"And yet the very absence I felt so acutely was paradoxically a presence in my life."
- Karen Armstrong, The Spiral Staircase
I've been feeling lost for a while now. When I look back at my past few journal entries, when I listen to my own conversations with my family, when I read my emails to my friends, all I seem to be doing is bemoaning the loss of contentment, loss of direction. And instead I feel empty, restless, lost. I feel like a person who suddenly went blind - seeking something, feeling my way around me, trying to touch something; and then feeling frustrated and disappointed that I don't.
When I read Karen Armstrong's sentence about absence being the paradoxical presence in life, it made sense, it rang true. The restlessness I'm feeling so acutely is what I'm seeking to soothe; the emptiness I'm looking to fill is what I'm so longing for; I need something tangible, something I can touch and see, to make me fulfilled. But God isn't someone I can touch or create. I can only feel him in moments of clarity, some rare moments when I'm awake. I need to be able to accept the fact that he's intangible, non-describable, unattainable, indefinable, un-bottle-able, incomprehensible. He's nothing and everything; he's within me and around me. And just because I can't touch him or see him doesn't mean I should miss him. I need to figure out a way to find those moments of wakefulness and stay awake.
I used to find it easier to find those moments and get lost in them. But now I realize it wasn't I who found them, but the moments that found me. All that arrogance I had (and didn't even know) about finding those transcendent moments is slowly draining away. I realize that I can't get back those moments if and when I want them; that they were a precious gift.
And then that makes me wonder - why did I get that gift? Why was I chosen for that blessing? Me, a confused, lost soul, who can seem to do no right? And so I can understand this emptiness within me, the sense of loss, the loss of direction. This emptiness, this absence seems to be the only constant these days, always present. If this is the paradox - of craving after filling it with the Nothing that's God, I have it alright.
I identify with this. We go on with our lives and have our good moments too, but there's this inescapable feeling, "But yet I know, where'er I go, That there hath past away a glory from the earth"...
ReplyDeleteMangala, Thanks for the comment! As always, a walking poet that you are, you have a reference to poetry... whose line is this one??
ReplyDeleteWordsworth :)
ReplyDeleteAh-ha!
ReplyDeleteI just looked it up, and it's a beautiful poem... all of it... you can almost feel his soul as you read it... again, thank you for sharing!