When in doubt, ask.

 

 

Black Moods and Bright Days

“You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it all is going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope.”

Thomas Merton

          These late-fall, early-winter days are the finest time to be alive in Birmingham, AL. It is still warm—70 yesterday—and the sunlight gives an autumn-gold tone to everything it touches. Who knows what tomorrow brings, but for this moment, we soak in the beauty.

          One day this week I was in a black mood—tired of everything, mad at the world, with not a clue as to why. I wonder if you have those days too. Oh, yes, things happen in our lives, and to the people we love, that throw us off-kilter, and unless we sit ourselves down and look it in the eye, we won’t know why. As for me, I just storm around mad as a wet hen and yell at dogs and people. Grouchiness rules the day.

Sometimes when I am simply insufferable, I resort to the I Ching, as I did on that day. I threw reading # 36 which said, and I paraphrase: “Yep, these are dark days. You are in a difficult place, and nothing much seems to help. The best thing you can do is lay low and bide your time until it passes—and it will pass. Trust me on this.” Okay, so I’m adlibbing the I Ching, but that was truly what it said. And I don’t know why it comforted me, but it did.

If we’re being honest with ourselves, life is a crapshoot of massive proportions. We often cast about in the dark for something we don’t know and wouldn’t understand if we did. Sensitive people pick up on the meanness and anxiety in the zeitgeist and feel it in their body/mind. It feels like friction, irritation, like an itch that is unreachable. When it’s obvious that it doesn’t belong to us personally, we can simply be with it until it passes. But when there’s a question as to why we feel as we do, it behooves us to examine it a bit. This inexplicable irritation is one way the psyche lets us know we are missing the mark—that there is something that needs attention that we are ignoring. Ask. Ask God, or someone you trust, or ask your inner Self, or ask the I Ching—just ask, and then wait with trust and patience. As Merton said, there are opportunities as well as challenges in this moment. What is required of us is courage, faith, and hope.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane