I am currently involved in an ongoing workshop on spiritual accompaniment. A better title would be "Learning to Listen." Last week we were given a homework assignment; tell the story of a moment that surprised you with an unexpected flood of feeling and how it has affected you. Here it is.
The moments that come to me initially are the big ones: seeing my daughter hold her first born stands out above all the rest. When I first saw them in the hospital, I thought "there is my baby holding her baby." But this awareness digs itself down deep somehow and I am no longer able to look at a mother and baby or watch a birth experience on TV or a movie with out tearing up and sobbing. I ask my friends how long this will last; no one has an answer for me but I now know it goes on for years.
Then the moments of graduations and deaths come to me. The moments of saying goodbye to my grandfather and then my father and now my mother and of holding it for just a moment longer while I think that this may be the last time. It reminds me that every moment matters, every moment I have the privilege to be in the presence of my elders matters. All they want and all I have to give is my time, my touch, my understanding. And now as I age ever closer to this stage in life, I come to understand that this too will be all I ever long for from my own children and grandchildren.
But the moment that resides in my heart, that still creates that flood of feeling, came in a room with my adult children and their partners just a few months ago. My son's journey was a difficult one at times and our relationship took on its cracks that we filled with gold like a kinsugi bowl. The cracks are still visible but they gleam in the light and we give thanks for the beauty that is left in their path. Over the past few years he has frequently shared with me his apologies for the pain that his maturing into the amazing man he became had caused, and I graciously accepted them thinking that he has now received his penance and reconciliation. But recently in a casual family conversation reliving the teen years that ended in laughter from everyone, the apology came again and so did my tears when I finally came to realize that this is something that for now he needs to return to again and again until he understands that he has been cleansed. He has apologized, I have forgiven him but yet his pain still rests between us. I will continue to forgive my beloved son until he himself knows and feels the unconditional love that I have and have always had for him. So what remains is the awareness that, as humans, we cannot imagine that our sins can be forgiven, that mercy can be so generously extended and that we can be loved so completely.
