Last week we referred to the stories, The Wizard of Oz and The Secret Garden. The first story especially illustrates how there are storms in our life, but they may be followed by rainbows. To follow the rainbow, we must not rely on magical resources from outside, but discover and draw on our own inner gifts and resources. That is how we journey to our home on the other side of the rainbow.

The Secret Garden brings out the inseparability of the outer garden of the events of our life and the inner garden of our heart. Rather than attempting to close off our hearts to pain or sorrow, we need to allow then to be open and vulnerable, though certainly in the safe place of our own solitude or in the safe place of a caring other.

The Selfish Giant, a modern folktale by Oscar Wilde likewise brings out that if we build walls around ourselves, it will always be winter in our hearts and no birds will sing. If we break down our walls, we can allow new life to flow within and without, even in a playful way. This conviction is illustrated by the children. They come in through cracks in the walls and winter turns to spring, darkness to light.

This story reminds me as well of Leonard Cohen’s famous line from his song, Anthem: “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” In Hallelujah, he sings of a lonely and a broken hallelujah. These words would seem to acknowledge the sorrow and limits of life. Yet they are followed by a movement beyond to gratitude for the gift of life, a celebration of that life, and spirit of generosity. It is possible to trust our longing for home, which lies on the other side of the rainbow which follows the storm.

In the story of Snow White, the growing child is faced with a choice represented by the colour red and the two queens. The colour red stands for the powerful and even contradictory feelings. The two queens represent the red of love and the red of hatred. Snow White experiences both tendencies within herself, as we all do. As she grows–in the Grimm Brothers story rather than the film version–Snow White she faces a choice between the red of love and the red of hate.

In the story of The Two Wolves, the child tells his grandfather of similar feelings. He says that it is as if two wolves are fighting within himself, the wolf of love and the wolf of hate. He asks his grandfather which one wins. The grandfather responds that it is the one he feeds. The grandfather also acknowledges the presence of both strong feelings within himself and the struggle between them: “I too, at times, have felt great hate for those who have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do. But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It’s like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times.”

These stories recall the expression of Richard Rohr that suffering–and we might add the powerful negative tendencies and feelings–are either transformed or transmitted. It recalls also our distinction between inflicting our negative feelings on others and entrusting them to a caring other.

In the story, Snow White is tricked into tasting the red side of the apple. In effect, she tastes the red side of life, that is, the whole variety of powerful emotions. To do so is to undergo a kind of death, an ending of one stage of life. In the story, she is then encased in a glass coffin. Like the wall which surrounds the selfish giant, in her glass case, she becomes inaccessible. Only when the glass encasing her is cracked open does she emerge to a new life. The story suggests that it is only love which is able at once to acknowledge the cracks in life—all that is painful—yet hold them together in a caring heart. It is essential to taste life fully, yet not to poison, but to nourish self and others in the process.

Writer Katherine May, speaks along similar lines in her book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. She says that “wintering as a metaphor for those phases in our life when we feel frozen out or unable to make the next step, and that that can come at any time, in any season, in any weather.” She suggests that when we are in a dark place, we need to ask what it can teach us. She notes that we are uncomfortable with sadness. And our instinct is to try to move others out of that state immediately. But that can feel a lot like being told that our feelings aren’t acceptable and that our state of being isn’t acceptable. It is more helpful to make space for their sadness, to open up a space that their sadness is acknowledged and validated.

The Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone stresses as well the seasons of winter and spring in our hearts as well as in the weather. Winter is linked with a time of loss, desolation, and mourning and desolation. Spring is a time of new life, joy, and connection. Both seasons are a part of life. My godson, Aidan and I reworked the story of Pandora, whose name means “all the gifts.” It suggests that while sorrow and suffering are an inescapable part of life, life still remains a wondrous and sacred gift. And it is best contained within hope and love.

May all the storms in your life give rise to rainbows. May you acknowledge the presence of all feelings within yourself without ceasing to be grateful for your life. And may you find caring others to whom to entrust all your feelings.

