I’ve stopped saying things can’t get any worse, because they can, and do. I don’t need to make lists for you. Even if you don’t read the news, you can read the shock and despair on your friend’s face. Even if you ask not to be told the details, every life lost is written in the sky. The birds sing a dirge, the wind paints colors of deep greys and bloody reds. Even if you turn away, where is there to turn to?
Where is refuge, sanctuary? Where can we take our weary bones and our broken hearts to rest and renew a moment, have a conversation with spirit who is always ready to talk, always ready to comfort.
You settle and listen. This is a time of darkness and despair, spirit says, when it seems like all is lost, and you nod, sinking down into a plush armchair that has miraculously materialized. This is a time of keeping still and holding firm to what you know to be true.
And what is that, you ask, exhausted beyond coherence.
That we are always present, walking you through the danger. That there is sanctuary to be had by simply coming to a place of shadow and silence and lighting a candle; that calling out from the depths of your longing as you struggle to make sense of this madness will always bring us to your side.
Sanctuary is anywhere you put down your doubts and fears for a moment and ask for help. Help to see beyond the current violence, help to keep from drowning in depression and anxiety.
Help is like Abracadabra, spirit says. It unlocks the genie waiting inside the bottle. It’s the last piece of the puzzle. It answers the question you didn’t know you needed to ask.
Help is the golden key that unlocks the door to a sanctuary you’ve glimpsed in dreams, a place of peace and light, of rest and renewal where we have been with you since the beginning and will walk with you until the very end. It is a place to lay the burden of your wounds down, a place to offer up your helplessness, your shattered heart to forces greater than your own.
Seeking sanctuary does not deny the brutality of the world, she continues, but gives you a glimpse into the forces at work, like huge gears grinding, that are beyond your understanding but not beyond your compassion. It is a pause to reclaim your dignity, the holiness of rest. Even a wounded world offers us moments of wonder and joy.
It’s the oldest trick in the book, spirit says, smiling. Ask and you shall receive. Ask for sanctuary and respite from the chaos and it shall be given any time you slow down enough, whether you are on a dance floor, in a second-hand bookstore, on a beach, in a forest or alone in a room with a white candle and a red rose.
No walls, no gates, only our choice again and again to remain human, to remain kind and patient and of service to each other.
It will all be there tomorrow, spirit says, offering you sweet tea, toast with jam, food for a child in need of comfort. But rest here today so that when you reenter the world you have been fortified with our blessings, and the key to the door marked Help.
Help, you say softly, and the door opens to a place of sanctuary where you are not alone, have never been alone, and the slow dance song playing on repeat in the background croons Love always wins. Love always wins.
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Read more stories like this in my book The Ripening: Essays on Love, Loss, Marriage and Aging, available from Amazon.
Nancy London 