Part Thirty-One

Wells of Strength

Joan Ann Lansberry

March 10, 1998


©JAL, 1996
A stream at Montezuma's Well, a little south of Flagstaff, AZ
(Doubtless the Indians considered this well and stream sacred.)

Just Enough Faith to Reach

From where spring the wells that are our real source of nourishment and strength? When a human is pushed to the wall and she thinks she can't possibly take any more, where does she turn? What is it that people of faith and people who question can agree upon?

There is a sense of spirituality that doesn't require deity. It is simply the sense of profound connectedness to all of life. It is this sense which ultimately is the glue that holds us together, even when we break.

A dear friend of ours, Kathy, wrote us:

Well, I look forward to reading more great stuff on your site. I wander over there every now and then to peek at Joan's journal and to poke around, and I always find something inspiring. I'm happy you all have found such great love together. I feel the Great Mystery and have seen it work in my own life - not nearly to the extent you have, but in my own twisted ways. I'm pretty much on my own "spiritual" path, but it's great to be connected with so many interesting and wonderful people who are willing to share the tales of their journeys.

It is in that sharing that comes our strength. For only then, do we know that we do not struggle alone. This is what ultimately comforts us in our worst hours. We all have known pain which seems unbearable. The sort of pain which cuts so deep into heart and mind, death calls a siren song of release. When Laura wrote back to Kathy, she recalled her own time of trial:

I went through a year and a half when my physical brain just seemed to simply dissolve. The doctor put me on Benzodiazeprine drugs, heavy concentrations, and they turned me into a zombie. It was a strange tightrope. Without the drugs the physical pain, although the brain isn't supposed to have actual pain sensors, was something I couldn't endure. Yet, when I took the medication a black cloud enclosed me making me suicidal, depressed, and lethargic, a literal zombie.

Laura described the pain at the time. It felt like rows of knives were cutting through her brain. In remembering it:

Without the pills I was somewhat normal but had terrible headaches that felt like my brain was being dissolved in nitric acid. On the pills, I had no desire to do anything and, for me, that was soul destroying. Some part of me so real, so immense, couldn't tolerate the loss of all passion, all desire to do and to live. The doctors had trouble because they said that everyone else they gave these pills called them "Happy Pills." No worries, no concerns, no interest in anything, not even movies and television. I couldn't even follow the plot of a sitcom. Well, ah, bad example, but you get the idea.

Laura devised a plan of therapy. She discovered that she could focus her mind enough to color those intricate posters that come with a set of multi-hued markers. When I was home from work, both of us would sit on the floor, at a large low table, each with a poster. The lines provided a structure she could follow. It seemed to encourage her, that even then, she was initiating an activity I enjoyed as well.

The doctors were never able to determine just what had caused this agony. A couple of months before the pain became so intense, she had died on the table during an angiogram. She thinks she might have been gone a long time before they managed to revive her. We wonder if this caused it, by injuring the brain. Or perhaps it was a loose globule of cholesterol which was scraped off her artery walls during the angioplasty which later got lodged in the brain. It is a mystery.

Whatever its origin, it was hell.

There came a point when ... I noticed the physical pain in my brain wasn't as bad and so I started a program of weaning myself from the meds. Cutting out one pill a week on my dosages, I lowered the dose. It took six weeks and each time I lowered the dose I had to go through withdrawal symptoms. But finally I got off of them and now, only once in awhile, does the brain damage affect my life and activities. It was an adventure I am glad I had now that I am mostly past it....

There was a great lesson I learned during my time of trial. That I am mortal, that I am a fragile, vulnerable human being, and that some of the most wonderful moments in my life took place when Joan, Julia, my ex-wife, Mary, and my friends were all there for me, helping me, soothing me, comforting me and being my personal heroes. There were times I raged like a wild animal (without the drugs to soothe the pain), and other times I cried and wept because I couldn't find any motivation to do anything. Thoughts of razor blades and bathtubs full of water danced in my head. And through all of it, tender hands, loving hands, caressing me, soothing me ... a mixture of unbearable agony and exquisite joy in the love surrounding me, cradling me. It was the worst of my life, and the best of my life, all at the same time.

She further ponders to Kathy:

Skeptic, yes, perhaps, but it seems my life has been more mysterious and filled with more unexpected magic than anyone I have ever met. Why me? Do I, and the wonderful people in my life, such as yourself, make it so? Or is there something more, something that my search for truth and logic can not reveal? I choose to believe the former, but I do not discount the latter. I am but mortal and now I know this with an intensity that I never had before...

You are on your own spiritual path and you have your life ahead of you. The Mystery will work for you, whether it is internal or external, more and more as you develop. At your age I could hardly spell Mystery of Life.

