A Community of Compassion
Its going to be okay, I pray. I look out the window at a winter wonderland .Gratitude helps you get though the day. "Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy;they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom" (Proust, Marcel )". Listening to Carrickfergus sung by Jim McCain and the Dubliners helps as well. My soul stirs as the father of a young baby with an autism spectrum disorder offers unconditional love in Ryans' Song, Shine .I hear of others being able to 'get their shine on. ' I am curious. How do you truly do that ?
Well, I started a gratitude journal years ago. In my journal, I have recorded the names of those who have loved me , hurt me, forgiven me, and those who have graced my life. Not so long ago, a young man I knew and loved, died of a narcotic overdose after living years of sobriety. Several months later, unexpectedly, I then found in my journal a notation of a phone call I received from him celebrating his early recovery. This entry was followed by one expressing my gratefulness for being unconditionally forgiven by his Mom for my inability to love her forever, my gratefulness for my fathers love and pride despite his illness of depression and alcoholism and my Mothers tender listening ear and loving guidance. Why did this beautiful young man and so many others have to die ? Am I to be grateful for the teachings of his death ?
"Gratitude is not only the greatest virtue but the parent of all others ( Cicero ). To go forward from a place of pain, w, can carefully listen and follow the Seven Sacred Teachings, Niizhwaaswi gagiikwewin ( Bouchard, D., Martin, J.) with the hope of living in peace and harmony.with All your Relations". Prophecies tell us this is the time for One Heart, One mind and One Drum.There is hope .
The Teachings-Humility, Honesty, Respect, Courage, Wisdom, Truth and Love. Where to look for love? Within yourself. You cannot love another unless you first love yourself .
This morning, U-tube also offers The Last Great Love song , sung by Finbar Fleury, an Irish mistral who touches my heart. Love has a way of never letting go; that's the good and the bad, right? James Blunt sings , with conviction. "Did I disappoint you or let you down ? I am here for you. if you only you can. You touched my heart, you touched my soul, I shared your dreams and shared your bed. Good bye my love, good bye my friend. As you move on , remember us, remember me. I know your fears and you know mine. I cannot live without you"-but we must. The others we love after death of illness, overdose or suicide, still need us , still love us , still require our honest courage, grounded in humility, need us to offer wisdom and, respect for life .There is truth in that, as we regain our bearings, initially reeling in despair, gut-sick .
Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk , poet, scholar and human rights activist humbly bestows wisdom -there are elements of healing that lie outside the mind and body of the individual. He believes there are cultural and collective elements of health.He writes " living in an unhealthy environment where people seek only to satisfy sensual desires can cause collective suffering , despair and depression. A larger community that is committed to spiritual, physical and metal health is our best opportunity for healing" (Thich Nhat Hanh, The Energy of prayer How to deepen your spiritual practice, 2006).
How do we build Community? Jean Vanier, Canadian founder of L-Arche , in 1964, a world -wide community celebrating the commonalities of all people, and the gift of those with intellectual disabilities , wrote "coming from broken families where there is a lack of warmth and love, young people are in desperate need of communities where they can find their deeper selves and experience values that give meaning and a certain structure to their lives." (pg 4). This cry of anguish and loneliness for a sense of belonging , is a prophetic sign of what is lacking in the world and in the Church, not only for them but for all." ( pg 5).
Tears ago and years ago, I was told by a 18 year old homeless Ojibway young man, that injecting heroin into his arm was "feeling like the love of God was caressing my heart ".My client looked me in the eyes and said " if you have something better that that too offer to me , give er , I am all ears". At that moment, I did not have the knowledge , wisdom or humility to offer him what he deserved. He had joined one of the Indigenous gangs based in Winnipeg who control the drug and sex trade in Kenora, to belong, to have a purpose to get up in the morning, to share a false sense of security and to partially fill an spiritual void deep inside him. His seeds of soullessness were planted when he was apprehended by a underfunded Indigenous child welfare agent at birth.His grandparents were abused while attending Cecil Jeffries, a Kenora residential school.His mother was conceived in a crack house and born in a snow bank, in a blizzard .His father, was sold by his father, in a deal in prison to settle a drug debt , to a pedophile. His parents, both sexually and physically abused,found early solace in alcohol , solvents and the huffing of glue. This seed was watered by 14 foster home placements in which he learned to survive by trusting no one, pruned by incarnations in crime schools and brought to bloom by crystal methamphetamine and heroin. Children , not loved or wanted, seal themselves off from the world, feeling unloved and worthless. They awake each day cold and hungry, with a sense of self-loathing and worthlessness. An over powering sense of shame for all they had done or not done, fuels anger and despair.
