FIERCE GRACE
God whispers to us in our pleasure, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts to us in our pain.1
C. S. LEWIS
Do you know the story of C. S. Lewis, whose life was portrayed in the play and movie Shadowlands? It is the story of the British writer and Christian theologian, a don at Oxford, and his relationship with Joy Gresham, the American poet who would become his wife. About his marriage, C. S. Lewis wrote, “God gave me in my sixties what He denied me in my twenties.” Soon after the marriage took place, however, Joy died a painful death by cancer. Lewis said that his whole faith crumbled, like a house of cards. Here he was, a famous Christian apologist, but in the face of personal tragedy, he asked himself, “Is God a loving Father or is God the great Vivisectionist?”2
We do not imagine it is the Divine shouting to us in our pain, do we? It is in pain and suffering that love most often seems absent. However, when we are in touch with the deepest dimension of our Being, and not simply an idea or a belief in a concept of Truth, God, or Being, we may come to discover a fierce grace that can appear in times of suffering.
The path that moves each of us to awakening is unique. There is no one size fits all. I have an incredibly energetic friend who was diagnosed with cancer eighteen years ago. During fifteen years of living with cancer, and in spite of debilitating chemotherapy, which first seemed to work and then seemed not to, the types and locations of cancerous growths increased. Tumors were discovered in her pituitary gland, liver, lungs, brain, and bones. At one point she weighed as little as ninety pounds and was confined to a wheelchair, unable to walk, unable to lie flat in a bed because of pain, dependent on heavy doses of morphine just to survive the agonies of her body. She closed the charter school she founded, gave away her belongings, said good-bye to her friends, and went to her parents’ home to die. However, she experienced a deep awakening in which she felt her skin unzipped to discover the radiant truth that lay beneath the costume of her sick body. She told me she felt she would never have been still long enough to recognize her true nature if her illness had not been so debilitating. Today, she is cancer free. The unexpected and often unwelcome life situations that appear in our experience—those that rattle us, make us uncomfortable, put us face-to-face with the mortality of the body, defeat us, and teach us the ego is not in control—these challenging times have the potential to take us more deeply into what lies beyond our attachment to separation.
AWAKENING DOES NOT GUARANTEE A LIFE OF EASE
Many believe awakening means that life is always easy, that the body is always healthy, that living awake means life will always look a particular way. Might I remind you that the Buddha died a painful death from food poisoning, Jesus was crucified, Nisargadatta had throat cancer, and Ramana was wracked with pain and died from a sarcoma that began in his arm. What is “awake” is not a person; it is the Buddha nature or Christ consciousness within that wakes up to itself. Living more and more fully and consciously as that, one’s response to pain, illness, and other challenges may be deeply altered; however, this does not mean an awake life will never include pain or uncertainty.
Indeed, if we are completely honest, we never know what the next moment holds. This is not a reason to live in fear that projects a future that has not happened, nor does it preclude having human reactions in times of trials. Jesus, in his humanness, prayed, “Please take this cup [of suffering] from me . . . yet not my will but Thine be done.” And although what is awake in us is not threatened in the face of any movement of its own life, these human forms feel whatever they feel in the face of loss, perceived danger, or the unknown. And these are opportunities to accept the fierce grace that pushes us beyond our comfort zones.
MEETING UNEXPECTED CHALLENGES
The world remembers 9/11—planes flying into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. It was a time of chaos, fear, dread and uncertainty. My son was working in a building very close to the World Trade Center on that day, and he witnessed those horrific moments.
In the aftermath, his way of facing into the fear that swept through his mind and the whole city was to envision his own death in various ways, almost as a daily practice. While this might increase anxiety for many, for him, confronting his own death seemed to open his mind to the point that he felt no more fear of it. He said he began to feel at peace with the idea of his death and indeed felt freer than he had ever felt. What moved his method of dealing with trauma and fear? What moved his mind? What began to lessen and erase any fear of death? We don’t really know, do we? But I have repeatedly observed and experienced that it is in trying to escape what is here that we move away from the openness that can deliver compassion, love, wisdom, and unexpected healing. It is in the moments when we open wholeheartedly to our actual experience, rather than trying to deny it, judge it, or reject it, that grace seems most available.
One month after 9/11, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Now, such a diagnosis is a wake-up call if ever there is one. It offers an opportunity to look at mortality straight in the face, but also a chance to discover what is here that does not die.
During this time I was clear that I did not want to be in the energy field of anyone who was afraid of either cancer or death. This left very few people, actually, but I was very happy to have met Adyashanti before this experience. Here was, indeed, someone not afraid of either cancer or death. In moments of uncertainty or fear, Adya often appeared—not physically, but in the Heart where we have never been separated for a single moment.
One evening shortly before I was to have surgery, I attended one of Adya’s satsangs, where he told me, “You wouldn’t miss this for the world!” Of course, my mind was dubious and might have responded, “Easy for you to say,” but in fact he was right. I have perhaps never felt held in such an abundance of love as I did while I was waiting with my husband before being wheeled to the operating room. Then I was left alone in the hallway outside the OR, where I watched surgeons coming and going from their scrub room, some with half sandwiches hanging out of their mouths, or laughing, or pulling on their paper booties. It was a totally fascinating experience during which I was astonished that the degree of sterility, at least outside the operating theater, was not what I had imagined. But what was amazing was that I felt absolutely no fear whatsoever, just a curiosity about the moment.