Norman King
September 18, 2022

Last week, we mentioned the story, The Wizard of Oz. It illustrates how the longing for understanding (scarecrow), love (tin man), and courage (lion), are to be discovered and developed within oneself. In the story, they first expect that someone, the wizard, will confer these qualities magically from outside. The searchers discover that this is a false hope. The seeds of these qualities are already present within them. They just need to be developed in response to their experiences.

I think that this story illustrates a common mistake. We tend to look for magical answers and solutions. In part, this is related to the thought that there should be no pain or sorrow in life, and that we can escape them. A profound change can occur if we recognize that every life is a blend both of joy and sorrow, in varying degrees. We can then expect times of sadness or pain as an inevitable part of life. We can also recognize that quick fixes or running from ourselves will not work. Any short-term relief will be quickly followed by a letdown.

The challenge is to acknowledge the pain. We can, in a safe place, even allow ourselves to feel it.
Then we can, at least over time, transform our sorrow. Author, Susan Cain, in her book, Bittersweet, has commented that the most beautiful music contains or even springs from an experience of sadness. It is also out of her loneliness that Rapunzel sings beautifully and her voice may ring throughout the forest of our hearts, as it does for the young prince. Medieval mystic, Mechtilde of Magdeburg, says that when her loneliness becomes too great, she takes it to her friends.

In The Wizard of Oz, a storm and tornado breaks out on the farm where Dorothy lives. It carries her away to a strange new land. The theme song of the film is Over the Rainbow. (I find the most haunting version to be that of Eva Cassidy.) The storms of life can be followed by rainbows. It is often on the other side of the sorrows of life that its meaning and beauty can be discovered. This transition is wonderfully illustrated by the transition in the film from black and white to colour.

In life, as in The Wizard of Oz, the challenge is to go through and beyond the storm, and find new life. It is to find life even in the midst of the many deaths in the midst of life – the times of darkness, unknown forces, confusion, upset. Yet within them dwell the longing and hope that sense there is something beyond these storms.

Susan Cain’s book brings out that joy and sorrow, light and darkness, bitter and sweet, life and death are inseparably bound up with one another, and are an integral part of life. We have often cited Richard Rohr’s words that suffering that is not transformed is transmitted. Cain says similarly that if we don’t acknowledge our own heartache, we can end up inflicting it on others through abuse, domination, or neglect. But if we realize that every person experiences loss and suffering, we can become kind and compassionate to one another.

In the story, The Secret Garden, and its film version, the outer garden parallels the inner garden of the heart. Archie’s wife has died in the garden and so he locks it up and at the same time locks up the garden of his heart. His niece, Mary, who has been orphaned, arrives to live at his house, Through her vitality and love, she gradually opens up both the outer garden and the garden of his heart. The love that results in loss and sadness that become a prison is also the love that is the path out of that prison.

Our life journey, over the rainbow, involves the journey inward and the journey outward. These are inseparable and while they involve our unique self, they are not merely solitary. They also involve others, community, earth, and the universe. This journey, especially in its inward dimension, is beautifully expressed by Dag Hammarskjold, former UN Secretary General, in his book, Markings. His outer journey and its tragic ending in an airplane crash are quite evident. Only with his journal does his inner journey appear and shed light on our inner journey as well. He writes:

“The longest journey is the journey inwards, of him who has chosen his destiny, who has started upon the quest for the source of his being.” “I don’t know who or what put the question, I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone – or Something – and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life in self-sacrifice had a goal.”

Our yes to life is an expression of a meaning deeper than tragedy. It is an expression of hope beyond all sorrow. When she was three years old, my daughter had a pillow and sheet with the theme of Noah and the ark. More than anything else, it featured a rainbow. One time, when Lorraine and I were away for a day, we had a young nurse stay with the children. As it turned out, while we were en route with a friend to the Shaw Playhouse at Niagara on the Lake, a fierce storm broke out. Some trees on our street were toppled, including one that fell on our car and a branch that crashed through our dining room window. It was a really frightening experience for the children. Afterwards, for a bedtime story, I told a revised version of Noah and the ark, with a storm rather than a flood. For several evenings, Mary asked for this story and it always ended with the same routine. I would have to ask her if there would ever be another storm like that. She would reply, “No.” I would then ask her how she knew, And she would answer, “The sign is the rainbow.”

