Dark Night of the Soul -- one comment

This is the Song "Dark Side of the Soul" adapted for music by Loreena McKennitt from the poem "Dark Night of the Soul" by John of the Cross.



Upon a darkened night
The flame of love was burning in my breast
And by a lantern bright
I fled my house while all in quiet rest

Shrouded by the night
And by the secret stair I quickly fled
The veil concealed my eyes
While all within lay quiet as the dead.

(Chorus)

O, night thou was my guide!
O, night more loving than the rising sun!
O, night that joined the Lover to the beloved one!
Transforming each of them into the other.

Upon that misty night
In secrecy beyond such mortal sight
Without a guide or light
Than that which burned as deeply in my heart.

That fire 'twas led me on
And shone more bright than of the midday sun
To where He waited still
It was a place where no one else could come.

(Chorus)

Within my pounding heart
Which kept itself entirely for Him
He fell into His sleep
beneath the cedars all my love I gave.

From o'er the fortress walls
The wind would brush His hair against His brow
And with its smoother hand
caressed my every sense it would allow.

(Chorus)

I lost my self to Him
And laid my face upon my Lover's breast
And care and grief grew dim
As in the morning's mist became the light.
There they dimmed amongst the lilies fair.
*Arranged and adapted by Loreena McKennitt, 1993

The poem by John of the Cross was written in the mid 1500's. It describes the journey of the soul returning to God. It talks about the difficulties of the journey to separate from this world to focus on union with the Creator. The main idea is that life, and the spiritual life, is a journey with hardships along the way, but that we grow and gain maturity and insight from our times of struggle and despair as well as the times of success and joy. The poem's author later wrote a book/commentary of the same name detailing the interpretation of the poem verse by verse.

My understanding of the term "Dark night of the soul" is that is the the time of darkness when we, or our souls, feel cut off from God, in our spiritual life. It is when we feel fartherest away from God or disconnected. Irony is that this is a part of the journey, painful though it be. Often this stage or experience can be understand or is described as depression. Spiritual depression, I think, is different from clinical depression. (Many people often neglect the idea of spiritual injury. But it is real.) Native peoples, also called First Nations, understand the spiritual world and hence understand there is a connection between physical and spiritual injury. When I was visiting with an Aboriginal woman a few years ago, she explained to me the belief that there are often spiritual symptoms of an illness. It was no surprise to me to be having that conversation, as there have been numerous studies discussing the mind/body connection. It was a refreshing to be having the conversation with a spiritual perspective. Initiated by someone else!!

I have often struggled with what I will call depression. It is not clinical depression, but more of a "down mood, or feeling down". It is brought on by different aspects of life; bad day, stress, various elements collide. It usually doesn't last, but it does affect my interaction with other people, and obviously my work. (as that is a large part of my job, to interact with other people. To meet them in the time and place where they are, not the other way around. Sometimes, to bring them into my world may not be a healthy thing for either of us...)

I have often been aware of the connection between spiritual life/journey, and my mood. It is interesting to note, but at times difficult to get through. Perhaps the depressions have to do with expectations about how "things should be". This afternoon, one of my colleagues commented on a newspaper article about a woman who started a business as a result of a family problem. Her daughter was an Olympic swimmer who had a hard time finding a suit to fit. After the Olympics were over, the mother and daughter formed a company that is now globally known. The comment was that "people have a messed idea of what being successful is. You don't need to be making millions to be successful." Our conversation then was a discussion of what success means. When one's goals are unattained, this frustrates us and causes stress. But the question is "is our goal realistic, or is our methodology faulty?" Maybe this is where the Dark Night of the Soul comes in. Maybe we have an unrealistic idea of what life is supposed to look like, what our life is supposed to be with God. Often when people suffer, they ask "why? Why God? Why me? What did I do to deserve this? Am I being punished?" and this often drives people away from God because they might not have a strong foundation or faith/understanding of God's plan/motivation for us. Perhaps we have an unrealistic expectation or picture of what life with God is supposed to look like. This might cause a Dark Night. Things aren't going the way that we think, and we get frustrated and depressed. Hopefully the darkness does not stay too long, hopefully we are strong enough to continue the journey. Not to abandon the spiritual path to a deeper understanding of God. Still thinking on this subject.

Nouwen and the Birds...

Excerpt from "Seeds of Hope: A Nouwen Reader". Chapter entitled "Celebrating Humanness"


the Birds and I Genesse Abbey, June 13, 1974

This morning, Father John explained to me that the killdeer is a bird that fools you by simulating injury to pull attention away from her eggs which she lays openly on a sandy place. Beautiful! Neurosis as a weapon! How often I have asked pity for an unreal problem in order to pull people's attention away from what I didn't want them to see.

