An Awakened Soul Does not Go Back to Sleep
Thank God for Michael Meade and Awakening the Soul. How long ago did I buy the book? How many times had I tried to read it before I finally settled upon it about a week ago? Books come to you and stick with you when you are ready for them, when you need them, and this book, now, came to me from God.
How many guides have accompanied me on this healing quest? They are far too many to number, and they have been offering their wisdom—I can see now—for most of my life.
I need to write, even though I have expended far too much time and energy trying to avoid it. I need to tell my story, if only so that I will finally be able to understand it. What Meade has done for me is shine the light on an essential truth that has been lying in a dark corner. I’m sure it’s not the first time it has been illuminated, but it took Meade’s Story (of the aftermath of military imprisonment during the Vietnam War that brought him to the brink of death) to draw my attention to that corner of my soul and keep it there. After his release from the hospital-prison in Panama, Meade found it impossible to return to life as he had lived it. He found it impossible to take up where he had left off with the relationships he had left behind for a while. He explains:
Like many others who undergo life-changing events, I had trouble finding people who would listen to what I could not fully understand, yet had to talk about. Though I had a story to tell, I was far from being able to tell it, much less understand it myself. Like many who survive a war, a natural disaster, or a tragic loss, a level of turbulence and trauma continued unabated within me.
I am reminded of a conversation between Frodo and Sam at the end of The Return of the King. Frodo says, “We set out to save the Shire, Sam, and it has been saved, but not for me.” Frodo went to the Grey Havens because there was no way he could simply return to life as he had known it. He had experienced the dark night of the soul, and what he discovered there could never be unseen.
I never really fit into the world I found myself in, but for at least 54 years, I was pretty damn good at convincing myself that I did. A lot of other people seemed to think so, too (for the most part, anyway). But I have seen the truth, and no matter how much I wish that old relationships could be mended, I know that they’ll never be the same and that they probably shouldn’t have been the way they were in the first place. The kicker, of course, is that without those relationships, I wouldn’t be where—and who—I am now. So I trudge on, and see where my feet take me.
About the photo: I took it back in 2012. These days, I more often see my father’s sisters in my face, but there’s plenty of my mother in me. And that makes me think of something that I came across recently. It went like this: “Fate is what happens to you when you do nothing to stop it.”
