Sync'd

The universe is speaking to us. Stories and lessons about how I am learning to listen.

"Tragedies, joys, triumphs, failures, frustrations, crises — I assume that behind every development, small and large, is something else, something meaningful, a hidden gift, that if received with grace and used with reverence, invites me a step higher on my journey."
— Carol Lynn Pearson in Consider the Butterfly

Reached

The post below was written last June. It is probably the most personal piece I’ve published. With lingering indecision, the passage of another Father’s Day inspired me to move forward. I believe that everyone carries at least one deeply embedded interior wound that must be tended to throughout our life. Just like our desires, aspirations and successes, the wounded part of ourselves yields its own guiding influence. There may be periods of contentment and peace when it lies dormant. But sometimes without warning or even reason, the painful tenderness returns. Perhaps it is part of a spiritual DNA to call us deeper into the alchemic mix of joy, sadness, love and loss propelling us forward. Those who bury, ignore or deny the interior ache miss the calling from God or the universe to embark upon a pilgrimage toward deeper healing. The journey to walk through one’s pain honors the beautiful complexity of what it means to be human. Synchronicity, can and will, conspire with this mystical energy of life.

Sunday, June 16, 2024

Approaching the Unity church, creeping feelings of loss are stirring. A fun two-days with a long-distance love interest ended with his expressed reticence. I sensed a shift the morning after our first night together. It has taken several years to want someone resting at my side. Only at the beginning of a new possibility and the ether of evaporating intimacy has returned. The sudden retreat feels like a ghostly chokehold that lingers in background of my life.

As a second-chapter student in pursuit of a graduate degree to become a psychotherapist, I struggle to objectively observe the familiar emptiness stretching between my chest and gut. This slow and gradual unfolding to someone new in my life inspired work with another therapist. As with many of us, my deceased father and living mother loom large in the desire to move to a deep place with another.

Walking toward the church doors many memories surface of raising my fist to the Lord over dissipating romances. Perhaps a petti complaint in the scheme of life, but abandonment is the deepest source of rage directed at my creator. Mired in malaise, I’m shocked the church door opens before I touch the handle. A hip and smiling younger man says, “I’ve got it” and welcomes me. A tiny gesture affirming the decision not to simmer at home.

My heart sinks with the glimpse of less than 40 people seated in a sanctuary that holds hundreds. A guest reverend heightens skepticism of any reprieve from the feelings of loss crawling all over the neural pathways of my consciousness. I take an aisle seat halfway into the church, hope for the best, and plot an early exit.

The reverend clumsily kicks off the service directing the congregates to mingle and welcome each other. In no mood to “pass the peace” I see the hip welcoming dude with his partner seated across the aisle. I head toward them hoping to burn a mingling minute or two. Extending a hand and sharing my name, I barely hear his response. Repeating his name for confirmation, I’m completely wrong. Awkward pause … and we both moved on.

Pulling us back together the reverend shifts into a transformed tone instilling confidence about today’s gathering. She reflects on the holiday … Father’s Day … Shocked it was forgotten, feelings of emptiness held under the shroud of my attempted control, are set loose. Emotions rise.

The minister moves into the message of pursuing a life “awakened” to “intentionality.” Words that personify the love interest who may be drifting away. He was one of the most intentional men I have ever known. Welcoming silence to seek clarity. Pursuing a vocation that provides space. Seeking value in things left behind. From our first texts there was an almost magnetic pull to his attentive, patient and playful energy. A unique trio in this world of speed and flash.

An affirmation sentence is projected on screens, “I awake to live an intentional life.” We are asked to repeat again and again. I try not to feel taunted by the spirit. The collision of Father’s Day with a lesson of intentionality is another gift of synchronicity. But my embrace is tepid trying to smother the gesture of grace. I want the presence of the man I’m beginning to know. I want the father whose gentleness not remembered but only seen in pictures. I sway in the tension between holding and letting go.

As the minister’s message concludes we rise to recite the Our Father. Surrendering to this anchoring prayer and my words fall into a shallow voice. Behind me, a man’s resonating tone moves in and through my whisper like a gentle embrace. It’s as if our reverence for these ancient words is bound together. I sense it’s the young man who opened the door.

As the tradition, congregants move to join hands and sing Let There Be Peace on Earth. Having felt his voice rise through mine a primal desire emerges to take this hand. But feeling sheepish, I move toward a woman closer to my right. As I receive her palm, I suddenly feel him at my side. To hide my tears our eyes do not meet. His hand seizes mine with a wordless powerful strength that reaches the abandoned little boy. In the closing prayer, with each spoken affirmation – light, love, power and protection – we both tighten and loosen this handheld embrace as a gesture of brotherhood.

Moving through time, space and irreconcilable loses, I received the guiding hand of a father. Such a simple gesture of humanity, touching the tension between all of us seeking to hold on, and yet also let go. A healing love is certainly with me and among us.