Sometimes it seems that every bird has institutionalized every one of my defense mechanisms. The cowbird lays her eggs in some other bird's nest to let them do the brooding job, the Baltimore oriole imitates the sound of more dangerous birds to keep the enemies away, and the redwing blackbird keeps screaming so loud over head that you get tired of her noise and soon leave the area that she considers hers. It does not take long to realize that I do all of that and a lot more to protect myself or to get my own will done. Genesse Diary

I find this to be an interesting commentary on people and the defense mechanisms we use. Often we want something done, but we aren't willing to do the work to get there. Or in the case of some patients I have met, they do not or are not able to take responsibility for their own actions. The illness is the result of someone or something else. That may be true, but in the meantime, this is where we are... let's work with that. Blaming someone else for our problems and trying to figure out why or how, sometimes this doesn't help us at all. We end up wallowing in our own misery and at times, this exasperates the situation (and the other people around who are trying to help.) I have a few patients who are "labelled" (for lack of a better word) as "non compliant". This means that they have come to our hospital saying "I need help. Please help me to fix this issue." But when told a treatment plan or when the "plan" doesn't fit their criteria, they don't follow the "prescription". They want help, but not in the way that we have to offer it. Very frustrating at times.

The complication is that often the non-compliance is a result of denial or non-acceptance of the situation that they are in. True. Some times we will wallow in our misery and pain. True, sometimes this is warranted. However in the case of a health issue, this may not be good. Rather time is not always afforded to allow the person to process at their speed.


This afternoon, I was talking to 2 family members of a "new" patient. *New to me* One I had met a few times before, and so we had a good rapport. They had worked in the health care field and hence had some understanding of the kind of issues that occur from non-compliance. The other person, I had only met this afternoon. They didn't come to the hospital very much as per the non-compliance being a large part of a relationship dynamic causing frustration and burnout for this individual. They mentioned that when the patient smartens up (my words) and gets a transplant then maybe they will stop whining about their problems and life will go back to the way it was. The health care knowledgeable family and I explained this person that getting a transplant is not like waving a magic wand. Instead, it is a means to living longer (temporarily) just as certain medications and treatments were. Kidney disease can be chronic, and when it is, it can be considered terminal at times. Freud said that from the moment we are born, we begin to die. This is a fact that we all must face, just some people must face it sooner. That can be a factor of the non-compliance. They aren't ready to consider death as a possibility. It would likely overwhelm and cause depression. "Why bother to live for today if I might die tomorrow?" But then we might all think that eh?

The birds and their "defense" mechanisms. Sometimes, people use these defense strategies so that people don't see the thing the birds are trying to hide. Sometime we people are the birds. We are trying to distract our fellow cronies from seeing the flaws, our perceived failures, and other times, we are trying to distract ourselves from seeing our own flaws and perceived failures. It is too overwhelming at times. Sometimes these "defense mechanisms" are warranted, but to persist too long can damage our emotional and spiritual health.

Magnetic Poetry

A few months ago, I bought a magnetic poetry kit for something silly in the office. I put a few of the words on the fridge in our staff room and added to it as time went on. Today I finished putting all of the words on there. This is what it looks like at present. Every so often I mess it up and people start all over. The person who wrote the "sometimes I wonder if there is a puppy in all this fluff" complained that the workds were limiting as his comment was "do you think that I wanted to ask if there was a puppy in fluff?"

Conversation in my staff/lunch room the other day

Male colleague addressing 3 of us in the lunch room.

"Why can't men wear shorts here at work?"

(Pause) No seemed to be saying anything and I was in a quirky mood.

Me: "Because some men have chicken legs and no one wants to see that."

Him: " But women wear skirts here."
Me: "Yes but they also tend to shave their legs." (Pause) "Mind you, there are some women who shouldn't wear short skirts either."

And then the conversation with the other 2 men present involved suggestions of wearing kilts... and I left it alone.

Headline #3 of the Day

Dad denied bereavement leave after baby's death

Gerry Bellett, Vancovuer Sun, Thursday July 3

ertz Canada Ltd. has failed to persuade the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal to dismiss a complaint by an employee who claims he was denied bereavement leave from his job at Vancouver International Airport to deal with the death of his prematurely born daughter.

The car rental company is also being sued by the employee, Ali Mahdi, for religious discrimination by deducting pay for the time he spends praying each day to practise his Muslim faith.

Hertz applied to have both complaints dismissed by the tribunal, but member Tonie Beharrell said the company didn't provide grounds to show why either complaint shouldn't be considered.

