FCCUCC Book Group discussion
Learning to Walk in the Dark
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Chapters 3 and 4 -- LWD
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I loved the story of the stranded turtle and her harrowing, sandy trip back to the sea. I have witnessed well meaning people try to comfort someone and what they end up doing is overwhelming them. For me, church can be the hardest place to be when I am grieving or sad because emotions are closer to the surface and I am surrounded by people who want to connect with me and help. I want to cry in the corner (or not cry at all). Because of this reaction I sometimes stay away until I can cope with it, and I know that once I can handle church, I'm well on the way to recovery!
On your question in #5 - How does theology/faith come into play when coping with emotions: I think that faith for an individual is different for each person, but as a corporate body of The Church we can be a very supportive resource. I have learned so much from watching church members go through grief and difficult times. When I lost a baby and didn't know how to be in the community anymore, so many people in church took me aside quietly and just shared their own experiences. Especially for a young person, this kind of communal support and inclusion is so valuable.
Re question #1: I'm mildly obsessed with the stars, always have been. My favorite constellation is Orion, which was the first one that I could see when I was a kid. Portland has less light pollution than Chicago so I can see more stars here, but nowhere near as many as on my grandparents farm. The night sky was breathtaking up there, especially in winter. I should have been an astronomer!Like Judy, I was also struck by the story of the turtle, and have also encountered well-meaning people who try to help and just make things worse. I keep telling myself that they're trying, but why do I need to be made to feel worse? Unlike Judy, I have no problem crying in church and find it to be a very comforting place when I'm sad. For me, the people connecting and trying to help and comforting me are actually super helpful. I think it is partly because in my everyday life, I'm mostly around people who handle emotions very badly. They're also all around the same age as me, and have roughly the same life experience. However, at church there are people in many age groups who have been through all kinds of different struggles who can give me sympathy, advice and perspective.
Jennifer, that's a good point about the intergenerational aspect of church. In today's society and workforce people are often isolated with only people in their own demographic. Everyone seems to listen to their own music, watch their own TV shows - people are not thrown together as a part of everyday life as much as they used to be. That's not healthy for any of us.
question number 1 stirs some very deep emotions. For me, looking out at the stars creates the very same feeling as gazing out over the ocean. First of all, the vastness of it all .......leading to wonderment and unlocked mysteries that are lovely to explore on star filled nights or on sun drenched days at the ocean. Secondly, there is the sense of breathing so deeply that I feel I can see my breath gathering in the edges of the universe and making a funnel that brings its power and strength directly into my body with the breath. Love that feeling of the cells in my body lining up and balancing, rebooting my inner self, putting me right. And I always smile. as an image of Wonder Woman appears, clicking her bracelets and chanting, "Powers of the universe UNITE!" I am grateful for the healing powers of the stars and the night sky. to me they hold magic.
LOVE the Wonder Woman image, Joan! :-) What a great description of the power of nature/God. Maybe this thirst for that source of power is what is driving all these comic book revivals. Someone's got to defeat all those zombies!
To point 4: I don't feel that we don't allow for dark places because of a lack of faith. I rather think we tend to avoid the dark spaces because it's hard, really hard work to confront them. The Chinese characters for crisis are two combined words: danger and opportunity. When I'm going through the darkness, I try to remember that it feels dangerous and scary and yucky, but at the other side there will be opportunity for growth.
FMI on the Chinese image for the word crisis, go to:
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Okay, perhaps the third try will be the charm!https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=...
(Apparently there are some other opinions about the Chinese characters...)
Sorry for any confusion
I agree with Debra that the dark spaces/thoughts are difficult to confront. My mind will just skip over them "Nope, not thinking about that now" but eventually they come back and you have to confront them. Usually at 3am. In the dark. Why is it that I never think positive, happy things at 3am? Mostly I just worry about work or the future or how my life is not going the way I intended, not at all.
Where can I sign up for the blind tour? I lived that experience vicariously through our author and loved every minute of it all the more because I have recently had it pointed out to me, by a dear friend, that that is where my life has stalled at this very point in time. As I write, I am sitting in a new home, in a new town, marooned by a broken ankle and a Frankenstein boot that can not support my weight. Here I sit, trying to learn the same lesson that I have tried and failed to learn a thousand times already. Living in the moment- slowing down enough to smell, taste, feel, and see what is actually there, right in front of me- that is the lesson that my broken ankle is trying to facilitate. My own blind tour. Chapter 4 helped solidify thoughts that I need to thank God for this "time out" in my normal rush through life and to take advantage of this gift of time to stop and smell the roses.
Cindy, thank you for sharing BBT's line about not filling holes, but rather entering them. The entrance can be daunting, but if we can remember that there will be growth and learning along the way, it may be more inviting.
