Psychic unsettlement. ‘Tis the way of things for me right now, for some reason. Mind-chatter has been full of various angst-ridden narratives or snagging anxieties: a forthcoming tenure decision about a co-worker, an old narrative re-emerging and re-living a bit this past week, a distinct lack of yearning to be anywhere or with anyone this morning of anticipated faith community life. I wonder what is afoot in these hours, days? Perhaps a series of glimpses through the lens of a ring. Not like Peter Jackson’s cinematic re-telling of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy in which the ring has a dark-mind of its own. No. I sense an enlightening, mirror-esque symbol-exploration, plausible for unearthing some narrative undertones of psychic unsettlement. The ring is an anam cara ring, after all, significant for my continued reflections and learning about (and within) many gifted-gifting companionships. It seems to have four major associations for me this morning, the fourth being the one inviting most articulate expression.
For the first, this ring
was a self-procured Christmas present offered to me by my parents during the holiday season of 1998. Self-procured means I found it when browsing at a Celtic store close to the hospital in which I was completing a third-unit of CPE as a Hospice chaplain. Christmas was coming and my folks asked for ideas for gifts for me, so I mentioned the ring. They loved the idea, so I procured it and they wrapped it up as a Christmas gift. At that time, it signified an opening of body and spirit to new relationships and a sloughing off of unhealthy habits and difficult relationships. A crotchedy, soft-hearted man named Ed Sullivan is intertwined with it at this stage.
Ed was a Hospice patient with whom I met four times, whom I still love today. He was an alcoholic who’d been sober for 27 years. A hard-spoken but soft-hearted ex-business man with battle-won, impish wisdom and a steady Roman Catholic faith. During the previous year, I had visited him once on the 2nd floor of the hospital—the heart-wing—and when I called in the next ‘season’ as a home-Hospice chaplain, he recognized my voice, on the phone. I was stunned. The third visit I had a “gift-and-run” idea, to give him a little piece of sea-glass as a symbol of the hard-won beauty of his sharped-edged now sea-tinted soul, softened in the living water he’d welcomed so faithfully in his life. As I was about to launch into my spiel, the doorbell rang. Visitors. I was peeved. My rhetoric and style had been interrupted. The visitors were the Eucharistic ministers of the church. “Would he care to receive the sacrament?” “Would I care to join them?” We both said yes, received the sacrament, and they departed. “Now where were we?” Ed asked. Such a better context for my little gift. Duly chastened in holy humor, I shared my gift and he beamed. Two weeks later, I wept when he died. I attended the funeral, shaken to my depths with my own grieving. It made no sense to be so shaken, to yearn so deeply for a man I had met four times as a Hospice chaplain. What would I do or say, were we to spend more time together? Nothing. There was no more to say after such a beautiful lively-dying. I remember Ed from that season in my life, our story and his sense imprinted into this little ring.
Not much later, I began to date an Irish-Swedish fellow from my college days a decade before. We would ramble about town, either his or my own, and whenever we passed a Celtic store, we would browse, sometimes supporting them with a little business-shopping. At one of them, I received the icon in front of which I wrote my dissertation. The Laughing Jesus, a drawing/painting of Jesus with his head thrown back in a belly-laugh. A well-suited image for my own relationship to this holy-man-God-teacher Jesus. Those early years, my beloved’s courting before and now into our marriage, the Laughing Jesus are all imprinted upon this little ring.
The ring danced alongside me into, within, and then out of healing times I experienced as dangerous as well. One September morning, I was slated to talk with a new friend about overwhelming sensations and I was terrified. I saw this ring in my jewelry collection and though I had not worn it for a while, I put it on my right index finger as a reminder of who I was. I didn’t want to lose me and I feared I might. Its symbolism did hold me as I entered into covenant with this friend, a blossoming anam cara relationship of healing, then eventual attachment. The ring was a sign of commitment to my beloved husband, but it took on a hue of meaning about this new covenant too. I played with it in times of spiritual practice, needing it to be a symbol of holy union to everyone, to no one, to Someone, in new ways I could not articulate or conceive.
It was a dangerous time. I felt the threat of lost trust, of lost connection to those I cared for most, all while my body and spirit swelled with a life and wholeness I had only dreamt about. Anam cara lives conceived and received will be beautiful and healing of both and all. Grasped and grasping, they lose their healing balm, captivating both and all. The ring danced me into its anam cara circle, held me there to be healed. Then, when my body-mind-spirit could no longer breathe in the grasped thrall of attachment, it pushed me out again. The circle must remain open, even as it remains unbroken, so my new anam cara circles sing. This little ring holds all that within it somehow.
Most recently, it offered me a new dance, retrieving the power of the gaze amidst practice spiritual-companions. The setting was the last session of “authentic movement” for the season (see Body-Literacy-3), and the circle-leader invited the group into a “partnered witnessing and movement” expression of the practice. My heart stopped as she described it. “You witness the eyes-closed, authentic movement of your partner for 25 minutes or so, then critically-reflect in journal/meditation. You share one-on-one what you saw/heard/experienced. Then, roles reverse, and the practice repeats while you move and she witnesses.” From my history, I know the power of the gaze within spiritual practice, one-on-one. I hadn't been in that space for awhile, but I know it. Have known it. Know enough to fear its intensity and eventual (holy) wounding. I know the woundedness received when the gaze "leaves" or no longer opens into the Holy. I was back in the anam cara learning/healing space with the old narrative, once again. I sighed, then named my fear in the circle, who did hear it. I'm not sure how many understood what I tried to name, but at least one did.