She was, in fact, using the story to interpret her storm experience and to reassure herself that this frightening experience would not happen again. It was an example of how we do see our life as a story and use the stories to which we are exposed to interpret our own story. In a slightly wider framework, I would say that, while there may be many storms in our life, there may remain the underlying hope that these be followed by rainbows. A marvellous illustration is found in the original film, Fantasia. The drawings that accompany Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony show the dark storm giving way to a radiant sunshine.

The subtitle of Susan Cain’s book is “how sorrow and longing make us whole.” She says in the introduction as well that the heart of her book is”transforming pain into creativity, transcendence, and love.”

Many all the storms in your life be followed by rainbows. May you always find the keys to the garden of your heart. May all your sorrows be transformed into meaning and beauty that give worth and purpose to your life.

Norman King, September 11, 2022
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Last week’s reflection spoke of listening gently to our own feelings. Even our difficult feelings, such as anger, indicate that something within us needs attending. Beneath feelings of anger often lies suffering that contains our inmost longing for life, for meaning, and for compassion and justice.

We referred last week to the thoughts on anger of Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nath Hanh. He suggested that we attend to the roots of anger within ourselves, to acknowledge them gently, yet not to unleash them on others, but to transform them into understanding and compassion.

I added that our experience of anger may also have positive counterparts in our deep longing for life, for meaning, and for compassion and justice.

I think it is essential to recognize that we share all of the human feelings, even those that are difficult and even unnerving or frightening. They may sometimes catch us by surprise and even occasion feelings of guilt for having them. When someone close to us dies, beyond feelings of loss of the physical presence of that person in our lives, we may even feel that we have been abandoned by that person. At first sight it seems inappropriate, but we can come to recognize it as a quite natural part of our reaction to that painful situation.

It can be very helpful to come to name the experience, either personally, or with the help of a friend, or with some work of literature or other of the arts. I recall coming to a sense that grief is not merely sorrow at a loss, but felt incompleteness. All our relationships have an element of incompleteness. But the separation experienced by death or other extended form of separation gives a kind of permanence to the feeling of incompleteness. When my younger brother died at the age of 26 from a chronic heart condition, it felt that we had been interrupted in the middle of a conversation that we could not finish.

On another occasion, I recall spending a day in a beautiful natural setting, with some fellow students. Later in the evening we listened to Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, and had the profound sense that this music named our experience.

Theologian, Paul Tillich, devoted a book, The Courage to Be, to the study of anxiety, the threat to existence, meaning, and integrity, that are felt in every human life. These can be met with courage, trust, and love.

The familiar story and film, The Wizard of Oz, tells of a storm that carries the child, Dorothy away to a strange new land where she encounters three friends who seek a mind (scarecrow) a heart (tin man) and courage (cowardly lion). Her three companions illustrate that this is really an inner search, a search for inner qualities that affect how we live our life inwardly and then outwardly as a result. Initially they think that their search is for someone who will confer these qualities, upon them, as if in a magical way. They learn in their journey that the ability to become mindful, heartful, and courageous really resides within them. It depends upon their experiences, how they respond to these experiences, and how they name them.

Their journey through a strange land and their encounter with strange creatures may well reflect the truth that, in our journey inward, we encounter unknown dimensions of ourselves, both creative and hurtful. The end of that journey, and really the goal of that journey, is to find and to return home. In fact, though Dorothy seems to return to the same home, it is in fact a different home because she is different.

These comments are an attempt to suggest the importance of recognizing the whole range of our experiences and finding ways to name them truthfully and deeply. I would add that we must do so with kindness to ourselves, which will then radiate with kindness to others. There can readily be a movement within ourselves to regard our feeling harshly, even to judge that there is something wrong with us for having them. I like to say that we should never speak to ourselves or treat ourselves other than how we would respond to a hurt or angry child on our best day. In these instances, we become attuned to the suffering behind that outburst, and even moreso to the sacred person that lives within and beneath that array of feelings.

