The Not Doing

A dear friend recently shared with me some not so great news and, as these things so often do, set my head and heart cogs a-turnin'. It's completely cliche and somewhat paternalistic to say that losing a child changes you. Everything changes us. That's life. It moves and shifts and in the middle of it all we're trying to figure out what to do with it. This blog has been my way of sharing pieces of my own path through all of this. The journey of trying to get pregnant. Losing Rhys. My transition out of Christianity and into Taoism. The birth of Adryn. And it's all been a bit of a rambling adventure, much like this post. While we were talking my friend said something that I felt in my bones, "I can't find meaning in this." I've heard that or something similar frequently over the last year working as a chaplain on an Oncology unit. Sometimes it's exhaustion, sometimes it's fear, sometimes it's a deeply honest assessment of reality.

There's a concept in Taoist philosophical practice called Wu Wei. It means non-action or actionless action. It's the place where action and being flow freely and yet remain balanced with the world. Spontaneous, compassionate, and simplistic, it is a state of naturalness that is the result of accepting the most honest depiction of ourselves and the world around us and not, as is so often the urge, as we might want them to be. I never really made much sense of it until I was sitting in the hospital recovery room with Kelly the night Rhys died. I wanted to rage and fight and push back against what had happened that day. I wanted to stand up and say no, this is not right, these things should never happen. But the only thing I seemed able to do was sit with that loss. I sat in my sadness, not really sleeping, aware of how long Kelly and I had waited to get to this point, and then losing everything we thought we'd finally found. We each cried throughout that night, sometimes alone, sometimes together; sometimes silently, sometimes loudly. And It was so completely counter-intuitive to my very western mind, such the antithesis of the protestant work ethic much of my cultural baggage is steeped in. And yet, that sitting with and being deeply connected to everything that had happened was essential.

Since Rhys, I've noticed that it's the not doing that really does. Putting to bed some of these notions of control or triumph have helped with that. There isn't much in the eddies of life that I have a great deal of say over save the way in which I interact with the world around me. Learning what it meant to deeply connect with my sadness and be honest about my fear has given me the opportunity to touch pieces of myself that have both empowered and cultivated in me a greater capacity to live. I think we rush to find meaning, or perhaps more accurately, rush to nail down a meaning. Meaning provides us with a sense of understanding and I've found that understanding (or thinking I understand) can be a seductive partner when I'm trying to control the world around me. My grief has provided the framework to be rather than subdue or change or rush to "feel better", something that I'm thankful for and something I continue to struggle with.

And meaning is such a fickle thing too. Rhys' birth and death meant something different to me than it meant to Kelly. It meant something different to friends and family members. Sure we share similarities of experience, but everyone's perspective is their own. We all come to the same scene with different collections of stuff that make us, us. There is a maddeningly beautiful reality in all of that. For me, Rhys is not an angel in heaven, he is not in heaven, he does not exist in a place where one day, when I die, I will recognize and be with him. For others, this is what he means, and while at times I find myself wanting to push back against that, I have no right or reason to. I don't own him, or his life, or the meaning people might derive from it. I don't get to control that. So, again, I'm learning to sit with these things, to accept and to share. To both allow the voices of others and (the more difficult thing for me) share my own voice in the process. This whole meaning-making thing is exactly that, a process. There's no blueprint for this stuff and sometimes I even fear that pegging down meaning is a sign that I've stopped seeking and stopped being. "I can't find meaning in this" is an okay place to be in my book.

There's a story attributed to Chuang Tzu I like about two goat-herders, Gu and Zang. Zang liked to spend his time gambling while Gu spent his time reading books and furthering his knowledge. One night, while Zang was completely absorbed in his gambling with friends a goat from his flock wandered away and he was lost. That same night, Gu was immersed in a particularly fascinating book and a goat from his flock wandered away and was lost as well. It serves, for me, as a gentle reminder that judging one's actions as good or bad, sinful or righteous, isn't the point. The point is remaining awake, paying attention, participating in the present, sitting with ourselves and the world around us. The point is being and I've found that there's a whole lot of not doing that helps me be.