Practicing the Whole Amidst the Partial

I have been asking the wrong questions of my nightmare. Big surprise. :)

An early November circle-practice led into a vision-nightmare of an intimate-spiritual friend (whom I’ll call Al) coming into town, staying with my husband and me, teaching at a local congregation then being shot. In that Christian sanctuary by a Christian fundamentalist. By “one of our own,” though only in the sense of sharing the ever-multiplicitous adjective “Christian.” Random violence I could not anticipate or control struck dead one I hold dear, one whose historical community has long been wounded by my historical community, and we were all faced with unbearable loss. What would I tell his wife? Would they ever forgive me? I was completely shaken, unnerved for several days afterward. My friend arrived, stayed with my husband and me, taught at the local congregation, then went home happily and well to his family, work, life. I have been asking questions of the nightmare ever since.

What in the world was that about? To what purpose? What was it to mean? Why was it so vivid and a felt-receiving of “something important,” yet it remains without any apparent significance? A couple days later, I wrote a bit “into the wind” to see what would come. A bit of poetry arrived, and then four cognitive guesses that may be accurate but still seem inaccurate somehow. Insignificant. The guesses—

·         I’m working out the costs of loving deeply across polarized religious difference(s)

·         I continue to be angry at the fundamentalist life-choices of my own sister, with whom I cannot even speak regularly, openly

·         Violence happens apart from our ability to control it, prevent it

·         The losses are felt intensely no matter what ‘circle’ you find yourself identified in/with, though there’s a particularly toxic cocktail when your primary relationships of learning-spirit-faith are outside “your own” community

—feel like stick-figure drawings of a breath-taking landscape: good first attempts, but completely un-fit or inappropriate media and representations for the phenomenon in view.

Then a dear friend and cousin came to visit for an evening, asking me a new question about it that jumped out at me: What part of you in this vision is your spiritual friend who was shot? Classical and contemporary psychological thought names each and every aspect of our dream-life some part of our own psyche, some part of our sub- or unconscious mind representing itself symbolically and characteristically. So, every actor in this nightmare is actually some part of my own psyche, leading my cousin to ask: Who or what of you is your spiritual friend representing? I was stunned, feeling something shift inside, but stunned also because I didn’t have a clue. Nothing came to mind at all. “I’ll have to sit with that one,” I told him. I have been asking that question ever since. Who was shot? What part of me was shot? Who or what in me does Al represent? All the wrong questions, except for being the right ones to get me to the next wrong ones.

The nightmare was about death, but only partially. In the face of all that fear, all the overwhelm of affect, a depth of interconnection was revealed anew to me, which is and inevitably will be source of both joy and pain. That is real, by which I mean an observable, communally-discernible, shared relation in an outside life-world. It’s not just in my own mind. In this sense, the nightmare was about Al and the “extended family” into which he/they has adopted me and my husband. Practicing the “daily dyings” of mortality requires regular discipline, willingness to welcome the reality of death. It is a gift unto itself, after all, though only if one practices and makes death a friend. A part of what must be for any new life to come. I acknowledge the love offered and received, the deep attachment that comes, but which is never to be the point itself. A Love can live only through those willing to love deeply and relinquish attachment, a balanced practice of overwhelming love and vulnerable mortality, both necessary for the devotion that lives through such persons.

Only partially about death also because a wave of relief came in circle last night when an awareness surfaced: it was just a part of me that had died, though I live and even live well today. This nightmare has had little to nothing to do with Al at all, in this view. And I don’t even need to worry about naming which part of me was shot. Some part of me is gone now, and I simply have to live into the path long enough to know who or what she, that part of me, was. The life and companions on the path remain. The work continues to beckon, and it’s good work to boot. And these “little deaths” (yes, pun intended) are required for maturity on the path, for diving more deeply into the Life intended for all. So part of me is gone now. I will learn more as I go, but may she rest in peace. 

So a part of me died. Death here is partial. It plays a role within a larger whole I had forgotten in my grief, my affect. It plays some part in a cycle also about the larger whole pervasive in that nightmare too: life. They are always intimately linked, never distinct. We are the ones who sever them, who misunderstand both because we grasp at one and avoid the other. As much as I’ve fretted about violence and death in this nightmare, it must also be about life in some fashion, because they are intimately linked. The nightmare can also offer itself as vision, no less affective and significant to listening to the path, perhaps even with new understandings to come.

You see, if we follow my cousin’s tack informed by Jung and others, the more interesting questions have to do with the “Christian fundamentalist.” Who or what part of me was the unknown assailant in my nightmare? What part of me came into an Evangelical Christian sanctuary with a gun, and used it? What in the world is going on my own mind that feels this polarized and polarizing animosity so intimately? I never have (or remember having) violent dreams at all. Scary ones, yes. Ones where I’m hiding from someone or something, yes. But out and out random violence? Rarely, if ever. Who or what part of me is the Christian fundamentalist?

So I’ll sit now with these awarenesses, held lightly with an impish smile. They are simply the next ‘wrong’ questions to ask the mysteries of death and life, deeply felt with those whose lives have shaped our own in breath-takingly beautiful ways.  The nightmare is about death, but death as an intimate reality of a Life that holds us in companionship without end, even were an end to arrive with excruciating pain. It is the life that bears witness, that observes the fundamentals, that practices the path on behalf of even the violent urges—the fundamentalists—within each of us. When the grief comes, whenever a lament arrives, how do we practice with and within our bodies so that we can hold the shape of Life while we rage at the loss(es) in death? Embodied remembrances. Observance. Practice. Practicing the whole while we receive the partial, each and every day.

I wonder what the nightmare will mean next?