Sadness is a Heavy Teacher...Parts I & II

Part One (4-30-26, 8 a.m.):

Sadness is a heavy teacher. Not necessarily unwelcome for me today, but rarely do I know how to welcome her knock upon my soul-door.

I’ve often repeated what feels a classic teaching from one of the Niebuhr brothers (I think?): anything of great light that comes into the world brings its proportion of shadow as well. Oracle Google makes reference to Reinhold Niebuhr’s Children of Light and Children of Darkness book (1944), which explores the tensions in being “as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.” (Matthew 10:16). Neibuhr was writing about democracy, given his era and focus, but the tensions are relevant to my sadness this morning.

 

One glimpse: “The preservation of a democratic civilization requires the wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness of the dove. The children of light must be armed with the wisdom of the children of darkness but remain free from their malice. They must know the power of self-interest in human society without giving it moral justification. They must have this wisdom in order that they may beguile, deflect, harness and restrain self-interest, individual and collective, for the sake of the community.” (https://philosophicalsociety.com/HTML/BonMot-ReinholdNiebuhr.html). While I don’t align well with the dualism, nor with the ‘children’ imagery, I do recognize some wisdom in what he’s naming. I’ve traditionally mirrored this in speaking about great mentor-teachers in my life, specifically James Loder then Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Both have been fundamental sources of Light for my own path, my own sacred work. Both lived lives of deep shadow as well, at least as I experienced them.

 

Loder was one of the loneliest men I’ve ever encountered, who wrote (ironically) about the depths of theological intimacy in Spirit. His own hungers shaped his students’ lives in both gift and challenge, joy and wounding. Estes was a beacon of Light for me to awaken to my own body, my own F/feminine. Encountering her in person for a week in 2012, Loveland Colorado, was an experiment in the deep shadows she stirred in those around her. Her choice of pedagogy meant there was a huge unmet desire in the room for closeness, seen from afar or given to 1-2 persons/day in the room. The visible relationship with her assistant was chock full of indignities and (seeming) disrespect, at least as I observed her, the two of them. So much so that I wrote a poem about it, naming the Light within her assistant and the shadows imposed upon her.

 

If I sit with my sadness this morning, gently knocking, I know it touches this light-into-darkness-into-light-again rhythm of a human life. It would seem one of the periods of my life with the most lightness would naturally then be one of great shadow as well. This saddens me deeply, unavoidably. The intense and very complicated closeness I lived with my friend Lisa, for so many years, is now a source of deep sadness to her. Is it to me as well, which I’ve just deflected or denied? Or has my journey with this sadness simply moved further downstream by now? I have sadness for what those years cost me, cost others in my life, yes. Yet the fruit of those years within me, within these others, is undeniably–even increasingly–sacred, significant. Light brings its shadows, which bring their light, and on it goes.

 

 

Lisa seems to be wrestling with those years in her life, the cost of them to her life with Chris. They are entangled in a church/unhealthy-staff-relationship that is bringing this dynamic to life for her, as he unwittingly chooses being a pastor over being a husband/father, then tries to rectify the choice by choosing being a husband/father who is yet still a pastor. She is wrestling with distrust of him, refusing to see the poison it is for their family, even as she then takes on responsibility for his choices because “she also chose to meet her needs with me that way, years ago.” I’m not sure that is the most healthful, helpful frame for her, for them, given it roots in self-recrimination and judgment of prior selves, all of us…but if it is what she needs/chooses, then so be it. It stings me, of course, to be the projected source of her self-recrimination, particularly as I am impotent to do/be any-way else amidst her projections, her process(es) with him. Her sadness needs to be her own, about which I do nothing, say nothing.

 

I am sad to be a source or focal-point of Shadow for her, of course, even as I had been the so-called source of Light too. Which brings me to the deepest absence I feel when I am with her today: spirit. The only way she and I grew, made sense of our years working together, was sensing the Spirit as primary mover and teacher in our shared work. There are no disciplines of Spirit we share today, nor do I sense this same intersubjective-Spirit-energy in how she and I work together today. To re-invite those now seems in direct challenge to her spiritual-intimacy journey with Chris. She–or he, and therefore she–no longer has an expansiveness to enter into spiritual friendship with others beyond their immediate circle, or at least one that includes me and Brian. It’s an either/or for her/them right now, not a both/and. The both/and path leads her back to her sadness, her felt-sense of ‘having betrayed him somehow.’ And I don’t want to be anyone’s source of perceived betrayal.