Often, as we noted last time, a whole variety of feelings can mask an underlying suffering, whether within ourselves or in others we encounter. The Dalai Lama has stressed the central importance of kindness. He advises that we must first cultivate an inner peace within ourselves. This is best accomplished by developing love and kindness towards others.

In a little book, On Kindness, Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor, state that many people today have been taught to perceive ourselves as fundamentally antagonistic to one another, and motivated by self-seeking. As a result, there is an immense loneliness, and lack of connection to one another. The pandemic and its resulting prolonged isolation have certainly made tangible how much we need one another. And to fulfill this need these authors stress that the path to follow is one of mutual respect, cooperation, and above all kindness.

It is interesting that the word, kindness, is related to the word, kin and kinship. This relation suggests that to be kind to someone, including ourselves, we need to feel some connection. This connection is certainly with ourselves and other human beings, near and far, and with the earth itself and its other than human inhabitants. As we have noted, we need to see the universe not as a collection of objects to dominate but a community of beings to reverence. Integral to this process is a sense of connection with and therefore kindness to ourselves. As educator, John Holt has said, we have enough kindness and compassion for others only if we have enough for ourselves.

Once again, the whole process of being gently in touch with ourselves and all the universe within us is part of this development. This can occur through solitude and meditation, through intimate and open conversation, through exposure to literature and the other arts, and through social involvement.

May you come to discover with gentle kindness all that is within you, and gradually extend that kindness in ever wider circles. As Thich Nath Hanh has stressed we must be peace before becoming peacemakers with others and our world.

Norman King, September 04, 2022

Last week we spoke of listening both to oneself and to one another. And of listening from the core or heart of who we are. This week we might explore a little more the notion of listening to oneself.

One striking example I discovered was on the facebook page dedicated to the writings of Thich Nat Han, the Vietnamese monk who died recently at the age of 95. His writings focused on the practice of mindfulness, and developed what he called an engaged Buddhism. He stressed how being peace within oneself was both essential to one’s own inner growth and at the same time called for outward expression in one’s presence in the world.

One example that he used was the experience of anger. He suggests that this and other emotions we perceive as negative are our way of letting ourselves know that something needs taking care of. He says that anger can never remove anger but only promote more anger. He adds that at first we think that our anger has been caused by someone outside ourselves. But in reality the main cause of our anger is the seed of anger in us. And if we do not deal with our anger, it will spill over and hurt others.

It is also important, he says, to help rather than punish those who are angry. We can only do so if we recognize that an angry person is suffering. But to help others, we must learn how to help ourselves. We cannot help to transform the anger in another unless we learn to transform it in ourselves.

To do so, he suggests that we learn how to breathe mindfully, to smile to our own anger, but not to say or do anything out of that anger. If we then look deeply into our anger, we may discern its roots, and then act out of compassion. In his words:“Only understanding and compassion can put down the flame of anger in us and in the other person. Understanding and compassion is the only antidote for anger. And using that, you heal yourself and you help heal the people who are victims of anger.”

In a not dissimilar manner, some years ago, I reflected on our experience of anger and wondered what were its positive counterparts. I found that they were a drive to life, to meaning, and to compassion and justice. Let me give some examples.

On one occasion, a very young child came up behind his father and bit him. Without thinking, the ordinarily non-violent father instinctively reacted by swatting the child and sending him across the room. Neither was really hurt and the incident was soon forgotten. This little event suggested that one occasion of anger is the experience of hurt and, on a larger scale, a threat to injury or even to life. The counterpart would then be a drive to life, to stay alive, and the anger would be a reflection of our longing for life, to stay alive.

Yet, it is not enough for us to stay alive. We want also to be alive, to have a life that is meaningful, to feel that our life has worth and purpose. As another example of anger, I recall once phoning someone early in the morning and being the recipient of that person’s angry attack. I learned right away that she had just burned her hand while cooking breakfast. This was certainly an experience of hurt, but it was also the result of frustration at something going wrong. I recall another occasion when I was greeted by someone who said that they were very angry, but that it had nothing to do with me, but was a result of a number of frustrating events during that day. Frustration can be an occasion of anger. This would seem to be a result, not of a threat to life itself to be things in life going well, or being good. It was a result of a threat to meaning. The positive counterpart, then, would be our longing for meaning, for a sense of worth and purpose.

Finally another incident occurred when a boy punched my daughter when she had returned home from surgery as a small child. While it was intended more as playful, the fierceness of the anger that arose was startling. This incident illustrates another occasion of anger, that arising from harm or injustice done to another person. Spiritual writer, Wayne Muller, recounted how in a counselling session, they discussed her anger. He suggested that she use that anger as alerting her to something to which she might make a positive contribution. It tuned out that, on such occasions, some hurt had been done to another or an unjust social situation had occurred. A third counterpart to anger springs from a sense of compassion and justice.

It would seem, then, that it is important to recognize and allow ourselves to feel our anger, but not to unleash it immediately. Rather, we can allow it to unveil our deep longing for life, for meaning, and for compassion and justice. We can then act from that place within us. We have quoted Richard Rohr as asserting that suffering that is not transformed is transmitted. To recognize that expressions of anger in ourselves and others are most likely rooted in some form of suffering are helpful in that process of transformation.

The same approach might be helpful when all kinds of difficult feelings arise. Meditation and Buddhist teacher, Sharon Salzberg, suggests that we regard difficult emotions as visitors. We may let them in but we don’t give them the run of the house. “These forces are visiting — greed, hatred, jealousy, fear. They’re not inherently, intrinsically, who we are, but they visit. And they may visit a lot; they may visit nearly incessantly, but they’re still only visiting.” This imaginative approach matches what we have said about such feelings telling us where we are a t that moment but not telling us how to respond or what to do. They do not negate the underlying sacred worth that is the essence of who we are.

Spiritual writer, Morton Kelsey suggests that the maturing process involves the self-awareness that comes from being alone with ourselves in silence. At first, he says that “disturbing emotions often come to the surface. … They can range from vague apprehension to terror and panic, or they may vary from bitterness and indignation to aggressive hatred and rage. Usually we attach these feelings to some object in the outer world. … In the silence one can allow the feelings to arise, disconnected from their ordinary targets in the outer world, and learn to deal with the depth of the psyche directly.” As we do so, he adds that we can move towards a greater personal wholeness and brought into relationship wioth what he calls the “Centre of Meaning.”

Gordon Cosby, late pastor and social activist, says similarly that it is important to overcome the resistance to sitting still, “With time to listen and to reflect, we will awake to what is in our hearts–all those feelings that in the rush of our days we keep hidden from ourselves and from others. Silence will put us in touch with yearnings, anxieties, pain, despair, envy, competition, and a host of other feelings that need to be put into worlds if we are to move toward a place of centeredness and come into possession of our lives. The fact is that most of us have an incredible amount of unfaced suffering in our histories that has to be looked at and worked through.” He adds that this journey to our own quiet centre is long and arduous. You will be tempted a thousand times to forget the call to make this journey, this pilgrimage, but will one day bring an immense peace.

May you come to a gentle awareness of the whole range of human feelings, and experience your own sacredness beneath them, and move towards a healing compassion for yourselves and those who come within the circle of your light.

Norman King
August 29, 2022

Last week, we spoke of the eyes through which we look at life, where we see from and how we see, beyond what we see. We may view the events of our life with the eyes of hurt, fear, or hostility, or with the eyes of understanding and compassion. With some effort, it is best if we can come to see ourselves, others, and life with a true and deep and caring awareness.

We also noted that when we learn something about ourselves or about life, it is not so much the acquiring of new information, but more the dawning recognition of something we always somehow knew, but for which we did not yet have words or images. Here too it is crucial to find ways of naming that speak to our inmost heart.

To move beyond our present level of seeing and naming, we must be open–open to our own feelings and thoughts, and to new ways of naming both our angle of vision and what lies within our inmost core.