According to Mahdi, his wife gave birth to a baby girl at 21 weeks of gestation in March, 2007, but the baby died the same day.

When he asked for bereavement leave, he was told he was ineligible because the child was stillborn and would have had to live longer than 24 hours for him to receive a leave.

Beharrell said there was a dispute between the parties over whether the child was stillborn or had survived birth only to die later.

The company had argued that a stillborn child "is not a child for the purposes of bereavement leave," so Mahdi was not granted leave.

As for the claims of religious discrimination, Mahdi is required to pray five times a day at times that vary during the year and which sometimes require him to pray while at work.

While the parties disagreed about how much time Mahdi spends at prayer while at work, they agreed that the punch-clock indicates he takes four minutes a day.

Accordingly, the company has been deducting 20 minutes pay per week from Mahdi's wages.

The company claims it has accommodated his need to pray and that it would constitute undue hardship to have to pay him for time not spent working.

Mahdi argued that other employees absent from work for similar periods were not docked pay.

Beharrell ruled that the dispute would go before the tribunal to be settled.

I pointed this article out to a colleague. He and I agreed that grief is grief regardless of whether this was a still born or whether the baby lived a few hours before death. The end result is a loss for both the mother and father. Grief isn't always about physical death, but in this case it was also the death of a dream and the hopes and plans that these parents had. My colleague and I talked about the seeming injustice presented in the article in that the company refused to acknowledge this man's grief. Despite the fact that the child did not live long enough to form a bond with the parents, there was still a relationship that was lost. This is to be acknowledged.

This article also screams injustice at punishing a man for practicing his faith on "company time". All employees are entitled to breaks, paid or not.

More Headlines..

Academic freedom and assisted suicide

This instructor wants to witness assisted suicide for his research. A fight is brewing over his right to do that.

Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun, Thursday, July 3, 2008

Canada's university professors are preparing to defend the right of a Metro Vancouver researcher to witness illegal assisted suicides in the name of increasing understanding of the right-to-die movement.

The Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) has formed a high-level committee to investigate claims that Kwantlen Polytechnic University sociologist Russel Ogden was unjustly denied the chance to research new techniques for assisted suicide.

"In the face of it, it looks as if there has been a violation of academic freedom," James Turk, executive director of the CAUT, said Wednesday in an interview from Ottawa.

The CAUT has formed what Turk call a "blue-ribbon committee" to look into why the Kwantlen administration is effectively blocking Ogden from researching assisted suicides, even after the university-college's ethics committee approved his research three years ago.

For more than 14 years, Ogden has engaged in controversial and ground-breaking research into scores of underground assisted suicides (often known as "Nu Tech deathing") by people dealing with AIDS, cancer and other terminal illnesses.

Ogden has frequently run into opposition from university administrators who fear their institutions could wind up in trouble for allowing him to possibly skirt the edges of the law.

In 2003, Ogden was awarded $143,000 in damages after it was determined that Britain's Exeter University had illicitly backed out of an agreement to protect the identities of scores of people Ogden found had taken part in illegal assisted suicides.

More recently, Ogden has discovered that more than 19 British Columbians have committed suicide through an increasingly widespread technique known as "helium in a bag."

Helium is seen as a swift, highly lethal and painless way to die without involving physicians or drugs. Helium is also nearly undetectable in toxicological probes.

The latest confrontation over Ogden's pioneering research techniques has arisen at the same time that assisted suicide has become big news in Washington state. Former Democratic governor Booth Gardner, who struggles with Parkinson's disease, is campaigning for a November ballot initiative on doctor-assisted euthanasia, which will go ahead if state supporters gather 225,000 signatures by today.

However, the CAUT worries that Ogden is being blocked from continuing legitimate research into the right-to-die movement by Kwantlen officials.

Despite receiving earlier ethics board approval, Ogden has since been told by Kwantlen's administration he cannot "engage in any illegal activity, including attending at an assisted death," says a CAUT letter written by Turk, which was addressed to eight academics and administrators. A copy was obtained by The Vancouver Sun.

Neither Ogden nor Kwantlen officials were available for comment Wednesday.

The CAUT's Turk maintains that, although assisted suicide is illegal in Canada (unlike in the state of Oregon, as well as the countries of Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands), it is neither illegal to commit suicide nor against the law to witness an assisted death in this country.

"Witnessing an illegal act, such as a husband murdering his wife, is not illegal behaviour on your part," Turk said.

Therefore, Turk said, it would not be illegal for Ogden to witness an assisted suicide, since he would be neither discouraging nor encouraging it.

