Greetings TSJ Friends!
I hope this blog letter finds you healthy and happy in spite of our recent heat wave and chaos in the world (and sometimes within ourselves)!
Today I am wondering if you have ever (or recently) had “an off day” in your spirits. If so, how did you work through it?
Monday of this week was like that for me. It wasn’t awful, but I was “off” as far as my inner self was concerned. I woke up feeling a bit gloomy. Not exactly depressed but something akin to walking through a fog or having a grey mood. Not stormy, not sunny, just blah.
None of the knowledge I have about how to pivot away from our negative thoughts seemed to lift my inner fog. Sometimes one just has to feel what one has to feel. But for those of us who seek to understand ourselves, it is hard to let go of thinking you can change it – if you just use the right strategy.
So I trudged through the normal chores and expectations of the day and tried to do what I write about – “pivot,” “practice kindness” and “pursue wisdom.”
I pondered how true it seems to be that “we teach (or write about) what we most need to learn.”
I freely admit my blah mood seemed intractable.
Eventually I did something that seemed to crack open the happiness door in my heart a tiny bit, just enough for me to experience a slight shift in mood.
SHARING THE JOURNEY OF THE BLAHS
I “shared my journey” with John and in a long text to a trustworthy friend. They both honored the feelings and were kind. They wisely advised me to give myself permission to feel it and be “still” with it. The last thing I felt like doing was meditating.
But by expressing the mysterious somber mood to them I revealed something I had not realized was so deeply troubling me. I was feeling sad for a dear friend who is trapped in her own body with a keen mind and awful circumstances while waiting at home for a nursing facility to open up for herself and her husband. She cannot get out of bed and he is experiencing a form of dementia and depression.
A year ago we went through something similar with another friend. Seeing people with minimal resources – financial, family, spiritual etc. and in the last months of life is difficult. Certainly it is appropriate to be sad but one cannot carry another’s story. We can pray for, love and support them and bear witness to their pain, even advocate for them, but it is not healthy to carry it around. So, I knew there was something I was not facing about this that troubled me.
Once I texted my dear friend about these hurting people I realized there was both grief (sadness) for them and fear for me. Fear that this could be me was sitting at the bottom of my psyche like sludge at the bottom of a puddle.
Finally, I did what I was resisting. (We often resist what we need the most.) I lit my little meditation candle, put on some gentle sacred music and sat with my fear and my grey mood alone in my office.
Ever so subtly something shifted. I knew John and my friend cared deeply. I felt their love and care. Solomon knew what would happen . . . I would move from . . .
FROM BLAH TO BLESSED
The Shepherd of shepherds would come to lift me as a fallen sheep.
And the Shepherd did just that. He reminded me that I am vulnerable to stumbling into ruts of fear and worry – much like a sheep does in the pasture, thus losing its center of gravity and unable to get up by itself. It simply lies on its back and flails its legs until it grows weak and exhausted. The vultures get excited and start circling. The shepherd sees the danger and runs to the sheep and helps lift it up.
Solomon says just like that …. “He restores our soul.”
I joined John in the living room and felt realigned. relaxed and truly grateful.
Then suddenly the lights went out. A power outage!
There had been thunderstorms earlier but all seemed calm for the last hour. We began to check on a phone number for RG&E, and we checked the street to see if other’s lights were out also. All lights were out except where the generators were running.
We knew where flashlights were. I used my phone (John has a flip phone) and he got the flashlight we keep in the bedroom.
I knew about a huge flashlight Tom had years ago that I had saved and kept in the kitchen pantry on the floor under the first shelf. I left my phone on the counter and went to the pantry in the dark (testing my visual memory), bent down and pulled out the huge yellow flashlight.
Something else came tumbling off the top of the flashlight.
The battery was dead so John came with his light and what had fallen to the floor were the reading glasses I had lost weeks ago!
It struck me quite funny that it was in the dark I found my glasses!
Finding glasses in the dark is rather like what happened earlier when I shared with my friend and John the darkness I was feeling. From that sharing I rediscovered the truth that meditation ultimately is like finding our glasses in the dark while waiting for the light to come on!
And our power was restored right after I found the glasses. (Similarly, my sense of spiritual power was restored after prayer and meditation.)
This was beginning to feel symbolic.
I wouldn’t have been looking for the light had I not been in darkness. And I would not have found those lost glasses!
Tuesday morning the scripture verse for that day was:
“It is the Lord who goes before you. He will be with you; He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.” Deuteronomy 31:8 (New Revised Standard Version) Talk about comforting!
Finally, a final sentence from Sarah Young in the meditation for Tuesday literally made me cry with profound gratitude for the Love of God.
“Fear no evil, my cherished ones, for I am with you.”
It is often hard to remember how much the Chief Shepherd cherishes us!
May you be blessed remembering, “The Lord is my Shepherd . . . , He makes me to lie down in green pastures and leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul” (Psalm 23)
With love and gratitude,
Margie and our muse Solomon
