Pop 89: Unwelcome Enlightenment
By Madonna Hamel
The first thing I do when someone I love is in pain is to “help”. I give advice. Share a pithy quote from a beloved author. Pass on information passed on from somebody else who is a supposed expert on the topic. I know better. I know that unwanted advice reads as criticism. Or it’s just an annoying buzz, as irritating as a swarm of mosquitoes. But I can’t help myself.
How many times can a person who’s just had as stroke hear yet another story that begins with “You know, my uncle had a stroke and he says….” Can we blame a curt response from the poor survivor who’s just had a radical life change? “I can’t talk right now,” might be all they can muster. But we must shut up, not take it personally.
Luckily, I have this column. So, let me tell you about an online newsletter I subscribe to called: “The Monastic Way,” by the author and activist Sr. Joan Chittister. Each month there’s a new theme and Sister Joan herself comes on for an afternoon to discuss what we’ve read. This month she writes about enlightenment. “Enlightenment “, she writes, “comes from outside ourselves. It’s a happening. It fills us with new light. It astounds those around us to see us change our lives so suddenly, so totally. And in the end, it changes the focus, the direction, the very center of our lives.”
Strokes and seizures are happenings as well. And though the originate from inside, they seem to come at the recipient like “being KOed by Mohammed Ali”, as my brother would say. Chittister also says sometimes moments of enlightened awareness come in strange ways, like, you suddenly realize: the thing you’ve been studying all your life is not the profession for you. “Or it might be the awareness that where I am is not where I belong.”
Moments of awareness can “strike us like lightning and burn within us all our lives. We recognize them when they happen to us but we would never have planned them.” Well, I can say, my brother never planned this. Watching him trying to remain positive, to turn crappy into happy in a situation that feels like enforced enlightenment is both heart-breaking and inspiring.
Last week I pondered whether God smoking Paul on the road to Damascus was actually a seizure, or stroke? “Quit prosecuting my people!” the voice boomed from the heavens. Is it the same voice of one’s own flesh saying: whoah, slow down, quit persecuting your own body?
“Take time to care about cultivating depth in your life rather than simply expanding the breadth of it. It is easy to collect experiences; it is crucial to understand the meaning of them,” advises Chittister. I’m not one to give that advice, as I too need to give the impression I’ve accomplished something every day, if even to myself.
What’s wrong with that, you might ask? Isn’t life about accomplishing things? We have to earn a living. I’m learning to realize life is less about getting stuff done than following one’s gifts. In fact, the monk (yes, I’ve turned to my favourite authors - simple-living monks and nuns - in this time of worry and fear) Martin Laird says: anxiety comes from too much talk, talk, talk, talk talk and text, text, text, text text then gets exacerbated by sitting passively in front of a tv screen. The answer to anxiety is to enter the silence and stillness. To commune with nature. To be creative rather than passive. I appreciate the reminder to bask in the uplifting energy of birds and sky and open range and head out for a walk that takes me to my mother’s homestead.
Who has the good fortune that, when looking for a shrine, an altar, a touch-stone before which one can weep and beg for enlightenment can actually walk to the very house wherein their mother was born? A storm was on its way but I chose to answer the call. I clutched my rosary and began walking up cemetery road, past the old crosses and tombstones of Val Marie’s founding mothers and fathers, past the place where last year I watched owls and the year before I followed a turtle. I walked into the field and rolled under a fence, walked another mile then rolled back again, to the plowed side. I passed the post marking the trail that was once the Lakota line, a trade route turned patrol line for the NWMP, from Wood Mountain To Fort Walsh. A group of us followed that line on foot one year, on a pilgrimage of sorts, our own El Camino. The marker pointed toward my mother’s home, now a heap of weathered wood, where another marker stands.
Help me know what to do and say, I asked the land, the sky and mom. And what comes back is: follow your God-given gifts. Listen to our own passions. Do whatever needs doing to feed them. Develop the tools to help you through tough times so you stay true to your passion. For me, it is writing. I quit a lucrative job, a job that gave me plenty of accolades and attention, a company car and gas card and rooms in high end hotels with per diems and swag. I loved that job. But it was not my passion. Writing is my passion.
This silent place gives me a chance to write about what gives life meaning. The prairie has facilitated many an enlightening realization. I walked back home composing these words in my head. I’m still wanting to share this with my brother whose moment of enlightenment was forced on him with his new physical reality. But, apart from being on call, I can help by getting comfortable with not giving advice, by finding solace in nature, by remembering and accepting the fact that he has his own tools, his own path of enlightenment.