The Window of Suffering, the Beginning of Hope

Five summers ago I had a dream so profoundly moving that it pulled me out of my sleep crying, my heart beating fast.  I once read that dreams are an expression of an emotional reality, and I didn’t want to forget the great sense of urgency this dream left me with. So I laid my head on my pillow for a few moments, allowing myself to settle, and allowing the dream to settle in my conscious mind – and then in my journal:

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I was in a vessel, (somewhat like the cabin of a ship) with several other people.  From my seat I could see a small window to the outside. Outside of this portal, life was going on; people walking, talking, driving, working. The good kind of ordinary day, after ordinary day.  The others in the vessel with me were seated around a table, also talking, conversing with each other – just living together.  I join the conversation, and enjoy talking to all of these people who are all so different. -But soon I feel slight turbulence in the vessel and I look to the small window and see that the weather has taken a turn.  I know that the others with me can’t see this window from where they happen to be sitting, so I glance back at the people to see if they felt the turbulence as well. But no one seems to have noticed, and they continue on with their casual conversation.  The weather continues to get worse, as does the turbulence inside the vessel.  I scan the people in the room with me again, and still see no acknowledgment.  Soon, outside of us, the wind begins to take on hurricane proportions and the turbulence inside becomes accordingly frightening.  Once again, I look at the others with me. Now I can see fear in their eyes,  I can see that they are afraid.  But still, none acknowledge the increasing turbulence or the fear rising in each of them. Instead, they stop talking to each other and begin to make piles.  Piles devoid of any meaning.  Piles of nothing.  

Gather. Sort. Stack. Gather. Sort. Stack.  

Eyes down, no longer engaged with each other, they divert their fear-driven energy into something they can control – meaningless busywork.  I’m bothered, confused.  I know we need to address this fear. I know we all need to look up, to look at each other and acknowledge the fear – this collective-individual fear.  Very soon the raging winds outside turn to a wall of water that hits the vessel with a great force.  With the sudden shock of this impact, all of the piles are thrown to the ground, scattered in every direction – this great turbulence shatters the illusion of control in a single moment.  With nothing left to gather, nothing left to sort, everyone finally looks up and acknowledges the fear in themselves and in each other.  With this re-engagement – we see each other again, we acknowledge our fear together.  With collective tears we give up our illusions of control. Within this space of loss, of suffering together, of engagement through our grief — we are finally able to hope and cry out for for the end of the turbulence. We are finally able to come together for the beginning of something better.

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Shortly after this dream occurred, I began my 7th year of teaching and this sense of urgency would soon follow into my awake life.  I didn’t know it at the time, but it would be the last year I taught.  I, like so many others, would loose my job due to the ripples and waves of Great Recession.  Adding to the blow, my husband’s work was knocked out from underneath him within the same year.  In a moment, our livelihoods were gone, all of our plans and projections for the future washed away.  This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

Quickly shoved into disequilibrium, we did what every good American is taught to do; we tightened our belts and pulled up our bootstraps.  We gathered our energies, sorted our resources and stacked our options.  We came up with a new plan. And then another new plan. And then another new plan. We were optimistic that something would work. -If we just held on long enough, just worked hard enough, we would soon be back where we left off.  We continued to try to make our way back to where we were, looking for jobs in a quickly contracting job market, applying with the hundreds of other applicants.  We cut our budget as much as we could, living very near the poverty threshold, all with the assumption that things would turn around, we would be back where we were – we just needed to hold on and those promises of security would once again be in our hands. This, after all, is how it was supposed to go.

What we didn’t know, however, is that this turn of events would not only drain our savings, but eventually even our mental capacity to be resourceful. What we couldn’t, (or didn’t want to) see is that something had passed, something had ended. We just couldn’t acknowledge the death.  So we pushed back the growing fear, turning it instead towards things we could control.  All of our efforts to seemingly no avail.

It was early December two years in, and remarkably two perfect teaching positions appeared out of thin air.  I quickly applied and was called for a first interview, then a second.  This was nearly miraculous in the current economy and I was sure that one of these jobs would once again give us the security we’d lost.  This would change everything for us.  Then the first call came – they’d hired the other candidate. Discouraged, but left with one good potential job, I waited for the second call. The second call came on Christmas Eve of that year.  It was a very difficult decision, I was told, but they chose the other candidate.  This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

It’s so hard to acknowledge death.

