together, each of my Wisdomkeepers shared something that does not need much effort to be coaxed into awareness. One of my Wisdomkeepers had a heart attack on his way down the stairs on Christmas morning. When I received the news I knew he was bigger than death and that this event did not signal the end of our relationship. To this day I sometimes find myself grasped by something he said, and my heart fills with laughter or awe. Sometimes it is simply the stillness and the quiet that resulted from his deep inner strength which, today, feels like a gift.
Way beyond my understanding and in defiance of my scepticism, my Wisdomkeepers have sometimes acted as midwives in my pain filled struggles with despair and helped me to grasp that I am a creature in process and that pain could be simply the prelude to new birth!
Young people are by no means exempted from a journey to this place of anguish, but generally, the things that drive people here are related to the older years. In fact learning to cope with, survive, and learn from the place of anguish, is a task that awaits everyone in their later years. Most of us, sooner or later, come up against doors which once were open but now have closed leading us to the awareness of how swiftly and irrevocably time passes us by. If we can avoid bitterness, the place of despair can teach us to value and cherish the time that is left to us and see doors that invite new explorations and even adventures.
The place of despair can bring a greater clarity to our seeing and initiate some basic changes. Pointless employment, which demands so much and returns so little, can be reframed as a mere means to an end and not an end in itself; long walks with someone we love ceases to be thought of as a luxury and becomes a fundamental necessity; and the drive to summon all our creative energies is awakened so as to leave something of value for generations only now being born.
The discovery of just how fragile and fleeting is that gift we call, “life” is a priceless insight we sometimes take away from the place of despair for it awakens within us a hunger for intimacy, and often, a need to complete certain tasks or start a conversation that has been on hold for too long.
The recognition of just how wonderful and capable my children have become ignites a deep yearning to engage them at a level we’ve not yet explored. I want to know them, and more urgently, I want them to experience me, not merely as a parent or mentor, but as a person who works away at life in the same way they do.
Joseph Campbell’s vigorous warning against living a life designed and structured by someone else, applies equally to embracing someone else’s questions and even more, their answers. While a good deal of common human experience may be found at the place of anguish, the answers others have carved for themselves are rarely helpful. At this place advice, good bad or indifferent, breaks down for what we need is not more advice but a drawing up of wisdom from the deep wellsprings of our being as we dare to face our own questions.
As a lover of questions once wrote,
I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. 18
An encounter with despair is never comfortable, yet it holds the potential for growth. Learning to honour all our journeys, even those that fill us with anguish, becomes a door through which we might engage the Wisdomkeepers. Yet be aware that our Wisdomkeepers never force themselves upon us and never demand that we honour their presence. Our need is
Way beyond my understanding and in defiance of my scepticism, my Wisdomkeepers have sometimes acted as midwives in my pain filled struggles with despair and helped me to grasp that I am a creature in process and that pain could be simply the prelude to new birth!
Young people are by no means exempted from a journey to this place of anguish, but generally, the things that drive people here are related to the older years. In fact learning to cope with, survive, and learn from the place of anguish, is a task that awaits everyone in their later years. Most of us, sooner or later, come up against doors which once were open but now have closed leading us to the awareness of how swiftly and irrevocably time passes us by. If we can avoid bitterness, the place of despair can teach us to value and cherish the time that is left to us and see doors that invite new explorations and even adventures.
The place of despair can bring a greater clarity to our seeing and initiate some basic changes. Pointless employment, which demands so much and returns so little, can be reframed as a mere means to an end and not an end in itself; long walks with someone we love ceases to be thought of as a luxury and becomes a fundamental necessity; and the drive to summon all our creative energies is awakened so as to leave something of value for generations only now being born.
The discovery of just how fragile and fleeting is that gift we call, “life” is a priceless insight we sometimes take away from the place of despair for it awakens within us a hunger for intimacy, and often, a need to complete certain tasks or start a conversation that has been on hold for too long.
The recognition of just how wonderful and capable my children have become ignites a deep yearning to engage them at a level we’ve not yet explored. I want to know them, and more urgently, I want them to experience me, not merely as a parent or mentor, but as a person who works away at life in the same way they do.
Joseph Campbell’s vigorous warning against living a life designed and structured by someone else, applies equally to embracing someone else’s questions and even more, their answers. While a good deal of common human experience may be found at the place of anguish, the answers others have carved for themselves are rarely helpful. At this place advice, good bad or indifferent, breaks down for what we need is not more advice but a drawing up of wisdom from the deep wellsprings of our being as we dare to face our own questions.
As a lover of questions once wrote,
I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. 18
An encounter with despair is never comfortable, yet it holds the potential for growth. Learning to honour all our journeys, even those that fill us with anguish, becomes a door through which we might engage the Wisdomkeepers. Yet be aware that our Wisdomkeepers never force themselves upon us and never demand that we honour their presence. Our need is
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