Nearer, my Goddess, to Thee: Divine Communion and Mental Illness

Last updated on: March 19, 2018 at 1:47 am by Rev. Catharine Clarenbach

Nearer, my Goddess, to Thee: Divine Communion and Mental Illness 2018-03-19T01:47:57+00:00 Rev. Catharine Clarenbach

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Gratitude and grief

Yet I would not trade my life now, with its routines and planning and follow-through, even for the bright-and-dark Faces I saw–and brought to others–so easily back then. I would not trade it, but that doesn’t mean there’s no grief.

Do you understand? Do you understand that while I am grateful for health and for stable relationships with friends and family, I also miss that one, great, powerful, and easy relationship? Do you understand that while I still can sometimes touch the fingers of the Goddess in the stars at night, it is not because I walk enveloped in those stars, but because I seek them, yearn for them, slowly do the work to find them within me as powerfully as I see them without?

The work of spiritual practice is worth every minute, every cushion, every asana, every note of every song. It transforms my life and makes hard decisions a bit easier and make my day-to-day life run more smoothly. My work, my writing, my relationships, my ministry, the contours of my heart–spiritual practice makes all these more and more in the image of Love.

Spiritual practice helps hold me closer to Earth.

And yet, those (very good) reasons are not the only reasons I practice.

I also practice to catch the slightest ray of the blinding star in whose light the whole world used to shine.

The wonder of spiritual practice is that it somehow does both things: It smooths the edges of daily life, making them more manageable, fruitful, and consistent; and it helps bring me back into the light of that Divine Star.

Blessed be our many ways, our many journeys, our many roads to the horizon. Wherever we are in journeys of struggle, health, wellness, and dis-ease, blessed be our ways.

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