It's important, Turk said, for academic researchers to be given the freedom to try to "understand politically unpopular behaviour." Even while a Canwest poll last year showed three-quarters of Canadians approve of assisted suicide, compared to 48 per cent of Americans, Turk said researchers like Ogden are being held back by university administrators "who might think the [federal] government is going to get mad at them."

The high-level CAUT committee that will review Ogden's case and issue its findings in a few months includes Kevin Haggerty, a sociologist at the University of Alberta; John McLaren, professor emeritus of law at the University of Victoria; and Lorraine Weir, an English professor at the University of B.C.

dtodd@png.canwest.com

© The Vancouver Sun 2008

The subject of euthanasia or assisted suicide is rift with controversy. The two sides would basically be Side one: All life is sacred. No one has the right to take the life of another regardless of the situation. All life is worthwhile, no one but G_d can determine its end. (This is usually backed by theological argument such as 10 commandments such as "thou shalt not kill" and others.)

Side 2 looks at the "right to choose" and is related to the experience of suffering, and the definition of "quality of life". Watching someone who is ill, who has constant pain and is able to do little more than lie in bed, may be alive by the aid of machines -- the definition of "quality of life" is subjective to the individual's experience. I had seen both sides as part of my work in health care chaplaincy. I have seen the family called to the bedside and told that this would be it, only to see the miracle of the patient to rally and continue living months or years more. I have also seen patients who are able to do little more than lie in bed, dependent on painkillers and oxygen or a machine to survive. Working in renal, I have even had discussions with patients who decide to cease treatment for their kidney failure. Often they have told me that it is the pain, the decline in their health, and the cessation of their perceived quality of life. After making this decision, and going to 'comfort care only" (meaning pain control but no 'heroic measures such as CPR or tube feed') I have met with patients who continue to survive for days or weeks. Some have asked 'why can't I die? When will this end?' I once told a man that I didn't know. (Often patients 'declare themselves', meaning they stop being aware of the world and their systems start to shut down. The body doesn't need or take in food or drink, their responses cease, and they begin the process of detaching from the world as they start the journey towards death.) I told the man that perhaps he wasn't done yet, that there might be something he was still to accomplish. I asked him to consider if he had unfinished business, if he still had a lesson to learn, or perhaps that he was to teach us something. This was not something he had considered...

The choice to live or die... not an easy one to make.

In the same paper, I found an article decrying the choice to award an Order of Canada to Dr. Morgentaler. Dr. Henry Morgentaler is best known for performing abortions illegally.

"Morgentaler is known for almost single-handedly pushing abortion rights on to the national agenda when he opened an illegal abortion clinic in Montreal in 1969. At one point, he was jailed for 10 months when a lower court acquittal was overturned on appeal.

The issue culminated in a landmark ruling in January 1988, in which the Supreme Court struck down anti-abortion provisions of the Criminal Code on the grounds they violate a woman's constitutional right to "security of person." "Cassandra Drudi, Canwest News Service; With files from The Journal, National Post and Montreal Gazette Published: Wednesday, July 02

One side of the debate argues that giving him the order of Canada has been a long time in coming. He has fought for the rights of many women who had little or choice regarding unwanted pregnancies. The other side of the debate claims that he has chosen to act against morality, to "kill" or take a human life by aborting pregnancies.

It is easy to take sides when hearing a story. But it is difficult to know what we would want when it is our situation. I wonder how many people surprise themselves by chosing something that they swore they would never do. I remember when I used think more "black and white/right and wrong", in a box. People who smoked were bad, people who drank were bad, people who got divorced were wrong. In practicing theological reflection in my everyday work, I have changed some of my theology in the 17 years since I first started my theological training. I now think that divorce is not a "sin", but hope that it is the last resort. I would rather see 2 happy people apart, then 2 (or more as children and other family members are affected) unhappy people together. I would rather people learn to relate to one another and try to have dialogue rather than discriminate due to a difference of opinion about how to live, or what to think. I would rather see people who are able to respect the beliefs and customs of others, and in turn have their traditions respected and maybe enhanced due to the openness towards those things that are new, or "different" (i.e. weird, or not like us). I would rather see love, real love (not sexual but agape

In my work, it is my task as a chaplain to "come along side", to walk with the person in their journey as a support for them in their times of health and/or other difficulties. To remind them by my presence that God is present in the midst of their struggles and seeming chaos and that S/He does care. To do this, I provide a listening ear with no judgment about their choices. this is not always easy. I might personally think one thing, but do not express this to the person, as I do not know the life experiences and perspective that leads to this choice or stage of their living. The goal is to help them make choices that will honor the person that they are, to enhance their life experience, to meet the "person" that they are -- that God knows them to be. I really don't know until it is my situation and my story.