Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink

Introduction

Water is needed by humans, animals, and plant life. This has been apparent in the last month as the grass changed from lush green to straw in colour and spirit in the summer heat. Water is needed to grow and when there is no water there is no growth. The purpose of a Spiritual Accompaniment Process is to grow in the presence of rivers of living water, the Holy Spirit.[1] There has been growth this year as I had been drinking from the repository of living water:

1. Growing in faith because the deeper the process took me, the more dependent upon God I became.
2. Growing in understanding because as I journalled through the process, I could see recurrent themes, especially around procrastination, putting things off and the liminality of this year. The Johari window of what I knew about myself grew a sliver as the window of what I did not know shrank a sliver.[2]
3. Growing in reflection because some of the things I was bringing to the process, notably putting things off, I wanted to change and was open to the transformative power of the Holy Spirit through Spiritual Accompaniment.

Walt Whitman in his poem, “Song of Myself,” during stanza 20 says this,

          I know I am solid and sound,

          To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,

          All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means.[3]

Whitman was talking of, as Spiritual Accompaniment does, trying to grasp the inner meaning; describing the event is one thing but gaining insight takes time. It is during a complete process that transformation happens.

A fish out of water

Remembering

The final visit with the Spiritual Accompanier I brought something new. I should not have done this following the rules laid out, but I felt nudged to do so by the Holy Spirit. It was not new; it was a memory, but it was new to the process. “Will this deflect from the deep ending to close the sessions?”[4] was my question of the day. I quickly reread what I had written before my first session of Spiritual Accompaniment and noted my concern for the Spiritual Accompanier if they heard all my story of which this memory is a small part. I prayed about it, asking the Lord if I should bring this up without the humour, I usually employ with such a bereft subject.

I had been thinking of new birth, newness, wholeness and had been drawn to think about water. Instead of happy occasions with water: water fights with the children, being baptised, or drinking a cool glass of water in the summer of heat of this year, I got a different memory. I flashed back to another water incident. This memory surfaces from time to time, but why now? Whitman describing the journey of soul,

                      The soul,

                      Forever and forever – longer than soil is brown and solid  – longer

than water ebbs and flows.[5]

He describes the journey of our souls as endless, not in a negative sense but in the fullness of time we will be complete in our healing.

In the session, I gave a thick description of the event through my lens[6]. The not telling anyone, the presence of the person in my life for some time and the difficulties those things created and the actual event. Christophe LeBreton when he was writing honestly and authentically in his journal describes how after learning of five French people killed in Algiers he gets angry. Not at the event but at his fellow monks,

Last Sunday I was at the end of my rope. I could have empathised with my brothers’ fatigue with despair of the Algerians, muted in their heart. But there was this ego I couldn’t get around: exasperated in choir, distressed by the scarcity of water.[7]

Context is everything, my questions about why now had many layers. LeBreton’s context was the horror of death and an honest struggle of faith. For me, the week before the session I had my ordination service and a funeral of a homeless man, whom I had been fighting for his dignity to be acknowledged. He was lecherous but all humans deserve dignity and in his final year reconciliation with family and faith was achieved. I was buzzing from the good death and the acknowledgement from the church that “I was worthy.” Why now when college is over and there are just a few reflections to write and the research project to submit does this memory seek to be important?

Still waters run deep        

Understanding

In the room, we looked at it through the lens of an enneagram nine. Peace at all costs, is the mantra of a nine, to the detriment of their personhood. The incident barely changed me on the surface; underneath however I was in a state of high anxiety until the person left the house and wandered elsewhere. The understanding of the event, as we chewed over it together, the Spiritual Accompanier, the Holy Spirit and I, took on a new form. We sat for many minutes without words. The stillness like a pre-dawn morning encased in snow. The silence was soft, inviting, and pure.

            The Accompanier did not rush this part, this was a silently agreed stillness. It was not a pregnant pause wondering who was going to break the silence. It was a comfortable acknowledgement that life is not smooth, stuff happens and our response to that stuff is what shapes our character. In the silence and stillness of the room as the Holy Spirit tended to the child inside and the adult, I had become. I realised I was angry. The anger was the unhealthy nine anger that popped up all over like a Whack-A-Mole at the fairground. I had a deep well of anger and it needed now to be held lightly. Gibbon Bogatsu is wrong when he says, “Children are naturally full of joy because they have an unspoiled sense of wonder and they are completely immersed in the world.”[8] He is right if all children were held lovingly and gazed upon in awe as is seen in movies when there is a new-born, but not all children are gazed upon thus. When I got ordained, I stood with four others who spoke of loving parents, and a loving church family, of being loved, nurtured, enabled, and empowered. The anger was welling from there. I wanted loving parents, my inner child wanted to be held and loved and told of the Father’s love for her.

The drop that makes a vase overflow

Analysing

This event was not new information, I do not have suppressed memories (that I know of); this was one of the underlying truths that have caused me to be the way I am. Many memories can vie for attention, which is the most onerous, which is the worst, which caused me most hurt, pain, loss, grief, and all from those formative years. When I was driving home, I considered again, what was it about this memory that I need to bring it today? The event caused me to separate from my biological family, though not literally for many years. I stopped. I stopped engaging in family life, I withdrew. The environment that had never been a particularly welcoming one was now toxic and an arid desert. I knew from that moment that there was no safe place. For many years, it was like I was trying to walk in bare feet across a room littered with shattered glass in the dark.

