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October - December, 2009

Of Myself I Can Do Nothing

Rev. Julie Bergum

I love nature. I’ll tell anyone who listens. That’s part of why I moved here: the beauty, the lushness, the stillness, the filtered light through the trees, the eagles’ grace and power, the blue heron’s prehistoric flight, the rich fragrance, the creek’s seasonal faces. I’ll tell you Heaven’s lawn is beautifully wooded and alive, peaceful.

Another truth woke me up at midnight — a fight to the death. I didn’t have to see the ferocity, the fear, the pain, the violence. The wild screams, pants and whimpers pierced my heart and when victor and victim fell silent, the last cry echoing in the night, I was left bereft and afraid. My gentle canine companion had heard the carnage, too, and whimpered quiet barks.

I tried to remove this upset from my thoughts as quickly as I could. Not just because of the early alarm, but because I find it so hard to bear. First I told myself it was the way of the world, which only upset me even more. I tried to give it to Spirit, and thought that worked because I finally slept. But I don’t think it did because on waking, my first thoughts turned to the battle in my memory and in myself.

I can see that I contain within me the very nature of the world that is upsetting me now. I can even acknowledge that I made this. I mean, if God had, it wouldn’t all be such a mess, right? But I need more than metaphysics to help me process this. It feels irreconcilable, these parts of myself, these parts of nature. I am victim and I am victor. I am the hunter and the hunted, the captor and the captive.

I see how I make the game and then play it so well, playing out being a victim of time, circumstances and my brothers. I see how I turn away, again and again, from rescue even while I’m begging, crying, clawing to be saved. I see how I hide from myself that I am predator, cloaking my motives and movements in Spirit’s white Light. I see that I want what I made to be absolute and indestructible, even at the cost of staying in the very misery I made.

By leaning into this experience and looking deeper for truth, I feel a shift. It starts at my solar plexus, some kind of release, a letting go. My shoulders lower and I take a deep breath. I hadn’t realized how shallow my breathing was.

I know this to be true — if I don’t have the answer now, I will. If I can’t see it now, no matter how many times you show it to me, I won’t learn it for myself until I’m ready. So I leave this paradox, this dichotomy on the altar and trust. In astronomy, the term “dichotomy” describes the phase of the moon when half of its disk is visible. I am that moon, the light and the shadow, and I allow myself to just be, forgiven and forgiving.

I invite Holy Spirit and my brother Jesus to show me the Way and I watch in gratitude as the obstacles to Love begin to fall away. By leaning into the painful parts of who I am, and surrendering to Spirit, I am finally at peace in the moment and with the moment. There is nothing I want to change, and for that I am thankful.

© 2009, Pathways of Light. https://www.pathwaysoflight.org
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