Minding the Light

Our Collective Journal
December 2013/January 2014

Oh ye beneath life’s crushing load

whose forms are bending low,

who toil along the climbing way

with painful steps, and slow. . .

Take heart for comfort, love and hope

come swiftly on the wing.

Oh rest beside the weary road

and hear the angels sing.

From “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,”

poem by Edmund Hamilton Sears (1849)

Chapter 16
When have you felt comforted by God?

St. Jerome in His Study, Colantonio (15th century)

Conundrum

Posted on March 15, 2014

I’d like to say that we followed the Light into the wilderness. In reality we headed off into the mountains unprepared and the Light accompanied us, knowing we would need divine intervention. Years ago my husband and I decided to take our teenage daughters on a hike over the continental divide in Colorado (12,000+ elevation). The payoff, we knew from past experience, was a natural hot springs set at 11,000 ft. high above the... [more]

Living in Jersey

Posted on March 15, 2014

In 1985, I moved from Oregon to New Jersey. I found myself halfway between Philadelphia and New York City. New Jersey challenged all my assumptions about pizza, recycling and customer service. The people were more aggressive. Wild spaces were harder to find. Despite the significant cultural differences, I was grateful for the opportunity to live in New Jersey. Being in graduate school felt like a privilege. On my drive to campus, I passed a... [more]

My Light Babies

Posted on March 15, 2014

I am a proud mother of two beautiful children, a graduate of higher education, and an experienced professional. I have a successful career as a Speech Language Pathologist and I own my own business, but I also have a traumatic past. In spite of my immense progress, growth, and successes, way down in the abyss that is my deepest being, the shadows still exist and more often than I like, they come out to haunt... [more]

Birds Like Arrows

Posted on March 15, 2014

A beautiful summer Saturday, I was nine years old. I faced a pile of ironing, high as my waist—punishment for some misdeed. I’ve forgotten what it was, or why I had done it, only that atonement waited in laundry piles: in washing, folding, and ironing. I waited until afternoon. Then, in a panic to finish before the grownups came home, I crammed all the clothes into one wash load, even my wool school skirt,... [more]

Difficult Tasks and Weighty Responsibilities

Posted on March 15, 2014

In 2009 I was fired from an organization I had served for eleven years—working my way up to Vice President. Part of me was angry, indignant, and ready to fight. That isn’t the story though. Those are mundane human emotions, not particularly interesting. But, how I was held—bathed, rather—in the light through this tough time is a much better story. A week before I was fired my boss confronted me with her belief that... [more]

Windows

Posted on March 15, 2014

After the surgery my view from the hospital bed was of the shadowy tops of trees and the dark night sky. The moon was full, adding light to the darkness, though I never saw the full round beauty of it shining in. I woke up every hour that night. The sky changed with bright stars, wisps of clouds, rolling clouds, changing constellations. At midnight, I woke and slowly realized that it wasn’t pain... [more]

The Last Time I Saw My Father

Posted on March 15, 2014

My father had been a troubled man. As a nineteen year old Marine in Korea, he had participated in the landing at Inchon, and the breakout and retreat from the “Frozen Chosin” reservoir. He was deeply scarred by these experiences, and very seldom mentioned what he had experienced there. Although he worked with the VA to find relief for what we now call post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), he found no relief. In the end,... [more]

A Visit from the Divine

Posted on March 15, 2014

The story that springs to mind when I’m asked, “When have you been comforted by God?” seems to need to be told backwards. Quite a while ago at a Yearly Meeting session, I passed the table of a woman I considered to be an elder of the Yearly Meeting. We got into a brief discussion, and in my unquestioning way, I announced my certainty of the presence of the divine. She stopped my babbling... [more]

God Heard My Prayer

Posted on March 15, 2014

Young Friend’s Story A few years ago, my sister, my mom, my cat and I were driving back from my grandparents’ house in the country. They live about an hour away from our house in the city. Right before we left, in the late afternoon, it started to snow. As we drove, the weather got worse and worse. The snow was falling harder and the roads were covered with ice. We were all... [more]

Hope for a Distant Future

Posted on March 13, 2014

My childhood encompassed a special kind of chaos. I lived in a tiny one-bedroom house with my family in Central California. I slept in a crib in my parents’ room until after turning six, when my grandmother’s Alzheimer’s Disease progressed far beyond a manageable state and she was finally placed in a nursing home. Then I relocated to her “hallway suite”. Our house was filthy and poorly cared for. Our front porch fell down bit... [more]

Release to the Captives

Posted on March 13, 2014

My son’s behavior was making me unbearably anxious, and I prayed almost without ceasing. It was hard for me to focus at work and sleep at night. It was January 1997. Jesse had been paralyzed from the chest down two years earlier by a self-inflicted gunshot wound. We had been devastated, but I had faith that God would heal him if he received all the help he needed. To that end, we used every... [more]

Nothing Changed but Everything was Different

Posted on March 13, 2014

About halfway through my undergraduate program I hit a snag. In order to proceed with the normal sequence of chemistry classes for my major I needed to have taken or be concurrently enrolled in general physics. But I hadn’t started the physics sequence, and the first class in that sequence wasn’t going to be offered in the coming term. The upshot of this series of falling dominoes was that I was going to fall behind... [more]

Our Collective Journal December 2013/January 2014

Chapter 16 When have you felt comforted by God?

Stories in this Chapter

Our Collective Journal
December 2013/January 2014

Chapter 16
When have you felt comforted by God?