So there I was. . . in this place of great conflict. . . .in search of peace. . . .so I decided I needed a spiritual retreat.
The Catholic seminary was built up on top of the mountains surrounding Santa Barbara, so it was both beautiful and peaceful just by its geographical nature. But there was also this wonderful part of the seminary that caught my attention, a quarter mile path that started just outside of the seminary at the top of the mountain and wound its way down through an outdoor Stations of the Cross, which was comprised of these 14 different "stations" (pieces of the story of Jesus's crucifiction) along this quarter mile path weaving through the grass and trees. I had never heard of this before (the Stations of the Cross), so I found the path to be lovely and wonderful way to "read" this story of Jesus.
I had created this retreat the week before Christmas, so the priest thought it was odd that I would spend so much time out on this Stations of the Cross path (which was about the death of Jesus), when he thought I should be spending time with the story about his birth. He was probably right, of course, but the birth stories weren't the stories that were resonating with my spirit in conflict, and I thought I needed to understand his death in order to appreciate his birth. . . .so I continued to spend time periodically out walking along this beautiful path in search of the peace my conflicted spirit so desperately was in search of.
My room was in a long quiet wing all to its self, a fact that was actually kind of eery at night, with the Santa Barbara winds blowing atop this isolated mountain, but there was also a wonderful library that I spent a great deal of time in. I found a tape series on Forgiveness that was wonderful (and very much needed at the time), but the best source I found that week was a small book called, The God of Surprises, written by a Catholic priest who had lost his faith, and this book was the story about his very long journey back to God.
He wrote about this process called contemplative imagination that he used when he started to reread the Bible. He described how when he would read a story (as that's what the Bible is, a wonderful collection of stories), he would imagine that he was physically present in the story, and not just reading about it. He found himself engaging in dialogue with the characters of the story, and more importantly, that the characters in the story were engaging back in dialogue with him in return. So his faith was renewed through this long journey made possible by this intriguing process of contemplative imagination that breathed life back into stories that now had depth and personal meaning for him.
So I thought I would try this contemplative imagination for myself. . . .
Armed with this unexplored new tool, I ventured back out to the path of the Stations of the Cross. I felt a little bit silly, of course, standing there in the middle of the trees outside of the seminary where I was certain the priest was keeping an eye on this odd woman talking to herself. . . .lol. . . .but I wanted to see for myself how this process worked, and I had this wonderful full-life version of the Bible story at my unlimited use, and so began my journey.
The Stations of the Cross is the journey of Jesus on his way to the cross, of course, and I had became one of the witnesses along that path (through the use of the contemplative imagination). But as I walked along that path from one station to another, I began to experience great anxiety, and I found myself in a dialogue that essentially amounted to me trying to talk Jesus out of continuing on. I knew what lay ahead along this path, and I was doing everything I could to stop what was happening!
So I begged and pleaded Jesus to stop, to do something different, to say something different, but he didn't. . . .he just continued on along that path to his certain death with a purpose and determination that I just couldn't understand. And since I was "pretending" to be a living particpant of that story in real life (which was the purpose of the contemplative imagination process), I was also experiencing real and genuine emotional responses, so to say that I was anxious and frustrated would be a mild understatement.
As I approached the fifth station, I couldn't continue. I was doing everything I could to stop what was going to happen, but I couldn't, so in my utter despair of not knowing how to stop this, I had to walk away, to get off of that path, because there was no way that I could continue on if that meant I had to witness the brutality that was about to unfold! So I looked over and saw a bench just over about 20 feet placed in a patch of amazing green grass along the dusty path, a bench that looked out across the pastoral valley below.
The irony in that moment was that I had taken this retreat because I was in such great personal conflict and I was in search of inner peace to end the conflict, yet here I was, out in the back mountains of Santa Barbara at this isolated seminary amidst the greatest conflict of all, as I had just walked away from the path of Jesus on the way to his brutal death at the cross. And as I sat down on that bench in the full force of frustration and angst of not knowing how to stop what was about to happen, I looked out across this valley to find a large green barn with the word PEACE painted in huge white letters across the side of the barn facing the hill of the seminary's path.
There are moments in life that are larger than life, moments that are so infused with an emotional experience that we never forget them. . . .and this was once such moment.
When I looked across that valley to find the word PEACE staring back at me as I sat on that bench, something opened up inside of my heart and I just started sobbing deep and hard, because I finally understood what the source of my conflict was with my clients, because I was doing exactly the same thing with them that I was doing with Jesus. My conflict was nothing more than the fact that I was trying to stop something over which I had no control, instead of just walking with them along whatever path their journey was supposed to be.
PEACE.
It was not the peace that I thought I was looking for that I found along the path with Jesus that day, but it was exactly the peace that I needed. And I returned from that retreat with a renewed sense of purpose and perspective of what my role as a family therapist was supposed to be, a clarity that changed the way I walk with everyone I come in contact with, because Jesus taught me how to walk with others along whatever life path they may find themselves upon. . . .and that blessing has changed me from my spirit up. . . .which is why I am not afraid of walking along the dark paths anymore.
People may not always understand me or the path my own spirit walks upon, either, but that's ok. I remember how Moises used to tell me all of the time that he was praying for me, praying that my anger would be removed from my suffering. ( I was very angry during my grad school years. . . .lol.) I always accepted his prayers, but they were more about him than about me, because I never prayed myself for God to remove my anger, as I embraced that as one of my greatest strengths at that time. I needed that anger to rise up out of the stories that had been imposed upon my life by people who also knew not what they did, so I wasn't going to pray the anger away.
So I have learned to walk my path of suffering, just like I watched Jesus walk his. And I have learned to let people walk away from my path when they no longer understand why I would choose my own journey of suffering, just the way Jesus let me walk away when I was overcome with angst and frustration of trying to stop what I could not understand as I walked along his journey with him. And I may not have grown up with God as a young person the way that other people did, but I have a very real relationship with Jesus, even if the way that I walk that path with him is not as easily recognized by others.
As for the Stations of the Cross, it took me a while to sort through the emotion released by the lancing of my conflict in that moment of finding Peace in the most unsuspecting of places, but I had found the peace I needed to walk that Stations of the Cross path to its bitter end, and I became a better therapist and person because of it.
Who knew that a quarter of a mile could be such a long and painful distance. . . .
As for me, I certainly didn't expect to find Jesus in those back country mountains of Santa Barbara on that personal retreat I created for myself back in 1997 , but that is where I found him. . . .and where I found the amazing God of Surprises.