Gratitude can be an affirmation that we are not alone, that there exists something outside of ourselves, that is bigger then we are, that contributes to the positive in our lives.For homeless individuals, these positives can be few and far between. Gratitude improves physical health, strengthens relationships and builds community. Rather than being a passive emotion, it can spur one into action. Hope can be elusive amongst the marginalized .As a psychiatrist consulting to the Kenora Association for Community Living in Northwestern Ontario, when worried about the presence of a depression , I ask" do you feel hopeless, helpless and worthless?" .Yes, yes and yes is what I hear,.Hope can be the source from which happiness, a sense of renewal and life purpose , grows. There can be little gratitude if there is first not hope.The best seeds of hope are planted in the fields of resilience in a community vowing to not repeat the atrocities of history inflicted on Indigenous individuals,committed to healing together with forgiveness and trust , reducing the need for soul-killing substances.
Psychiatrist Victor Frankl offered lessons for spiritual survival in Nazi death camps in his book , Mans Search for Meaning ( Frankl, V., 1959). Upon their liberation , survivors of concentration camps could not initially remember the meaning of freedom. As they walked away from Hell ,Frankl wrote, "we came to meadows full of flowers.We saw and realized what they were there, but we had no feelings about them.The first spark of joy came when we saw a rooster with a tail of multicolored feathers. But it remained only a spark: we did not belong yet to this world (Frankl,V. Mans Search for Meaning, pg 89). Bitterness and disillusionment followed as they returned to their former lives". He worked to help his patients acknowledge that, although suffering is inevitable in life , if we can find meaning in this suffering, we can move forward, shedding anger that destroys the container containing it. The concept of post-traumatic growth has emerged from this concept; the embracimg as a truth that a life on the street , proceeded by a childhood of abuse, temporarily numbed by drugs and alcohol, can be a life of meaning and fulfillment.
This does not come easily or quickly. Initial promises of sobriety are thwarted by relapse.We relapse when we are hungry , tired, anger, sad ,scared, happy, bored, lonely, in physical pain, or just at the wrong place, with the wrong people , at the wrong time. As a caring community, we could choose to decriminalize drug procession ( as occurred in Portugal with remarkable results ) or at least address the appalling inequalities in our Judicial system which disproportionately fill our prisons with Indigenous individuals.We need to all access to primary medical care when needed, and not weeks later.We can fund needle exchange programs to reduce the transmission of Hepatitis B and C and HIV and protect ourselves and our children.Insisting on complete abstinence as a condition to entering substance dependence treatment systems will seldom work. Embracing the principles of Harm Reduction can be helpful. Earning trust with non judgement and unconditional positive regard is a beginning. Recognizing shared humanness when it stares you in the face and looks so different, so ugly, so scarred and so much more brutal than you thought it would, may be a blessed new start for all. As health care providers, we can meeting suffering people where they are rather than where we feel they should be.We can educate community members to reduce stigma; spreading the truth,, that there but for the grace of God or the Creator goes you and I, our friends, family and our loved children. We can become trauma -informed .The use of substances to alter reality is exactly that, an escape from a life you would not wish on anyone. Abstinence is just the beginning in a healing journey. Please dismiss the idea that safe consumption sites enable addictions.Statistically, they do not. They keep people alive until they are prepared to commit to a new life they had lost hope in.
Choose to be loving to yourself . Take good care, as you walk forward, sharing the road of healing with your fellow human beings. Community will follow.