The Unclad Soul

There is an insightful comment from the novelist Virginia Woolf in her search for purpose in life. She had often come to detours and dead ends. There were high moments of discovery and low times of nagging self-doubt. In a personal essay she concluded, “What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with the years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.” It is such a magnificent comment. Most of us at some point in our lives, often in mid-life or our later years, look back over it all and wonder what any of it meant. We see people we loved for the wrong reasons. Relationships that ended badly. Pathways we should have never taken. Choices we knew were questionable but made them anyway often with regret. We see good times, laughter and celebrations, deep love; that fun concert, the hila...

The movie, “Collateral Beauty,” deals with vitally important themes. For me, it fell short in many ways. There were moving moments, to be sure. The all-star cast made good attempts, but they distracted me. I kept seeing them as the movie stars they are and not as real characters in a difficult story. The film centers on an advertising executive, played by Will Smith, who three years earlier lost his young daughter to a fatal illness. His grief has crippled him and he is lost in bitterness and silent rage. He spends his days building colorful, elaborate domino mazes that he then collapses. It’s an obvious metaphor of his life and the shattering of his spirit and soul. He created his ad company on the basis of three imperatives: Time, Love, and Death. These, he told his colleagues and employees, are what connect us to all things fundamental to our well-being. He wanted his ad agency to reflect these themes in all aspects of its work. And yet, in his tormenting loss, he sees thes...

I am mourning our country. Not the sham that is our politics. That stuff infuriates not saddens me. Not the pathetic Donald Trump. His dysfunction is real and alarming but he’s not the source of my grief. Not Hillary Clinton with her chameleon masks, her endlessly lavish suits, and her highbrow ownership of the Democratic Party. What a disappoint she has turned out to be. But I don’t weep over her. Not the professionally and morally bankrupt media either. Their selling out, their cowardice, their trivial pursuits drive me to scorn but not sorrow. No, I mourn for the real people in this country who desperately need a reliable government. I mourn for our veterans sent off to missions of disgrace and outrage only to return to us maimed, ruined, and dead. And all of that for lost causes and dishonest hype and the gluttony of a fraudulent Congress. I mourn for the poor, the homeless, the addicted, the disabled, and all Americans whose lives are daily embarrassed from lack of resour...

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. In Jesus’ day mourning was serious business. People suffering loss or some inner wound would go out into the streets and tear at their clothing. They would scream and weep in agony. They would gather a handful of dirt and pour it over their heads and let it mingle in their tears. It was a sign of their connection with their mortality, their belonging to the earth where sorrow breeds. They would wrap themselves in the arms of others. They didn’t lose themselves in mindless work or distract themselves in foolish activity. Grieving hurt. Mourning meant something. And I think what Jesus is saying here is: be open to the wounds of the world and to your own. Mourn the hurting of people and when you yourself hurt. Weep over the suffering of humanity and your suffering, too. Don’t hide from it. Don’t attempt to chase it away with meaningless clichés or empty escapes. Feel it and be moved. We are to mourn the deaths of those we l...

 "It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain! I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it." ~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Writer/Mystic

Before anything else is said this needs to be said. Suicide is not a stain on anyone’s name or life. Suicide is a human tragedy and like any death we mourn it as an incalculable loss. There are many reasons, often legitimate reasons, why someone chooses to take their own life. It is not a cowardly act. I can’t imagine anything more difficult to do.  And the truth is we all have the right to that choice if we decide to take it. I’ve heard all of the clichéd prohibitions to suicide and I reject them all. Religious people have often been carelessly insensitive about this, condemning suicide as a sin. Sincere but misguided ministers, of all faiths, and others can be too quick to weigh down the families of suicide members with guilt and shame claiming it an unforgivable act and making references to Judas selling out Jesus and then hanging himself. Death is always a deep human loss in whatever form it comes. Suicide should not be compartmentalized into some extreme form of d...

I am a prisoner of Richard Martinez’s haunting words at the brief press conference last Saturday where he poured out his heart about the senseless death of his son Chris who was murdered last Friday in Santa Barbara, California. I cannot escape his emotional words. Choking with grief, consumed with rage, he passionately asked why his son had to die for nothing. Christopher Martinez and five others killed by a gun obsessed, volatile and deranged classmate, were all students at the University of California, Santa Barbara.  Chris was 20 years old. At the press conference his father said, “Chris was a really great kid. Ask anyone who knew him. His death has left our family lost and broken. Why did Chris die? Chris died because of craven, irresponsible politicians and the NRA. They talk about gun rights. What about Chris’s right to live? When will this insanity stop? When will enough people say, ‘Stop this madness!’ Too many have died. We should say to ourselves, ‘Not one more!’” ...

I am reading Judith Guest’s monumental classic, “Ordinary People.”  It was written 30 years ago and was made into an Academy Award winning movie directed by Robert Redford.  It remains an extraordinary novel with life lessons still fresh and relevant today. Here is a journey into deeply wounding grief, into the dark shadows of shattering loss. The Jarrets are a suburban family of affluence and refinement.  Calvin, or Cal, the father, is a successful tax attorney.  He appears confident and polished but underneath the suits he wears is a broken man coming apart from sadness and crippling self doubts.  He longs for his family and himself to heal from a terrible event but he does not know how to guide the process.  He is stuck in bewildering passivity.  His wife Beth is a sophisticated, attractive woman, neatly put together in color coordinated outfits.  But she is coldly indifferent to her family, more than high maintenance, she is touchy an...