 

This sadness for me today is not unwelcome, as I named above. I have felt this increasing Absence between Lisa and me for months, maybe even years now. Which is not to say her path is not sacred nor Led. But it is to observe honestly that Spirit does not seem to be weaving our work together as once-was…and I don’t want to be a part of anything that doesn’t have Spirit has the mover, Leader, from the Center. What I experience as her religious narrowing is not where my own path can breathe. The community she seeks to serve is wrestling with fidelity in ways I no longer find compelling nor my own calling…which again is not to say they are less-than or anything. Just no longer within my own circling, calling(s).

 

And so the predictable pattern continues its next rendition in my sacred path: discovery, moving into centrality, deepening and integration, then moving further along the path, walking away in a more solitary fashion once again. While uncomfortable, even unto painful, differentiation as we grow is where Spirit, Life, and Light do beckon me. Does not mean I love any less, those from whom I differentiate and move, but it does require loving from a greater distance, from a sense of grief that is also deepest praise.

 

May Lisa find her footing in the paths most Led, most sacred. May she be returned to herSelf into a life of deepest abundance and joy. May she discover again and again that whereever Love is true, there is Life, beyond boundaries and our ken.

Part Two (4-30-26 11:30 p.m.)

Well, that was clear, dear Spirit. I am grateful, surprised (and not surprised), wearied with the excruciating wonder of soul-work, and feeling a little foolish for once again not really trusting. Though I will give myself a bit of slack in that discerning the spirits requires this willingness to work with the sparseness of what-is while honoring the yearning for what-may-be. All of my grief/praise this morning comes as praise/grief tonight. All without intention or expectation of altering anything that was unfolding, just as it was...

The writing this morning was a gift for me, coming to speech about what I was missing in this collaborative work with Lisa: Spirit at the center. Our years of closeness required a weekly, even daily sometimes hourly discipline of practice, connection, living into Spirit's energetics guiding us forward. Lis and I no longer have that discipline or shared practice of prayer. Amidst her challenges, I could not feel her present, presence. Facing a weekend of space-holding together, I made my peace with that, content to offer what I could faithfully, even if we weren't in the flow of energetics by which I recognize Spirit's work in a day, a moment, a flow. I finished Part One here, closed my computer, and poured myself a second cup of coffee. Lisa texted that coffee was made. I told her to come by when she had hers, as I was into my second cup already. She countered that she was in the circle room--so a refusal to come into my spaces. Without expectation, I told her I'd be there shortly.

I sat across the room from her, though facing the windows where we could both watch the sun rise higher. A different choice, to have that much distance between us, but it felt honoring of her need for space. Bit by bit, slowly and more slowly, a Conversation began to emerge between us--noting our (familiar) differences; being reminded of our shared Center in Spirit and devotion; giving our own voice to the Jesus-devotion each of us knows but also cannot find much shared language for; probably more... I honestly cannot recall the specifics much anymore. The end point was so very familiar, so Spirit-centered, so nourishing of that yearning to draw close I know so intimately. That I had relinquished ever feeling again, actually, letting her be herself and loving her from a distance, out of the way of her wordlessness with all my words.

But once again, we met on the bridge between wordlessness and words, her making the effort to bring herself to speech about things hard for her to name, me making the effort to share more vulnerably what I don't know how to speak in ecclesial or academic settings with any sense of integrity--my own Jesus devotion. She summarized it well enough: we had our 'come to Jesus' talk together. We both laughed. We prayed ourselves to a close, setting the energetics for the deepening soul-work to come in these next days, our holding space, etc.

And while the church-entanglement continues to unsettle and disrupt her, her family, I can feel her again. "On steriods," I told her tonight, with a smile and a hug. She shared the process unfolding for them, inviting my gift of words into the mix. Having relinquished any overt connection with her and her family, I once again feel this fierceness and devotion I've always known for her, for them. Out here in the cheap seats. Don't need much, if anything, from them...but it's a nice thing to be seen and heard in my gift of words...particularly if it helps them in their own gifts, their own healing/offerings.

So...this was to be the journey for today, it would seem. I wonder if I'll sleep a bit more deeply tonight.

I miss my own family, my beloved Brian, my snuggle-companion Nala, my own bed. AND it's been a blessed day of unexpected graciousness, restoration, wonder. I'm grateful.