This news sent me into a period of deep disillusionment. My security was only an illusion – we only had control until we didn’t.  The promises my culture had sold me of “work hard and get ahead” could not be kept, not by our efforts or by the systems that we believed would support them.  Everything was up in the air – these were powerless ideals that didn’t match up with the reality of things.  Suddenly, the fear I’d pushed back so well for two years was right in front of me;  Is there anything that is certain? Anything that is secure? Where is the end of this? Where is the bottom?  I questioned and cried, terrified of the answers.

But what I didn’t know was that this was exactly how it was supposed to go.

I’m not speaking in superficial terms of providence, but instead about the capacity and strength of the human heart to hold grief, and pull us out of numbness with suffering — something we so often avoid.  It was in those questions and in my fear that I was finally forced to face the reality of disillusionment and death like I hadn’t been able (or perhaps willing) to before.  With nowhere left to turn, I surrendered and allowed myself to sit in the suffering until the sharp pangs of anxiety and fear melted into deep waves of grief.  This was the end, this was the bottom.

And I was broken, but I wasn’t shattered.

Remarkably, and with much gratitude, I found that the unexpected and unconditional gift within disillusionment is the heart’s amazing resilience – it’s ability to open to something much greater, much more filling, albeit much more complex than the illusions that we hold.  The human heart can use our suffering, (if we allow it) to break us out of numbness, out of the status quo, and open us up to the freedom of real hope.  This is not a simple optimism that what we’ve already done will go well, (or not be undone). It’s instead a hope that grants us the freedom of imagination for things beyond our current reality, beyond what has already been made in our image, what has already been done, (or undone).  Hope without grief is a flat substitute for the real thing. The kind of hope that engages our hearts and emboldens our spirits for real change can only come out of the depths of suffering — suffering we can not access as long as we are numbing it with our illusions.

To grasp this hope, we must be willing to come down from simple optimism, enter the depths, engage the grief and acknowledge the death of our illusions.

 The death of systems that can’t keep their promises,
    of outcomes that can be controlled,
    of security that was never secure.

There is also a very real danger in holding back grief when disillusionment hits.  When we deny our fear and grief in the face of disillusionment – instead of opening – we risk shattering our hearts, (and perhaps the hearts of others) with our internal, (and then eventually external) rage. We have to release our desperate grip on our illusions long enough to let the grief come so that we can search for and grasp the things that can’t be lost.  We need to engage our current suffering, our collective-individual suffering, so that we can live into the unconditional gift of a real hope that gives us the freedom of imagination for something better, or it threatens to destroy us all with an unconscious rage.

So may we look up from our desperate attempts at gathering and self-securing long enough to acknowledge the fear in ourselves and see it in each other’s eyes – and may we cry with them. May we mourn the things we’ve lost, and lament the things we’ve found were never there.

For hope without grief is no hope at all.
May we let go of outcomes and trust this process.

May all of us, in our disillusionment, in our frustration and disappointment in broken promises, plans gone awry and realities shattered, embrace the grief —  our collective-individual grief.

And from the place of our grief, may we tap into the heart’s incredible capacity to imagine something better.

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* This post is part of the november synchroblog, different bloggers writing on the same subject. Franciscan Father Richard Rohr says, “The role of the prophets is to call us out of numbness.”  This month, bloggers were asked to write about changes, challenges and the role of ‘prophetic voices’ in being called into a better future.  See the other writings below:

• Joy Wilson at Solacetree- The Blessing of Losing Your Faith
• Jeremy Myers at Till He Comes – I Have a Dream
• Glenn Hager at Breathe – Uncomfortably Numb
• Linda at Kingdom Grace – On Earth as it is in Heaven
• Sally at Eternal Echoes – Where are the True Prophets?
• Tammy Carter at Blessing the Beloved – No Compromise
• Alan Knox at The Assembling of Church – My Word of Prophecy:  Quit Listening to Prophetic Voices
• Liz at Gracerules – Listen
• Christine Sine at Godspace – Surrounded by Prophetic Voices: Clouds of Witnesses That Call Us Out of Numbness
• Amy Martin – The Window of Suffering, the Beginning of Hope 
• Kathy Escobar at The Carnival in My Head- Rising Up From Below 
• K.W. Leslie at More Christ – What is God Challenging You to Do?
• Katherine Gunn at Truth Makes Freedom – Where is Your Heart? 
• Steve Hayes at Khanya – Murder of the Cathedral
• Leah Chang at desertsspiritsfire – Wall Street, Our Street

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