This openness involves listening. Genuine listening involves not merely hearing words on the surface, or inattentively, or simply being quiet long enough to wait our turn to say what we already have in mind. It is striking, as we have cited before, that the opening words of the fifth century Rule of St. Benedict are to listen with the ears of the heart. This would seem to mean to listen from our core or centre, to listen openly, to be willing to be changed by what we hear, to listen not only to the words but to tune in to the person or text behind the words.

In a recent CBC Ideas interview, Benedictine monk, Columba Stewart, who copies digitally ancient manuscripts, had this to say on listening.
“The discipline of listening is now an endangered art. .. .True listening requires attention. And I think the ability to pay attention and to focus is one of the many endangered things in our present-day and our modern culture. … And so the ability to just sit quietly with somebody, or in a larger group, and actually to pay attention to what they’re saying, it’s very difficult not to retreat into our own thoughts.”

And so that ability that counsellors and psychotherapists have had to cultivate — spiritual directors more in my kind of wheelhouse — of being able to really listen, not only to the words of the person but to the things that are unspoken but nonetheless are being communicated in the encounter, I think that’s tremendously important. Whether it’s a spiritual conversation, working on some kind of emotional issue or a psychological issue or functioning in a political context.

One form of listening is to listen to one’s own inmost self. This can be a matter of sitting quietly, whether in our own home or in a natural setting, somewhere we feel is a safe place for us. We can then allow thoughts and feeling to arise, and we may find that one feeling gives way to another, so that gradually what is deepest within us arises to the surface of our awareness.

One approach, used in many meditative practices, is first of all to listen to our breathing, then to physical sensations, and then to feelings. These can be progressive sessions, as illustrated in the meditation DVD by spiritual author, Jack Kornfield. He concludes his presentation with a lovingkindness meditation. It begins with a wish for the well-being of oneself and extends progressively to those near and then far from our own lives.

Spiritual writer, Thomas Merton, speaks of a listening in silence not for a word that breaks the silence, but with a general openness. We may then experience our very selves, so to speak, as a word our of the silence, as an expression of the universe, as valuable, as having a sacred worth and meaning.

Perhaps w may experience, beneath all else, a kind of longing. It may be viewed as a longing for meaning, for a sense of worth and purpose. And it may be accompanied not by a certainty, but by a hope that this longing is not in vain, but reflects what is really true about each one of us. If we are able to listen to our own sacred worth, we are able to hear that worth in others as well.

In listening to another, we may attempt to tune into the person behind their words or other expressions. The anger of a child–or for that matter an adult–may be a covering for a hurt or insecurity.

While it is essential in our contact with another not to allow ourselves to violated in any way, it may call for a listening to the person hidden within the words or gestures. As I have sometimes said, we cannot talk someone into anything, but we can listen people into their own truth.

Correspondingly, when people express themselves from their inmost self, if we are open, we may hear them in our own core as well. I recall once hearing a song in Ukrainian which resonated with deeply felt longing. I asked my mother-in-law what the words meant. She told me that the person was aching for their homeland and sang that they wished to fly there so intensely that they felt like a bird whose wings came off from the intensity of the flight.

The singing of Leonard Cohen or Louis Armstrong seems also to cone from that heart space. There is a science fiction story by John Campbell, Twilight, which tells of the song of a dying civilization, that reflects an aching sadness. The story of Rapunzel tells of her singing from her lonely solitude and that her voice rings out in the forest and touches the heart of a young man.

Certain parts of the duet from the opera, The Pearl Fishers, seem also to come from and lead into a depth dimension in the soul, to bridge the gap between time and eternity, not as entities but as present experiences, the experience of being totally present rather than merely en route. So too does the climax of the Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber.

What it comes down to, perhaps, is that if we are in touch with our inmost core and are open from that centre, in a safe place, we may tune in to voices in literature and music and art that speak to and name for us what is in our inmost core.

May you be ever more open to the voice of your inmost core and the voices around you that speak from and to that core. And may these experiences enrich your life.

Norman King, August 21, 2022