Crises

 I noticed years ago how during a crisis I feel more alive.  Slightly embarrassing, when I was 9 I remember saying to my mom that I wish I’d been alive during WW11   She shushed me, said I didn’t know what I was talking about (true) but what I was getting at was the clarity of good and bad that comes with crises and the energy, the urgency.  I definitely had a long stretch of never ending crises with Gils health, David’s prison, Adam’s GB and others at work and building the house.  And they did indeed clarify thought and add (and drain) energy.  They also gave me an intense experience of “there’s More going on than meets the eye” a feeling of spiritual closeness.   I said once that era ended with Gil’s death, that I’d become a crisis addict   Not only did they make me feel intensely alive they also gave me permission to only deal with the challenge in front of me not the day to day slog of keeping floors clean and paying bills.   

I am not in crisis mode now.  I’m rewatching  A Gentleman from Moscow  and as I watch the way life and death War time informs the characters, I wonder is it possible to have that without all the fear and pain?  I’m listening to a podcast about someone who with a devastating cancer diagnosis, is blown open with feeling connected to LIFE, with loving even the mundane day to day of it.     I’ve been there.   Can I experience that without feeling on the edge of disaster?

Many years ago when Adam was about a year+ old, Tom wasn’t sure that he wanted to stay married to me.  We were living in a trailer as we were trying to build our house and during the day Tom would take our one vehicle over to spend time “working” with his new sweetie.   I was 24 with no marketable skills and I was terrified.    I remember one night lying in Bed with Tom who didn’t want me to touch him, feeling like I was falling into a black hole.   And then.  There was a feeling (I don’t think I actually saw anything) of a bright light at the end of a tunnel. And a voice said  “ You will survive. There will an other slide of this experience and you will be stronger and wiser for what you’ve gone through. You are not alone”.  In my memory It was such an intense feeling    And it was the beginning of my experience of crises as a potential gift.  And a reawakening of my spiritual curiosity.      

Lord only knows there are plenty of crises in our world right now.  But the portal is not wallowing in the awfulness.  It’s using the fear, and….?  to feel the intensity of life,   See the beauty and possibilities.   I’m not sure the way in.  I think I thought the challenge of the downsizing and the move might do it.  Not yet.  I want to find the way in without disaster at my back.   But how? (A common refrain in my life these days)