thine infirmities."
"For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it."
"We must ask of souls only what they can give: of some, a continuous upward surge of heroism; of others, little steps, which bring them ever nearer the end to be attained. But, to be configured to Christ, every soul must sacrifice itself under some form or other."
-- Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life
-- Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange, The Three Ages of the Interior Life
Thursday, September 10, 2020
Tuesday, September 1, 2020
"Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. It has only happened to me like that once. I have been alone while I was with many girls and that is the way that you can be most lonely. But we were never alone and never afraid when we were together."
-- Ernest Hemmingway, A Farewell to Arms
-- Ernest Hemmingway, A Farewell to Arms
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