The Gifts That Remain
Last week I wrote about leaving a spiritual community and the resulting feelings of loss, alienation, and estrangement. Today I’d like to tell you a story about an encounter that helped begin to set me free to heal the anger and sadness I felt after leaving church, and ultimately to continue on the seeker’s path.
It came from an unlikely place, from a teacher of philosophy during my Waldorf early childhood teacher training. After we enrolled our children at a Waldorf school, I got drafted into teaching early childhood education. Working in this magical space became part of my spiritual journey which was a delightful surprise. More on that another time. During teacher training, in addition to studying child development, teaching skills and personal development, we studied the esoteric writings of Rudolf Steiner. These were nearly incomprehensible to me, but we had a lovely teacher who guided us through. He was a gentle soul who one day talked about our experiences of religious or wisdom traditions, and what happens when it is time to move on.
This happened to coincide with my deepening crisis of faith and the growing anger I felt towards church. The teacher stood before us and spoke about leaving a tradition that he had grown up in, as if this tradition was physically on his right and the future was to his left. He turned to the right, to the past, and he brought his hands together at his heart in a prayerful position, bowed, and he quietly said “thank you” for all the gifts you've given to me. He turned back to center and then to the left indicating his step towards the future. He spoke so humbly that day that it echoes for me still.
I was not yet ready in that moment to thank the church for anything. I needed to feel the outrage, the anger, the sadness – I needed to grieve. I needed to draw some clear boundaries for myself of what I would no longer accept. But I would come back to this image of humbly bowing in gratitude and then moving on over and over. Mining my experience for the gifts became an important part of making peace with that part of my path. It has come to be an important practice for me as I have gone through additional stops on my spiritual journey.
Over time, the practice of acknowledging gifts with gratitude helped the anger and sadness to loosen. With this gratitude, I could carry gifts I had received forward with me – the rhythm of the year, the sacred feeling in cathedrals, the sensory experience of the rituals, the friendships.
A few years ago, I walked into Sacré-Coeur Basilica in Paris as a choir of nuns in full head-to-toe habits began to sing. Their voices filled that beautiful space, giving me goosebumps rather than anger. I was grateful that this was still a spiritual experience for me even though I was no longer Catholic.
As the anger and sadness eased, so did my estrangement from the Divine, and I could connect again with this Source.
Think of a spiritual home you have left behind. What were the gifts? What do you want to carry forward? What are you grateful for? May this exploration bring you peace and healing.