Jen and Debra, I definitely concur with you on the difficulty of confronting those dark spaces/dark thoughts! Ugh. It's just so much easier to squelch those painful thoughts and move on to something less distressing. They are still there, though, always waiting for an opportunity to pop back out again and weigh me down . . . What I find myself trying to do these days is allowing the darkness pop up for me as it sometimes does, and then I try to examine and study and engage with the darkness for a few minutes (sometimes I may even come up with a good idea for something I should do to address the issue in some kind of positive way, and so I try to remember that for later). Then when I determine that was "enough" for me at that time, I work at pushing it away again by distracting myself in a really focused way. There is an African proverb that resonates so much with me these days: "Little by little, a little becomes a lot." It encourages me when I find myself overwhelmed by the negative.
"Little by little, a little becomes a lot." I like that better than "One step at a time." It acknowledges the progress being made and puts a positive spin on the process. It has been interesting to consider the idea of facing the darkness and even seeking it rather than avoiding it at all cost. The cost is often linked to the avoidance and not the darkness itself. Still, it takes some bravery for sure. I've been inspired by all the bravery revealed in the last few weeks, fellow-journyers!
Being an animal lover, I was deeply moved by the author's story about the stranded turtle on the hot sand. I could empathize with the way that helpless turtle must have been feeling as she was towed upside down through the sand: fearful, confused, uncomfortable, perhaps even angry. The turtle's situation reminded me so much of how I sometimes feel about God when I'm going through a period of darkness in life. Even though His hands are the ones helping ease me through the difficulty, sometimes it's not until I'm past that dark time and "swimming free in the ocean again" that I am able at all to look back and appreciate all that God was doing for me (and within me, growth-wise) along the way. I continue working to recognize and feel gratitude for those gifts and blessings even--and perhaps especially!--during the dark times.
fearful, confused, uncomfortable, perhaps even angry.I feel this way too sometimes during the dark places, and I've actually caught myself thinking "there had better be a purpose someday to all this suffering". I used to feel a little guilty about being angry with God but hey, that is a part of relationship, right?
Recognizing gratitude helps in the dark times as well. It starts out feeling forced, but almost always makes me feel a little bit better.
I so love Dori's African saying! Thank you for sharing. When I'm in a wonderful place, which for me would be life's little but sweet moments, I try to be fully conscious of how good it feels. Recognizing the good moments and naming them as such, I think, empowers them more fully... It's sort of like putting money in the bank. When the dark and bad times come, i try to remember the good times.- rather like making a withdrawal from the bank account. It makes me feel stronger.The fond memories are a tool for going through the dark.
I have had many dark times in my life, but I have had oh so many more sweet moments. So my bank account is definitely not in the red! I feel blessed.
Because I'm currently traveling in Vietnam and have been to several temples as part of the tour, I can't help but think of the Buddhist way of looking at dark times. I think a Buddhist would accept the dark and scary moments life throws at us as necessary to maintain a balance with the sweet moments. If we live fully in the present moment, we will get through it. And there will be more light,
1) What is your relationship with the stars? Do you see them regularly? Miss them? Rely on them or ignore them?
2) The author's discussion of light pollution reminder me of the director of the Silver Lake Camp in CT, who likes to tell about taking the kids outside at night to lie in the field and look at the stars. One of the kids was shocked at what he saw and asked, "How do you get them so bright out here?" I guess it's a matter of perspective.
3) In telling the story about the stranded turtle, BBT says, "It is sometimes hard to tell whether you are being killed or saved by the hands that turn your life upside down." Do you have similar experiences you would like to share?
4) BBT talks about our inability to allow time for grief, our impatience with the grieving if it lasts "too long." She quotes Greenspan, who writes of "spiritual bypassing"--which she defines as "using religion to dodge the dark emotions instead of letting it lead us to embrace those dark angels as the best, most demanding spiritual teachers we may ever know." This connects back to the "solar Christianity" we discussed earlier, yet it takes it one step further: not just that we don't talk about our dark places at church, but that we don't allow for the dark places at all because that would be a sign that we don't have enough faith. What are your thoughts on this?
5) BBT quotes Greenspan again when she writes "There are no dark emotions--just unskillful ways of coping with emotions we cannot bear." Those unskillful ways are often unhealthy ways as well. Having owned my share of unhealthy coping mechanisms, I know the damage they can cause; but I also know that we learned them for a reason and they served a purpose. It's easy for many of us to see where therapy comes into play here. Where does theology/faith come into play?
6) My favorite line from this chapter is: "There is no filling a hole that was never designed to be filled, but only to be entered into." I haven't processed it enough to comment now, but I do love this line.
What would you like to add?