One Woman's Passage

Finding the Sacredness of My Lived Experience

Deborah Bernard — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 19:22:46 +0000

Where exactly does one go to find this sacredness of one’s own life experience? I had no idea what I was looking for or what I expected to find. It seemed at once holy and metaphysical, a quantum physics kind of leap, and I wondered if I would even recognize this sacredness if it were to reveal itself. Would the moment transcend time? Would I be washed in a divine glow? Would the notes of a heavenly choir fill the air?

It turns out I didn’t have to go very far to find it. Not very far at all. And while the revelation was definitely transcendent, it came out of a largely ordinary event.

Discovering the sacredness of lived experience is not accompanied by miracles, although I would argue that such moments are miraculous. The earth need not move, thunder need not roll, and seas, red and otherwise, need not part. But as surely as miracles happen, I felt the sacredness of my own life experience in the everyday ordinariness of my daughter and grandson chauffeuring me to and from a doctor’s appointment.

With the birth of my grandchildren, I have begun to experience a shift in my life’s vision. Whether or not I get to the milestone of centenarian is not the goal. My vision is living my life today in such a way that I can enjoy every moment with my husband, my daughters, and my grandchildren well into the future.

It’s not a question of cheating death. I used to fear death albeit I was ultimately resigned to its inevitability. While the fear of the unknown had become a nagging thought as I aged, I have come to know with certainty that I live in the Light and am of the Light, and that when my body dies, I will still be in the Light. I am not worried about my own death. Rather I am conscious of my own life, of living each moment of my life with love and compassion.

I should have had a base line colonoscopy eight years ago, but the idea was humiliating, and so I neglected my health by rationalizing that since there was no history of colon cancer in my family there was nothing to be concerned about. Instead I chose to gamble with my health. My newfound vision of living my best life, however, required that I schedule the procedure, and I asked my daughter to take me to and from the appointment.

It was after she delivered me back home that I realized the sacredness of my lived experience in her simple act of love. I discovered the truth of what it means to seek the sacredness of my own lived experience. It is with you always, this sacredness. I saw it with new eyes, eyes that looked backward to my mother and forward to my daughter.

I was not there for my own mother in the last year of her life. I cannot change that, but I have found forgiveness with my mother, and I can live deeply connected to her through my vision of the future. My vision looks forward from a long view backwards, and with new eyes I can learn to see the sacredness of my lived experience. This sacredness is found in every moment of my life.

You Are That Which You Seek

Deborah Bernard — Fri, 27 May 2011 21:11:06 +0000

A dear friend enclosed these words of St. Francis in an email to me today. Just these six words: You are that which you seek. I have always been a seeker and never more than at this time in my life as I approach midlife and wonder, what now? What is my vision as I enter the “Third Age” of my life? Once embodying the archetypal female divinity of Virgin, then Mother, and now Crone, what is it that I seek at midlife?

I am still trying to wrap my head around the nomenclature of crone, but I prefer it to the somehow androcentric elder woman. In early matriarchal societies, “crones were women who held the wise menstrual blood–believed to be the source of their wisdom–in their bodies as they transitioned past child-bearing into years of value and service to their communities” (Walker, 1983). This is where I begin my vision: discovering and naming the wisdom I hold and realizing how I might redirect this powerful energy in the third age of my life.

I believe as Jung suggests that each woman’s essence extends backwards into her mother and forward into her daughter, and that all my ancestors “live undiminished in me and will continue to live, united with me, in my descendants” (Arrien, 2010). For most of my life, the line backward to my own mother lay broken and tarnished. Feeling out of touch with her left me bereft and devastated. But recently I have found enormous compassion both for myself and for my mother and reclaimed her in my life and found my own unique essence as her daughter. This “motherline” is deeply symbolic of where I find myself today: deeply connected backward into my mother and forward into my two daughters.

That which I seek is the sacredness of my own lived experience with a lens to the past and a vision toward the future.

Integrity

Deborah Bernard — Wed, 25 May 2011 19:51:05 +0000

When any individual enters a race for elected office, he or she is obligated to tell the truth to voters. And when an individual assumes the office of governor, he or she assumes the mantle of moral leader, like it or not. The governor is not merely the balancer of the budget. He or she must be a model of integrity, a person above reproach. The governor and anyone who governs sets the example for the citizens of his or her state–especially the children.

If Governor Schwarzenegger had chosen not to hide his out-of-wedlock child for ten long years, the fallout would not be as destructive as it is. Instead of choosing to be honest with the people of the state of California, he lied. He chose to lie and to hang us all–including a child–out to dry.