Fear, Danger, Winter, Light
I was recently reading Sarah Polley’s book, Run Towards the Danger. It was the title that grabbed me as I browsed along the shelves of our librarians’ weekly picks. Run towards the danger I thought to myself. The title came from advice given to her by the physician who was treating her for concussion.
The tendency to avoid unseemly noise and bothersome lights is exaggerated when one’s nervous system is disrupted by a concussion. Even small sounds, if at the wrong frequency, can be devasting. I know this from my own experience, and the last thing I would have guessed to do would be to run towards such dangerous sensory triggers, rather than avoid them and allow a gradual desentitization to occur.
I liked this theme, this new approach to rise and challenge that which is making life constricted and small. When senses are over reacting and indicating to the mind that something benign is unsafe, life becomes very contained, and the more you obey these danger signals, the smaller your living room becomes. I liked her doctor’s approach. It felt liberating and empowering, and, as Polley writes, it is not just applicable to concussion treatment.
This time of year, media representations of who we are supposed to be, how to socialize, what we will experience, eat, and even what we are to believe. Our sensory lives are taken up with subtle and overt messages that may or may not, miss the mark of our real life experience. How do we navigate what may feel like too many messages, noise, or information?
It would be cliché to say that this can be a difficult, as well as fulfilling, time of year. The traditions of many people come at this time in the northern hemisphere of shortest days and longest nights. We gather to light candles that increase in numbers as the days grow longer; we celebrate the soltice as it turns from the longest night into lighter, longer days; we celebrate messages of birth and hope of a better future. Gathering to feast is a most human way of communally acknowledging these natural wonders and changes.
Some of us plan all year for this season, finding bliss and fulfillment when it arrives and along the journey there. Others find it difficult, or avoid it altogether.
As a hospital Chaplain, I liked to spend Christmas Day filling in for my Christian colleagues so they could spend the time with their families. I would be called from one site to another in the hospital’s system, from the ER to the long term care home. There would be a son who faked a car accident so that his father wouldn’t know he’d actually stolen the family’s TV, or a Vietnamese priest who was all alone with no visitors in the care home on Christmas, or a child whose parents were in the midst of a nasty child custody dispute and aggravating his illness. I would step into these spaces with all of my hours of training and supervision and clinical experience, and mostly with deep reverance, and create a safe, sacred, space; for the danger to arise.
And, yes, it would arise. And, yes, the participants all ran towards the dangers they presented with, because they wanted relief from the fears that held them hostage within themselves and to each other. The wayward son confessed, and his father could chastise and then make up with him; the priest welcomed my company and became comforted and less isolated; and the child’s parents admitted their marital frustrations and stopped bickering at their ill son’s bedside.
Some danger is good to run towards. Having a guiding presence, such as Polley had with her physician, or a professional Chaplain or Spiritual Director or other clinician, can help make it possible to shine light on what seems dangerous, to help turn the darkness and danger into a passage of discovery and healing.
