Spiritual Questing Through Grief

Matt Schultz; 2/23/2008

Every trip takes a turn around a bend at some point and then you are headed home. This is usually more of a shift in mindset than trajectory or distance traveled. It is a point at which the sights and attraction seem to melt away, losing their allure and awe and we can’t help wanting to be at that place we call home. If it is a long road trip like my recent adventure then you have ample time to think of what home means to you. My current battle with colon cancer and the old family Christmas picture in my wallet put it into very clear view for me.

There was a time in this young man’s life though when that turning point hit me like a tornado hits a small town. Instead of a clearer focus, my lens was shattered completely. In fact, instead of that gentle yearning for the comforts of a well-loved home I was jolted to what felt like an alternative life to the one that had lead me to that point. The names, people and geography were all the same but the relationships had completely changed. Nothing would ever be the same. Even my quest to get to know a God I thought that I was maybe beginning to understand was thrown into faith searching oblivion. The Almighty had gone back to the Great Mystery and that is the story I would like to share with you today.

This is not a story I have shared with many. It may have meaning for you, perhaps something to learn from or a message. I don’t know. For me it is a story that changed the course of my life and my ideas of faith and God. What I ask of you is to simply be a listener and in the end the telling will at the least be good for me and interesting to you.

Before jumping to the climactic event I need to briefly lay some groundwork or background so you can share somewhat in my perspective. I grew up and sort of had the run of a 400 acre farm at the end of the road in one of this areas many beautiful valleys. My view of the world as being large and full of adventure was set early. Not to mention my passion for all things natural. Animals wild and domestic flowed in and out of my daily life, trees were like friends and building forts was my occupation.

Just like the hills surrounding our farm created a barrier from the outside world, there was an invisible barrier that seemed to keep out great sadness or grief while I was growing up. I knew the reality of death. Pets were lost, animals shot and livestock slaughtered, but none of my family including many cousins, aunts, uncles or grandparents bore any tragedy or grave illness while I was young. I shed tears over the loss of animals I loved dearly but knew nothing really about human loss and grief.

I grew up going to church pretty much every Sunday at a Lutheran church in a small Catholic town. I learned to repeat the creeds, confess my state of sin and bow my head at the communion rail. Overall it was a good experience, I even sort of enjoyed confirmation class and learning about Martin Luther. By the time I was graduating from high school though I decided to take a serious look at whether conventional Christianity was something I should spend the rest of my life following. I had my reservations and was leaning more towards a follower of Thoreau.

At Waldorf College in Forest City , Iowa I read theologians, philosophers, historians, and the Bible itself to try to uncover what was the truth and what was myth. By the end of my freshman year I had drawn no conclusion, but remained open-minded. I would say that I had sort of a Joseph Campbell view of things.

After a summer off and only one year left at the small Lutheran 2-year college I decided to give Christianity a full on chance. I joined the chapel band, the campus outreach group, still sang in the choir, and had a bible study and prayer group. I have to say that I enjoyed almost all of it. My interpretation of Biblical stories were often different but it did no deter me from the experience. Deep down I had decided there was a God of some sort and I liked this Jesus fella. I still had my reserves about creedal belief statements. I started praying and listening more on my own until one day I had my own born again type of experience. One can write it off to my age, deep searching or longing, but it was very real to me. I remember feeling that I would never find any definitive answers and my own imperfections as a human being came to the forefront of my mind. I felt a real need or grace and so I prayed for it. All I can say is that I was overcome with emotion. Tears flowed and there was a feeling of lightness. At that moment I left the search for facts and ideas and embraced the so-called faith of a child. It really was exhilarating and the end of my time at Waldorf was really fantastic. My favorite writer at that time was C. S. Lewis.

After touring Eastern Europe for a month with the Waldorf Choir I left Waldorf for a job at Wilderness Canoe Base on the edge of the Boundary Waters where my faith and love for wild places could mix. I quite honestly was in love with God and found great comfort in the teachings of Jesus. The Lutheran affiliated camp with a mission to work with inner-city and church youth seemed a perfect fit. I had decided I wanted to seek what Jesus sought rather than simply try to keep my euphoria going. I began learning what I could about other religions to see where they might fit into my experience. I remember reading and enjoying Khalib Gibran, Stephen Mitchell, the Tao Te Ching, Ghandi, Black Elk, Siddhartha , the Gospel of Thomas and Krishnamurti. My prayer practice turned more to meditating on chakras and I learned a little Yoga. I was all over the board but it helped me to see the nuggets of truth in the New Testament that were hiding amongst the stories. After four summers and one entire year at the camp I still felt a strong connection with God or the Great Spirit but my open-mindedness kept things changing.

One thing that hadn’t changed was my strong sense of connection to the natural world. My church had become the wilderness where human hands had not yet dealt their blow. This lead me to longer and more involved trips. My time spent working with kids in this setting and sense of calling eventually lead me back to school in Duluth to become a teacher. When given the opportunity to student teach in New Zealand I couldn’t resist. I went early to hitchhike and backpack wherever I could. My student teaching assignment was in a small seaside community north of Wellington. At the end of that rewarding experience my Dad came to visit for the holidays. I planned a great trip. We hiked and explored our way down the South Island to our biggest adventure. We would charter a flight into the most inaccessible fiord, Doubtful Sound and spend 4-5 days hiking to a lake where we could take a long boat ride back to our rented car. We were excited, the flight was amazing, and I was still tickled to be having these adventures with my dad. It was his first time outside the states.

