The Walk to Gethsemane

It begins each year at this time. At first, there is a trigger---a catalyst---that nudges me inward. Something happens, something minor or major, to turn me toward self-reflection. Once that doorway is opened and I have gone inside, the floodgates open. I'm awash in grief over the seeming cruelties of life. Most of the time, I delude myself into believing this is a personal process, and that the grief and the cruelty is connected only to my life. At some point of fate, I glance at the calendar and am struck with the "ahah!" that this is the season to make the pilgrimage to Gethsemane. The story of Jesus' last heart-breaking journey vibrates deep in my Christian bones, buried like treasure in my unconscious. Even as I actively choose worship in solitude over worship in church, where I am weary and wary of those who cling to dogma as if it is truth rather than risk being open to the organic story emerging even now in our midst, this one story returns to me every year, as Paula D'Arcy is quoted as saying, "disguised as my life."

The particulars are unimportant except to say that I am walking consciously through a loss I never imagined, and would not have chosen. It was given to me to bear, and I do not want it. But, as if to emphasize the point, it comes to me in other ways. Several of my clients walk this same path at the same time, sometimes to the day that events broke open for me. There is no escape from the story they ask me to witness for them, even as I must pass through it myself. I was managing the complexity of this convergence of my story and theirs, my feelings and theirs, well enough...until another client, this one unexpected, came through my door sobbing uncontrollably about a love she recently and joyfully found that was now under siege from forces she could not change. I knew then that the hand at my back would not allow me to slip quietly or easily through this one. This was going to be a long, deep dive into the waters of Spirit.

And so it is. I have been seized by grief, taken in and tossed about by suffering so penetrating it seemed a stake pierced my heart. I couldn't breathe for the pain that washed relentlessly through me as the stories, mine and others', kept coming to me as paradoxical gifts. Whenever I was alone, I would weep universal tears for us all.

I have been on this walk many times and know how to give myself to grief. I know that the collective wound is often healed through those of us who are willing to heal the portion of it that comes as our personal story. I have chosen many times to be used in this process of healing a wound that is both ancient and new: the tearing of love from our hearts by everyday acts of unconsciousness. In the midst of the journey I have made many times, I re-visit the question that haunts me: Is there, somewhere in the heart of God, a hidden cruelty that forces onto people of good hearts unimaginable pain?

In holy conversation with a friend who called to bear witness with me, I risked asking this question. "Think of Jesus," she said quietly, "and how he walked into Jerusalem knowing of the cruelty that waited for him. Think of him looking from one side of the crowd to the other, the people waving and cheering, wondering who would turn on him and jeer as he struggled to bear the cross. There is cruelty in the world, and we must all bear a portion of it in one way or another. I don't know where it comes from, or why it's here to be borne. I only know we must bear our share with as much courage and grace as Jesus did."

Her voice gentled as she thought of me carrying not only my personal penetrating sorrow, but that of others as well. "You want this cup to be taken from you," she said, "and if it could be, it would. But that's not the way the story unfolds. In the story, we sometimes feel forsaken. We are sometimes prostrate before the Mystery, pleading---if not to be relieved---at least to be accompanied on this terrible journey. It's unknown where we will end up. But what the Christian story tells us is that, even as a part of us dies, feeling forsaken, another part of us is coming alive in a new, strengthened form. Have courage, my friend. You are not alone. All over this world, at this very minute, people are suffering what you call 'unimaginable pain.' You walk shoulder-to-shoulder with them, each of you bearing just one piece of a suffering that begs to be healed. Heal what you can; trust others will do the same. And when you are complete---when you can finally sigh and say, 'It is finished'---come back to be with those of us who love you."

Placing my personal story into the container of a universal story, even an archetypal story, allows me to put one foot in front of the other to move forward. What waits? We already know it's a crucifixion of some kind. Something in the psyche must die so that something else might come alive. These are the rigorous gifts of the Spirit, the living Mystery, and so long as we set foot to the spiritual path, we are its reluctant recipients.

I don't know where, or even if, this story will touch your story. I only know it's a story that follows me through the years of my life and lives anew each year; whether I want it to or not, it comes to me "disguised as my life." If it has come to you in a similar way, may this ease your suffering as it helps to ease mine. If it doesn't touch you this year, remember it for a time when it does. It's not a universal story because it's the Christian story of Jesus in his last days. It's the universal story because each of us must one day begin the walk to Gethsemane, and this story tells us how to carry ourselves and bear the pain for all who suffer. Perhaps, in a distant time I can't yet picture, there will be no need for suffering...but we aren't there yet. Suffering is rampant among the creatures of the earth. This liturgical season is one way we bow in an acknowledgment of that truth, and help to propel it forward toward that distant future, one person and one grief at a time.