LOVE CAN BE FIERCE AND ALSO JOYFUL
In the matter of birth, life, and death for my immediate family, we have faced two additional cancer diagnoses in addition to my own: my daughter, when her son was only two, and my husband, at the end of his life. Life touches all of us with both joy and suffering within the wholeness of Being. Love wants to touch itself in every experience.
Sometimes in the darkest and most uncertain times for our family, there were moments of beauty, moments of joy, moments of unexpected insight, and a fierce love that showed up for all of it. I say “fierce” because love sometimes needed to show up as a protector, a cook, a strong advocate in hospital settings, a listening ear, a no to well-meaning friends bombarding us with advice, a long and silent hug, overnights with our grandson, the open space for our feelings, fatigue, and fears. Love does not abandon us, and it is our pain that is most in need of compassion.
When it was time for my daughter to have her waist-length shining hair cut off and her head shaved, I expected it to be a sad occasion, but actually it was full of joy. Her husband also shaved his head in solidarity, and their two-year-old wanted to have his head shaved as well. (We all thought better of that idea.) She donated her hair to a place that makes wigs for cancer patients. As layers of my daughter’s identity began to temporarily fall away—being an opera singer, a healthy mom, someone with long, silky, beautiful hair—she felt herself grow “lighter and lighter,” in her words, and at one point seemed to become radiant, despite the fact that, or perhaps because, she was facing into what was left when so many things seemed to have been taken away.
MY HUSBAND’S DEATH AND THE GRACE OF NO SEPARATION
The last example I will share with you of a fierce grace came through my husband’s stage 4 cancer diagnosis, and our family dealing with yet another loved one undergoing chemotherapy and radiation and all that that entails physically, emotionally, and spiritually. After months of aggressive treatments, unbelievable fatigue, and dietary challenges for my husband, his oncologist announced that he actually had a clear scan. We were in disbelief, relief, and joy, imagining we might have at least one more Christmas together. However, two months after the wonderful news, he died of sepsis. Where is the grace here? I will tell you.
My husband and I had been married nearly fifty years at the time of his passing. That itself was a grace for which I am truly grateful. We shared the joys and sorrows of life together—the births of our children, the deaths of our parents, the challenges of my cancer diagnosis, our daughter’s, and now his. For many years, we had said to each other that we hoped we had many more years together, but if we did not, ours had been a “wonderful ride.” Our love was steadfast and sweet, focused on our family and each other. There was hardly ever a day in our lives that we did not share laughter, good food, and music.
He did not want to pass his days dealing with debilitating cancer treatments, and he wanted no extreme measures taken. But he was in a temporary remission when sepsis occurred. Despite the many ways that the sepsis was treated in the ICU, it actually took his life within a few short days. If it could not be reversed in his case, it also seemed a grace that these intense days were not prolonged. Our children and I were with him in a hospice room as he breathed his last breaths. A great calm arose inside as I invited him to let himself be taken to the other shore and assured him that he did not have to DO anything, just to let go and let himself be taken. It was a very peaceful death, and immediately after that last breath, two hawks circled right outside the window. Freedom seemed to be showing itself in flight.
THE BODHISATTVA WAS A HUMMINGBIRD
The night after his passing, I had fallen asleep in exhaustion when I was awakened by someone squeezing my hand. His presence in the room was palpable, and he reassured me that he was fine. I did not doubt that that was so. A few days later I walked to a park where the two of us used to walk frequently, where we took our grandsons on the days that we cared for them over the years. This day, I sat on the bench where we always used to sit, and I felt his presence on that bench immediately. A hummingbird began to circle near me, and while this may sound strange, it felt as though my husband and I communicated through the medium of that hummingbird. In one profound download of insight, it seemed as though we understood what karma we had played out in our lives together. Through my tears, his presence as THE Presence was incredibly potent.
After a while, I thought it was probably time for me to walk home, and so I asked the universe, “If it’s time for me to go, let me see the hummingbird one more time.” Sure enough, the bird appeared, but as I began to walk in the direction of home, the hummingbird seemed to be flying nearby and beckoning me in the other direction, so I followed the bird to a lovely fountain. Once again, the hummingbird disappeared, and after a time, I sensed perhaps I should go home. Once again, I asked: “If you are really here, let me see the hummingbird again.” But the hummingbird did not come at once. Instead, what came so deeply, so very powerfully, so very profoundly, was this: “Now you see me in the olive trees; now you see me in the flowers; now you see me in the clouds; now you see me in the sky.” And as my whole being seemed to receive and understand this all the way through, the hummingbird appeared not two feet from my face and took a drink from the fountain.
In the years since, hummingbirds have been very much part of not only my life experience but also our two children’s, being present in ways they never were before this incident. The hummingbird is the only bird that can fly backward as well as forward, and perhaps it can teach us to look back without getting stuck in the past—an apt teaching for one who feels a loss. But the greater teaching, through a fierce and painful grace, is that I see my husband as the Spirit that we all are—before, during, and after incarnation.
“I AM HERE”
When Ramana was dying, he told his followers, “They say I am leaving. But where could I go? I am here.” I feel deeply that my husband is “here” in that same way. What we all are in our essence has gone nowhere; it is here everywhere I look. Death does not end love, and even in so-called death, there is no separation in the Heart we have always shared. Transformation has happened—similar to water evaporating to become a cloud, like the stream in our first chapter—but all that has happened is a transformation, not an ending. At some point before, or certainly at the moment of death, we will all be transformed as well; we will go beyond form and yet lose nothing of our deepest essence that is Spirit.