In a rather organic fashion, the group of eight partnered into pairs, and while I had a preference and inclination, I was also practicing receptivity to whomever would be my partner. Preference and partnering matched up, to my surprise, and I wound up witnessing and being witnessed by someone I'll note as N. I've been an unexpected but deeply-intimate safe-haven for her before, in fashions I was not aware of choosing but which I desired all the same. She has just birthed a new project into the world, as have I, and that day it was 'made public.' The day was also the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. In circle, I spoke a weird 'sharing' I had not planned in which ‘pregnant’ was my adjective of choice. I never use that adjective, but it was apparently what drew her to me for us to partner. It was a significant offering and opportunity for me to hold her in this practice, this space, with a circle-intimacy I've learned to trust but not expect. I think she was surprised when her intensity didn't phase me in the least. What a blessing to recognize another’s intensity as much, even more, than my own.
For my part, my turn of movement, I was returned into sensate space I recognized from previous years, reminded of that holy yearning, a sense of loss or lament at the distance from that space/sensation, supposition that it was singular space left long ago. Some tears came, with awareness that while alone, I was being seen, held in the practice. Another hand touched mine, without intention, but held me gently, while being seen. It felt just like receiving intimate space or knowing holy intimate connection with another while married to my beloved. And again, it was okay. It was better than okay. It was Intended, gentle, precious. I found myself laughing, playful in the Gaze, unable to really move about but energized and enlivened once again, then again. I became aware of the anam-cara ring on my index finger. I took it off, put it in my pocket, but eventually relinquished it to the circle. I gave it back, in other words. And I discovered once again that this space of the Gaze is not singular in the least. It’s always present, ever available, to any and all.
Freed from attachment, I began to play with awareness of the Gaze...facing it with my eyes closed, turning away from it, lying down as if in my own home, my own bed. I remembered wanting a "new intimate friend" of years back to know me in that space somehow. In speech, we had crossed that line, which I now regret. So I laid there relinquishing that regret, that sad memory, protected by this practice and aware of renewed healing.
Moving time ended and there was opportunity to journal a bit. In the partner-sharing time, it became clear that my movement but also the meaning had been seen. "It was like you were at home, in your bed,” N said, “and it was so sweet to observe. I know I will never see that, but how beautiful it was." I was held, seen, touched, but this time in a healthy, bounded way...awareness shared in a fashion able to hold the awareness, across a circle of practitioners. I felt like I was invited into and had progressed through a mini-version of my entire narrative, through to the healing balm of bounded bliss. As the practice ended, I retrieved my anam-cara ring, had N put her hand on top of mine as I placed it back on my finger. We can only receive what we have completely relinquished. What I procured in 1998, amidst all of its nuances and companionable dances, is renewed, redeemed, once again.
The circle of companionship remains open but ever unbroken, so the ring continues to teach. I know little how long this circle of practice will nourish and be nourished by what I and we will continue to bring to it. I can sense new invitations into service amidst my many loves. But this circle continues to give me an unending gift. I am listening anew, attentive to my own sense of commitment to circle practice, with whomever enters the circle, however circles come into being, and only for their time. Such a circle seems to be the only viable container in which to hold and honor what's possible in holy spaces.
One of the most beautiful dimensions of the story for me, today? N. Her intensity and passions to offer the world. A gratitude overflows everything I am and reminds me of the devotion I know in my flesh-and-bones of holy space, sacred giftings shared. She is larger of spirit and more gifted than she is comfortably aware…and…attachment between us is slight to nonexistent. I know a devotion to her but no attachment or conditions of relationship. We know ourselves to serve the One whose birthing into the world comes in feasts, around tables, within the rhythm of the drum. As for myself, I'm learning, slowly, to steward these gifts of connection, reception, and release I'm continually startled to find as my own. There is nothing better to offer a world so hungry and I know of nothing else that grows my heart to its fullest so very often these days.
Significantly, as I close, the ring has been many sizes in its life with me. It was too large for my ring finger when I first wore it. I remember it sliding off my finger in a restaurant one January, when my hands were inordinately cold. Years later, when it danced with me amidst its times of healing and danger, we had it resized to fit my ring finger, even a bit tighter than I was comfortable with. When I was pushed out of healing and danger, into the open space of new companionships, my beloved and I had it resized again to fit on the finger on which it began, the right index finger. Relinquished, received, so it rests...for now.
Blessed be…Holy Mother, Divine Child, the One I know in Three this season of anticipation and fruition. A light renewed beckons for a bit of play...a new day of devotion to my beloved dawns, to be lived out in all the ways it may...prose, photography, poetry, all with a bit 'o passion to share.
(As one of my teachers often says:)
So may it be for you,
So may it be for me,
So may it be for all of us.
Amen, amen, amen
…and a little woman