Owls and Orchids

image from http://www.josephinewall.co.uk

“You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.”
Swami Vivekananda

Some people spend their whole lives searching for their own truth. Some take the truths their families taught them or the church taught them and are fulfilled and happy with this. For these people it is right and none can gainsay this. For those who search for their truth, the questioners of life, death and all manner of things, their search may be long, yet we must hope that they eventually find what they are searching for.

What feels like a lifetime ago I turned my back on the beliefs I was brought up to believe. I was a questioner. I needed to know the ‘why’ of things. I couldn’t blindly accept what I was told. I was part of the new movement of people who wanted to understand their world, their place in it and where it was leading to.  Until I was 14 years old I thought I understood my place in the scheme of things, but I had reached a place filled with questions and I could find no-one to give me answers.

My Grandmother, my Nanny, was a beautiful lady. She had been ill for much of her life having contracted St Vitus dance as a young child which left her with a weak heart. She had such a strong belief in her faith, in God that despite all her travails she believed. In all honesty it probably kept her going through everything.  Her passing and the manner of her passing saw me reach a crisis in faith.

Beautiful memories  Nanny sitting between her brother, Alec and Grandad, her husband.

It was the first time I refused to cry. I refused to allow the mourners who had come to sit with the coffin, this was in the days when the coffin came home for the final viewing, I refused to let them see me upset or cry. It felt as though their eagle eyes were boring into my back as they watched me cross the parlor, waiting for me to break down in hysterics. In my self-imposed agony I refused to allow them that satisfaction. It is strange what thoughts pass through your mind at times like that. To this day I abhor open casket viewings.

There was no closure, I had important exams the next day and my parents, wishing to spare me the distressing funeral service told me to go to school. Whether this would have helped I don’t know, I only know that it hurt almost as much as losing her.  It also created an internal barrier which prevented me from going to the cemetery later.

I was a ‘good Catholic’ girl, attending a Catholic college and was a handmaid of the Blessed Sacrament. I went to mass every day at school and thought I might become a nun. That was about to change. I needed desperately to understand why, an all merciful God could take a beautiful soul in such a horrid and heartbreaking way. In a fit of despair I asked my school chaplain this question. I was told it was “Not my place to question the workings of God.” Further pressing on my part solicited the response the “I would be excommunicated for my heretical behaviour!” I was so angry at this callous attitude I believe I was quite rude. By this time I’m afraid God and the Church had lost me anyway.

I refused to go to church at school unless it was absolutely necessary, but refused to open my mouth at all, refused Communion and, but for my mothers deepest wish for us to continue to go to church would have stopped going with her also. I refused, in my mind at least, to have anything to do with a God who was so vengeful and cruel. There was no blessings to be had for me at that time.

It was a bleak time. The pain refused to lessen and my obdurate stance on refusing to cry caused Mum a lot of heartache. I also refused to go to the cemetery with the rest of the family. I took the better part of a year before I found my way there alone one day. There was no peace there for me. I didn’t feel God’s presence or his reassurance. I simply saw a sad and lonely place, filled with dark reminders of those who had been lost. There were no answers there for me only more heartache.

Even though we left England a couple of years later I hadn’t reconciled to going to the cemetery with Mum, always making my solitary way there so spend time trying to remember something other than the last time I saw her face. Perhaps that was the cruelest irony of all for me at that time.

I was wrong. It appeared the “all merciful God” had not finished with my lessons in his omnipotence. My granddad didn’t want to leave all his friends and family and come to Australia. It was difficult leaving him behind but there was a hollowness inside that this new pain simply sank into. There was plenty of time for introspection on the way over, between the insane bouts of high jinks. Yet the thoughts of “why’ and “what does come after’ never left.

There was a strange feeling a couple of weeks after we sailed. It coincided with getting underway after the long layover in Teneriffe. I woke one night to hear my granddad calling my name. Just that, but so clear I answered him. Then it was gone. A puzzle for me to think about.

When we arrived in Australia my parents were ushered into my Aunt and Uncles lounge and ‘the children’, of which I was apparently still counted as, were ushered into the garden in the broiling sun. Shortly afterwards we were called inside. As soon as I saw my mothers face I simply said “Granddads dead, isn’t he?” Despite the shock on her face she confirmed that he had passed away in his sleep two weeks after we left England, the same night I had my name called.  I had more questions than ever. So many things were piling up in my mind and I was looking for answers to them wherever I could.

In part two I recall the strange places I searched to find the answers to my growing number of questions,

image from http://www.thevoiceforlove.com

“Man learns through experience, and the spiritual path is full of different kinds of experiences. He will encounter many difficulties and obstacles, and they are the very experiences he needs to encourage and complete the cleansing process.”
Sai Baba

Blessings,  Susan x