We spent the first day in a little, yellow dinghy hopelessly trying to catch some cod and then some trout at the mouth of the river. The next day we started a sunny, hike up a lush valley. We had lunch on a large boulder underneath a giant beech tree at the edge of the river. We had a couple more hours of hiking and plenty of daylight since this part of New Zealand only had 6 hours of darkness on December 21^st. We hoped to try for some trout again. I hadn’t realized that I had lead most of the day so my dad asked to take the front with about a half hour left. We were working our way around a lake when our trail became steep. After angling up for awhile my dad started to work his way down to a small clearing where the trail appeared to go. It didn’t look right to me so I looked around and found that the trail actually made an easy switchback. Turning to tell my dad , I heard a branch break and saw the weight of his pack pull him back, he rolled through some thick, but weak vegetation and fell a great distance down a steep face where the trees had peeled away some time before in their own landslide. It happened so quick, yet I knew he could not have survived. I yelled for him and then took off running down the trail making pleas with God for some kind of miracle.

Internally I leapt back to that resurrection faith I had at age 20 and 21. Time is irrelevant in these situations but I imagine it took me an hour to an hour and a half to find my dad. The whole time I was begging for mercy or a miracle. I wanted the faith of a child again. I thought of the mustard seed parable Jesus told and longed to be able to move mountains with my belief. Well, No mountain move for me. I finally found my dad and the moments that followed are deeply haunting. The reality of the situation hit me like the landslide I stood on. I had to leave me dad against a mossy stone where he could be seen and I began the hike or run out. Everything except essentials were thrown out of my pack in disarray. The 4 day hike took me 24 hours and and it took the authorities 4 days to get the airlines to fly my dad’s body and I home on Christmas Day.

There are many more details to the story, but for the sake of sticking to the topic I’ll try to skip ahead. The call home was torturous and arriving home left me feeling numb. After a few months the numbness started to wear off. I found myself angry at the indifference of some higher power, but I tried to remain open to that experience with the divine I had felt before. I went for walks on the farm pleading for some help, I journaled and prayed and tried reading some of the Bible again. I was fighting despair and depression and wanted back the joyous life that had been rendered from me. At a particularly tough time the Waldorf Choir which I had sung first tenor in came to little Arcadia for a concert. My dad loved listening to the choir and had convinced them after three years to come give a concert. It was poorly attended because my dad was supposed to do the promotions but my old choir director told the choir to sing out for me. It was deeply moving and so strange that my dad had planned this concert and there I was needing it so badly. I joined them at the end for Beautiful Savior and wished I could go back to that innocent time. It was obvious I needed to continue with my life. Shortly after the concert I started looking for teaching jobs and began a relationship with my future partner.

The grief took years to quell as well as the post-traumatic stress, but I felt good about pursuing life rather than settling into despair. It may have seemed that agnosticism was my new outlook but I badly wanted to rekindle a relationship with a God who now seemed silent when I needed that grace the most. I grieved not only for my dad but also for the joy I had for life when I had that type of faith. I couldn’t find it and it was not for the lack of trying. I knew there was something real about what I had experienced before and I wasn’t going to give up on it although it left me frustrated spiritually. What I didn’t see was that the grace I needed was actually right there for me in relationships with caring friends and family, and especially Sarah who kept me looking forward to the future during some difficult times.

Sarah and I had a great wedding and after moving to Winona we attended First Congregational for about 5 years but eventually I had to stop because it was just not a good fit for where I was at. In my frustration I finally declared that I gave up trying to find God. I felt I had more than lived up to my end of the bargain. At that moment I felt at peace. The search was over, I felt comfortable with the Mystery of it all. The throwing in of the towel actually left me ready for a different idea of the divine or holy. Like all good misfits, Sarah and I found our way to Unitarian Universalism where I found my appreciation for seeking the truth wherever it can be found.

It may have been having children, or being in a committed marriage or simply the passage of time, but I do still have a connection to what is commonly called God, or Great Mystery, or Wakan Tanka/Great Spirit. This notion has come to mean things that are more real to my life experience. It is hard to categorize these sorts of beliefs as they get more abstract. For me it can be boiled down to these three things:

1. The Holy or God within – I love the greeting Namaste’ . This belief that we all have that holy spark in us really helps me as a teacher at times.

2. The Divine or Spirit we share in relationships –I really feel that in all relationships there are wonderful things that can happen when they are done right. Things of course can also go terribly wrong. Seeing each relationship as a gift helps keep them in the right perspective.

3. The Mystery or Wonder we find in Nature. My connection to land and soil are very real to me. It is no great surprise to me that all the elements on this planet are found in us in at least trace amounts. We are all made of stardust.

These three things combined in me to renew a faith and rekindle a relationship I thought was lost in the whirlwind of tragedy. Now I write my own creed,

look for the grace in each moment,

and take communion in the garden.

I have to admit that I do miss the bread and the wine, I miss baptisms and familiar hymns, and I miss the stories and parables. But they are right their waiting for me when I need them.

I would like to close with my own little parable. There are many metaphors about life as a river or water crossing but I like to think of myself as a skipping stone.

There is a beach full of small rocks where the Great Stone Thrower likes to walk. She makes her way barefooted along the beach picking up stones with her dark hands. She studies the stone and with the whip of her arm and flick of a wrist she sends it sailing just over the calm waters of a crystal, clear sea. Sometimes a stone flies out a long way before it starts to hit the surface and some hit the surface immediately and sink. At the bottom they join sand and other stones. The waves work them back up to the beach over time where the stone thrower will find them again. When a stone is thrown it never knows how many skips it will make. Some skip countlessly, feeling the wet sea briefly but finding air again to carry them a little farther. Others skip hard with a slap and then make it up for a long second flight. Each stone is different and each throw is different but they all sink to the bottom of the sea and eventually make their way back to the beach, just a little more worn.