My lived experience, my memories and my biological family are a part of me and how I got to where I am but there is no need to ruminate any longer on these. Much better to celebrate on how God has called, sent, and sustained me to this point and going forward. He is leading me to stillness, like the psalmist wrote, “Be still and know that I am God[9].” The context of that phrase is being in the middle of something akin to a huge earthquake or tsunami. The meaning being no matter what is going on, no matter how huge the situation, memory or lived experience is, it is okay, God has this.

Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water

Applying

The Holy Spirit wants to heal me, I got an image of glass being fused together. It was as if all the strands of pain and hurt from childhood were being fused together to form something beautiful and the rest could now be excreted.[10] I want to study more about personality. Did this event and others like it cause me to be INTP (Myers Briggs) and Enneagram Nine? How much will the traits that I perceive to be autistic be shaped by this event? In concluding our last session, we agreed there was more work to be done but that in the gentleness and lovingkindness of the presence of God this will happen over time.

My journey is not complete, but I feel ready to explore more, being kind to myself in the process. The old me would have changed plans on the Saturday evening of my ordination to go and tend to my father, making him the centre of attention, fixing him, sorting him out. Instead, the next day as I asked my congregation to pray for him, I spoke about him living with the consequences of his actions. Habits of a lifetime have changed this year as my Spiritual Accompanier, and I basked in the glow of the Holy Spirit. As the Holy Spirit challenged and comforted us both, I take the verse Psalm 46:10 into the next phase of growth. As Emerson wisely said, “what lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.” As I look back over the year of Spiritual Accompaniment, I imagine back to the person I was and in a stop motion movie watch the Spiritual Accompanier and I with the Holy Spirit traverse the year. As we emerge into the Jesuit garden in June 2023 after our last session I imagine meeting me going in for the first session; what would I tell her? Be true.

Appendix 1

An example of fused glass I found when writing this up that conveys for me:[11]

• A wave of water bringing it back to the lived experience
• The fused pieces that were once individual but now whole
• The circular motion of the piece that speaks into the nature of reflection.

 

Bibliography

Allender , Dan. B. To Be Told: Know your Story, Shape your Future. Colorado Springs: Waterbrook Press, 2005.

Allender, Scott. The Enneagram Of Emotional Intelligence: A Journey To Personal And Professional Success. Grand Rapids: Baker Publishing Group, 2023.

Bogatsu, Gibbon. “Creating Authentic Sacred Space” in Kaleidoscope: Broadening The Palette In The Art Of Spiritual Direction. Edited by Ineda Pearl Adesanya. New York: Church Publishing, 2019.

Lebreton, Christophe. Born From The Gaze Of God: The Tibhirine Journal Of A Martyr Monk (1993-1996). Translated by Mette Louise Nygard and Edith Scholl. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2014.

Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Homewode. Ocean Wave Fused Sculpture. https://www.homewode.com/products/ocean-wave-fused-glass-sculpture?variant=045e1396-9133-4b09-aa6f-0ab6821794b5&pp=0&epik=dj0yJnU9N2JmTk1aQmtpRXduYnpLY0ZXQWdNMWpHZE9LWExHOUQmcD0xJm49bnlkeW1IMG9STlkzQ1VlbTlsalAtQSZ0PUFBQUFBR1NOZno0 accessed June 23^rd 2023.

L’Engle, Madeleine. A Circle Of Quiet. New York: Open Road, 2016.

Whitman, Walt. “Song of Myself” in Leaves Of Grass. Garden City: Doubleday,1920.

­­­________ “Starting From Paumanok” in Leaves Of Grass. Garden City: Doubleday,1920.

---

[1] John 7:37-39

[2] Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham, “The Johari Window, A Graphic Model Of Interpersonal Awareness”.

Proceedings of the western training laboratory in group development. (Los Angeles: University of California,

Los Angeles, 1955).

[3] Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” in Leaves Of Grass, (Garden City: Doubleday,1920) 57.

[4] The pun of ‘deep ending’ is not lost on me.

[5] Walt Whitman, “Starting From Paumanok” in Leaves Of Grass (Garden City: Doubleday,1920) 19.

[6] A live-in boyfriend of my mother’s attempted to drown me in a public swimming pool.

[7] Christophe LeBreton, Born From The Gaze Of God: The Tibhirine Journal Of A Martyr Monk (1993-1996), Translated by Mette Louise Nygard and Edith Scholl, (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2014) 94.

[8] Gibbon Bogatsu, “Creating Authentic Sacred Space” in Kaleidoscope: Broadening the Palette In The Art Of Spiritual Direction. Edited by Ineda Pearl Adesanya, (New York: Church Publishing, 2019) 48

[9] Psalm 46:10

[10] See Appendix 1

[11] https://www.homewode.com/products/ocean-wave-fused-glass-sculpture?variant=045e1396-9133-4b09-aa6f-0ab6821794b5&pp=0&epik=dj0yJnU9N2JmTk1aQmtpRXduYnpLY0ZXQWdNMWpHZE9LWExHOUQmcD0xJm49bnlkeW1IMG9STlkzQ1VlbTlsalAtQSZ0PUFBQUFBR1NOZno0