So this period that lasts from roughly October to mid March--this time of darkness--its metaphysical meanings have trumped me this time.  truly, truly I have been brought to my knees.  To say that my sense of wilderness began with Lent would be to short change serious months of questioning--but here we are, the beginning of Holy Week--the end of Lent--and the light is returning once more.  yes.

What I am concluding about wandering and "testing" and wilderness is this--that the testing is not for the sake of God because God knows who God is--God knows who we are.  The testing is for our own sake because there is always something more about the nature of God that can be learned--and that nature translates into our own.  And I think these things after giving consideration to all of the "testing" stories--all the wilderness stories...yes, I think it is for us alone.  I can't say that I understand it or am pleased that it happens because I thought that things were going quite swimmingly before the whole thing began.  But here I am in what feels like it may be a clearing.  Notice I didn't say I accepted this or that all of the insights have been found and I am pleased as punch--I am no Pollyanna.  Merely, I am acknowledging a clearing.

To have it all culminate during Lent has been a layered cesspool of symbols.  I resumed meeting w/ my spiritual director, Kay, for starters.  I knew that she would be the beginning of the end which is why I took a two month break from her. :) I wanted to wallow alone and inviting her in marked an acknowledgement that change would be forthcoming.  (She knows all these things and loves me anyway--bless her.)  And almost immediately after meeting with her the black plague came to our home leaving us all intermittently ill for a period of three weeks.  When I say that I haven't been this ill in years--YEARS--I am not indulging my love of drama.  So I'm the mother to a toddler which means that I'm tired.  I'm pregnant which means I'm even more tired and then--THEN--I was on my death bed while playing Florence Nightengale and was very, very tired.  There have been such low points this season.  At the root of them all lay a sense of abandonment--an old, old wound.

You know the kind of wound that never completely heals and routine care has to be given to it, otherwise it's libel to get all infected and gross again?  One of those.  I have two wounds of this nature, and abandonment would probably be somewhere at the heart of each.   But the one which I am specifically referring to would be the death by suicide of my grandfather.  My grandfather the minister.  My grandfather my heart.  My grandfather my rock and pillar and teacher and companion.  My first love.  My first best friend.  His death will never really be resolved.  Even still----even after I have come to a place of understanding and love--even after I have come to a place where I can say thank you that his suffering has ended--even after I have come to a place where I can see all the lessons and blessings that have come to me as a result.  yes, even still wound care must be maintained.  I was fourteen when it happened and don't think the darkness cleared in any significant way for another three years.  And by then it was just that the darkness was transferred and maintained by other means.  Needless to say, my sense of faith became...well, it became nothing--but in the end took me someplace I would have never reached through any other means.  So this road in the wilderness is a familiar one.  And while it ultimately blessed me the last time, is still one I would never (ever, ever, ever) willingly choose to embark on again.  Would any of us?  I will never be that kind of person.

Probably around November or December--one of the last times I met w/ Kay before my strike we had talked about how I couldn't personally connect w/ the divine but was trying to vicariously connect via the lives of the saints.  So last week (our second meeting since Lent) when she asked me if I was studying any of the saints (because they too felt deep abandonment and darkness) I was all like, "Do you not listen woman?"  :)  Ugh! I tell you Ugh!!  She does this on purpose.  This nudging.  And when I'm already hormonal and discontent I merely take these things with a roll of my eyes.  We have one book on a saint that survived the great book purge of 2005--Julian of Norwich--and although I said I was looking at the saints I didn't necessarily mean that I was picking up a book to actually read.  That last bit just happened.  (My wallowing and stubbornness are mighty.)  And before I quote the book in its entirety I will also interject that it is my concept of God--the names and images that I give the divine that have been transforming.  The old felt outgrown and the new felt contrived.  How can I pray when I don't have a name to pray to?  My clearing companion, Julia, has gifted me with this name "Mother Jesus."  As soon as the words were read, the tears began and with the tears came a connection.