Unresolved discontent has gotten me re-interested in seeking an inner life, the same inner life I was seeking before my outer life went to hell in a handbasket. That was three years ago, and as life has moved on since, I feel as though I personally haven't moved an inch.
So I go searching. For people who have what I want, classes that teach what I want, a book to read with something I haven't heard before in quite the same way...? For a new job.
At present I'm a shelver in the mornings at a bookstore, same company where I used to be a manager, but again, when my external life went kablooey so did my work status. Anyway, I'm shelving during this time of impending crisis and I'm in the Christian section, shoving every incarnation of the Bible known to humankind onto the shelf without regard to arrangement, just get the freaking things off the cart and onto the freaking shelf. And this is not just because I'm jewish and the Bible's not my thing, but they can be so cumbersome and all look the same unless you pay close attention. And attention is not what I've got today. I am not in a good space. I want to be somewhere else.
I move on to the little, bitty inspirational books and feel as though I'm going to bolt from my body. My friend Andrea quoted Pema Chodron today, "Never underestimate the urge to bolt." I feel like bolting - urgently - but I've got to get this shelving done so I can afford to eat dinner tonight. A particular book with a van Gogh painting on it has fallen off the shelf. Oy. I put it back and move on down the line and, what the hell, the same book has hit the floor again. Ugh. Did I mention that I hate shelving? But I go back and put it back on the freaking shelf, anywhere for god's sake, just get back on the shelf little Christian book! I move on down the shelves again and for the love of god, the book has fallen off again!
All right, already!!
It is Henri J.M. Nouwen's "Life of the Beloved." What do I want with a book by a catholic priest? However, the subtitle is "Spiritual Living in a Secular World." This catches my attention because, although I'm "jewish" I'm also a little bit of everything else. And I open it:
"I have called you by name, from the very beginning. You are mine and I am yours. You are my Beloved, on you my favor rests. I have molded you in the depths of the earth and knitted you together in your mother's womb. I have carved you in the palms of my hands and hidden you in the shadow of my embrace. I look at you with infinite tenderness and care for you with a care more intimate than that of a mother for her child. I have counted every hair on your head and guided you at every step. Wherever you go, I go with you, and wherever you rest, I keep watch. I will give you food that will satisfy all your hunger and drink that will quench all your thirst. I will not hide my face from you. You know me as your own as I know you as my own. You belong to me. I am your father, your mother, your brother, your sister, your lover and your spouse...yes, even your child...wherever you are I will be. Nothing will ever separate us. We are one."
Oh my. I'm not going to get all swoopy at work. So I buy it.
I bring it home with me, it reverberates in my purse, in the seat next to me, in my car on the road. In my hands while I'm reading it. It's 149 pages that read so smoothly it's more like 5. It is where I am.
Or shall I say, where I'd like to be. Because regardless of how elevated I feel when I sit to close my eyes today, up comes the "crowd at the mall," as I call them. Jeez, there's an awful lot of chatter in there. Always has been. But seemingly more than there used to be. Hence the peeling of the onion effect: the closer I get to me, the deeper, more ancient the chatter. My sponsor used to say, "Stop distracting yourself from yourself." Twenty-five years later, with many, many periods spent in meditation, I think I'm just starting to understand what she means.
And what comes into focus in the crowded mall of my psyche today are Joan Crawford's eyebrows. Everywhere. They're thick, like fuzzy worms and everybody's got 'em. My mother used to draw them on every morning. "Never leave the house, never be caught dead without your eyebrows!" One of my mother's tenets. Even at the end - in the hospital she actually crawled out of bed to draw on her eyebrows, only to break her arm when she fell. A couple of days later she died. I forgot to ask my brother if she had her brows on.
Even when I tried to focus on the Serenity Prayer today, all I ended up with were the brows. Many a shrink has had a heyday with me.
Today I'm grateful for Henri Nouwen, for the chatter, for the brows, for my mom - and for the willingness to keep trying to find my truth - that I am, we are, the Beloved.
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