Life By Candlelight

My primary orientation is toward the past. I learned this when a friend and fellow enneagram-enthusiast told me that different numbers on the enneagram have different primary time-orientations. Threes (achievers), sevens (enthusiasts), and eights (challengers) are future-oriented. Ones (reformers), twos (helpers), and sixes (loyalists) are oriented in the present. And fours (individualists), fives (investigators), and nines (peacemakers) have past orientations. I am a four and “four’s emotions and thoughts center most often on what has already happened, what they regret, or an ideal experience they romanticize.”

This orientation to the past reveals itself in my love for reflective journaling and reading my mom’s decades of diaries. I often blog here about memory (Making Memories, Remembered, Blue Eternity), and was once invited to talk about Remembering as a spiritual practice on the CRC’s Faith Formation podcast, Open to Wonder.

My orientation to the past feels like home to me, and home is a comfortable place. That is, until I find myself locked in the attic of my memories. When my preferred attention to the past overlaps with the messy end of a relationship or a mishandled conflict or the death of a denomination, I am not just oriented toward the past, I feel bound by it.

I found a key to unlocking myself from this bondage in Chuck De Groat’s new book, Healing What’s Within: Coming Home to Yourself – and to God – When You’re Wounded, Weary, and Wandering (or, I would add, when you’re Wiling Away in the attic). Chapter 6 is titled: “Hidden Roots: Honoring What is Known and Unknown about Our Suffering.” In it, he introduces us to what Irish poet and priest John O’Donohue called the “neon consciousness.” Chuck writes,

You’ll find this neon consciousness in some churches where the glaring beams focus solely on your sinful behavior, your guilt and shame only magnified under the lights. You’ll find it in therapeutic spaces where the goal is to shine the blazing lights of diagnosis in an attempt to analyze and conquer what ails you. You’ll find it anywhere you are viewed more as a problem to be fixed than a person to be known. (133)

My own neon consciousness lights up when I trace and re-trace the threads of a relationship to try to figure out when it went wrong and why it went wrong and who’s to blame for it going wrong. The neon lights blaze when I fixate on getting the story straight so that those in the wrong (myself included) might properly be held accountable.

Sometimes we need the neon consciousness – or a form of it. We need to hold the past up to all the lights in order to do the work that needs to be done to heal as individuals or organizations and to bring about justice in the wake of horrifying harms (with thanks to Kristin Kobes duMez for shining a light on sexual abuse in the church in her film, For Our Daughters). We must not spiritually bypass the discomfort of speaking truth to power, whether that power is the power of the patriarchy or the power of the old self within each of us.

We must do the work. Until we come to the time we need to let go of the work– at least for a season, if not for the duration of our lifetime. “There are seasons to lean in to what is known and can be healed,” Chuck writes. “And there are seasons to embrace the darkness, to acknowledge the immensity of one’s story, the vastness of the soul, the mystery of the unknown” (144).

There are things that can’t be fixed or figured out, no matter how long you rummage through the attic. Perhaps there are even some things that cannot be forgiven. Or rather, there may be some things that someone might not be able to forgive – for a season or for a lifetime. Praise God that not even that can separate us from God’s love.

At the end of chapter 6, Chuck tells the story of Wendy, who came to a point in her therapeutic journey where she could say this: “I simply knew that a time had come for me to honor the mystery of my story—what I’ve discovered and what will remain undiscovered—and walk more gently into my next season of life” (146).

Wendy’s gentle walk is a different kind of consciousness. Perhaps it could be called a “dark consciousness.” Dark like the dark of nighttime, lit only by the gentle lights of the moon, the stars, and a few candles. Wendy’s walk helps me unlock the attic door and pad softly down the stairs in order to be at home with myself and with God and with others… to enjoy the varying lights and shadows of the past, present and future.

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With gratitude to Chuck De Groat for giving me permission to share in its entirety, here is an exercise he offers his readers (148-149):

The three candles

To begin this practice, find a quiet place where you can light three candles. Each represents a different aspect of engaging your life and story.

• The first candle represents what is known in your story. Light this candle to honor what you’ve learned about yourself. Perhaps you’ve been on your own journey in therapy or seeking spiritual direction, or maybe you’ve sat with a friend or a pastor where together you’ve named places of pain, possibly even patterns of self-sabotage or addiction. Allow a few moments to breathe and honor this good, good work. Offer gratitude to the different parts of yourself you’ve gotten to know along the way. Listen for the whisper of the Spirit within saying, “Well done.”

• The second candle represents what is yet to be discovered as you continue your work. In the days and weeks to come, you may peel back yet another layer of your story. Light this candle to honor your ongoing desire to live in truth, your desire for God to search you and know your heart (Psalm 139:23-24). Honor the challenges of this work. Honor the many resources it requires. Honor your persistence. Honor the parts of you that sometimes feel like it’s too much. Honor your surrender to the unpredictable timetable of the work. Honor your deep longing to be well.

• The third candle represents what is unknown and perhaps at some level even unknowable. Light this candle to honor what you may never know, understand, or resolve. Light it not as an act of passivity or even complicity, but as a surrendering to what you can’t control. Remember that even the saints in heaven awaiting the second coming of Jesus cry out “How long?” (Revelation 6:10). Honor the depths of your own cry of “How long, O Lord?” Honor the feelings that come up here, whether you find fear, sadness, or even rage. You may wrestle with this if you feel a great need to figure out what happened or desperately want a wrong to be righted or an abuser to be held accountable. If needed, honor your hesitancy to light this candle and wait until you feel ready.

Header Photo by Sixteen Miles Out on Unsplash
Neon Sign Photo by Maruxa Lomoljo Koren from Pexels