Patience, my dear friend, patience. That is the greatest secret of seducing the Mystery. Well, appreciation is pretty important too. If I chose to look at my year and a half of hell as pure agony and ignored the lessons learned, where would be the Mystery? It would have been there, but I would have missed it. So, to some extent, we all make our own Mystery by embracing the good without denying the bad.

Where was the strand connecting Laura to life? "Through all of it, tender hands, loving hands, caressing me, soothing me", reminding her she is not alone. This, then, is the leap of faith. In the perilous transverse of the chasm of death, just reach out to find another human at the end, willing to guide you across that thin tightrope. You will reach the secure ground at the other side. Just enough faith to reach, that's all it takes.

March 16, 1998

A GENTLE KNOCKING

Oh, the terrors at the door,
How they howl.
Chill the icy winds.
But listen for a gentle knocking.
Reach out to
Thin Faith
And invite her in,
Tiny and fragile though she may be.
Feed her,
She will grow.
Faith rewards the gracious host.

.............JAL, 3-16-98

March 19, 1998

"Where there is no vision, the people perish" .............Proverbs 29: 18

This verse from the Bible was illustrated on the wall above the large entryway to the arts section of my high school. Rays of gold and orange dominated the design, which had been done by students. The rays served as visual metaphor for rays from yet another lighthouse, which has guided me in the darkness amongst the rocky waters of life.

Dag Hammarskjold was the author of this piece of wisdom, which has also served as a guiding light.

"The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside. And only he who listens can speak. Is this the starting point of the road towards the union of your two dreams - to be allowed in clarity of mind to mirror life and in purity of heart to mold it?"

Dag gave clue to where the vision must be focused. So I looked within. It both terrified and thrilled me. I feared the hazy distant images seen down my "road which diverged." Fearful, but still I knew I must follow, even if there might be no way back.

WHY DO MY FEET STILL FEEL SO WARM

Burning bridges
seen from the distance,
Can it be possible I set them afire?
Yes,
I shall never return.

I'm not sure when I wrote this. It was published in Odessa Poetry Review, Summer 1986 issue, page 34

The choice was made. I had known since thirteen I would go a different way. I didn't know what lay in store, but I knew certain family members would not entirely approve. At thirteen, I knew that much. As the details of this path clarified, I knew just how strenuously they would disprove. Not just the smaller nucleous of family, but the larger framework of society held no wide acceptance. Poet, artist, dreamer, and queer..."genius is so close to insanity." Should I take the dizzying chance that it was more than illusion? Yet I knew I could not choose other wise. And so followed the hard, but honest path, my "Dream's Passions"

DREAM'S PASSIONS

I throw my heart to the sky;
All my strength is the throwing.
I hope to reach high;
All my life is in the throwing.
No looking back,
Once the choice has been made.
This is life's leap.

Is this reckless?
Young dreams, hot with freedom's passion.
Strain, steeled into strength,
Fevered, pounding heart,
Wanting of justice.
Gritted teeth and clenched fist,
Breathless will,
Wanting of justice.

When dream's passions extinguish and die,
Life has also burned away.
Charred ruins and ashes
Are all that's left.
Life is then an useless excuse.
But how long will my dreams burn bright,
Before their light flickers out?
Oh God, let not the fire die,
LET NOT THE FIRE DIE!

JAL, sometime in 1979 or 1980

I was so scared that the fire within would die little by little by forces beyond my control. I had to learn to claim that terror which threatened to drench me. The fire did ebb quite low, but a flicker still remained. How is it my flame did not die, while too many others seem to have lost their spark?

A variety of answers can be proposed: sheer luck, good genes, the knowledge I wasn't alone, a Mother's love which embraced me totally, a Grandmother's love which embraced what of me she could understand...; maybe it's just the fact that I hung in there when the depression and anxiety was at its worst. I, with my lantern and its fragile ember, was able to cling onto a branch when the torrential currents ripped at me. The currents did not pull me loose, and into the unfathomable depth. The branch was composed of all those elements. But hope made me grip, hope and perhaps sheer defiance against that void. White knuckled, and heart pounding, still I hung on.

The storms did end. Hope would flare again into dream.

Dreams can propel you high into uncharted territory. Trusting your own vision to pilot yourself, you become an explorer. You can discover anything in these realms. I have a vision of what MIGHT be there. Possibility keeps me ever in pursuit. Wild-eyed and obsessed, it nonetheless fulfills me. It might not be just craziness. There might be SOMETHING REALLY THERE!

go to main index of all our pages Continue Forward in Time
"Something Really There" Index, Book One of the Journal
Main Journal Index Page