Occasionally in my life, I encounter stories, essays, movies, novels that touch the core of my being, nurture my soul and inflame the light of hope within me that I am not the only one experiencing life like this, that there is indeed somebody else in this cosmos who “gets it”, who is much like me, a kindred spirit, a soul sibling.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a loving family and a very loving and supportive husband whom I treasure and love. But even with so much support and love surrounding me, there are still those days when the prevailing atmosphere in my mind carries with it dark clouds of lightning, thunder and rain felt emotionally by feelings of exhaustion, apathy, longing and defeatist thoughts towards myself. Thoughts that remind me of the zeal I had as a young man, the dreams I had, the courage and confidence I had that I WAS going to make a difference.
Those thoughts remind me that the zeal I once had has evaporated. Remind me those dreams I once had — of being a writer, of living a life of service to God and others, of not “selling out” — have blown away with the winds of life in the “real world”. Those thoughts ask me, “Where’s your confidence now? Where is that courage? What difference have you really made?”
Such is the life of a sojourner trekking their spiritual journey living with mild chronic depression.
Luckily, during extended periods of these dark clouds in my mind, the universe, God, the fates smile on me and serendipitously bring into my path a movie, a story, a novel, a book, an essay that speaks to the core of my being and inflames that light of hope within.
One of the earliest memories I had of these serendipitous encounters was as a young adult in my mid 20’s when I ventured to the movies by myself one afternoon. I had been on a pastoral year from my seminary studies with a Roman Catholic diocese and had made the decision after much discernment to leave the diocese and move “out East.” The movie “Shadowlands” about the life of C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman had just came out. Anthony Hopkins portrayed C.S. Lewis and Debra Winger portrayed Joy Davidman. That movie spoke deeply to the young soon to be ex-seminarian who was leaving his hometown in the next few weeks to move out to the east coast.
The movie ends with a monologue voice over of Anthony Hopkins (portraying C.S. Lewis) saying: “We read to know that we are not alone. Some would say, we love in order to know that we are not alone. Would you agree? ….. Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; except the life I’ve lived. Twice in my life I have been given the choice — as a young boy and as a man. The boy chose security. The man? Suffering. The happiness then is part of the pain now.“
The entire movie spoke deeply to me but it was the closing quote that really touched my soul. It touched me so much so that I made sure I cleared up my afternoon the following day so I could return to the theatre and see the movie again and write down the closing quote. This was before the Internet when you could Google “Anthony Hopkins, Shadowlands, Quotes” and I couldn’t bear the thought of waiting 18 – 24 months for the movie to get on video so I could rent it and write down the quote.
“We read to know that we are not alone. Some would say, we love in order to know that we are not alone. Would you agree? ….. Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; except the life I’ve lived. Twice in my life I have been given the choice — as a young boy and as a man. The boy chose security. The man? Suffering. The happiness then is part of the pain now.“
Anthony Hopkins, portraying C.S. Lewis in the 1993 movie Shadowlands
Other serendipitous encounters that would speak to the core of my soul and inflame that light of hope would occur in 1996 when I would read Peter Gadol’s latest novel Closer to the Son. The protagonist, Brad Gray, is house sitting his way across the country from New York to California after the loss of his lover to AIDs. In one part of the novel, Brad describes how the physical touch of someone he is with “brings him back into the land of the living.” Those words spoke deeply to the young me coming out of the closet at the time and learning to accept and love myself as God had created me instead of trying to “wish to be normal.”
The next such encounter with literature that would speak deeply to my soul and inflame that light of hope within me would occur while reading Rick Bragg’s memoir All Over but the Shouting. His recollections of growing up in a dysfunctional, chaotic and emotionally volatile family environment and how he conquered the demons from his past and achieved becoming the prize winning journalist that made him famous resonated with my own family experience and gave me hope that I too could overcome the past and achieve any goal or dream I dared to set.
That would soon be followed by the serendipitous experience of reading Michael Lowenthal’s novel The Same Embrace about identical twins Jacob and Jonathan — one a gay right’s activist and the other an Orthodox yeshiva student in Israel. The struggle between the twins as it reveals their sameness and their differences resonated with me a gay, former seminarian, coming to know and love myself as a young adult and the relationship I had with my own twin brother as he entered graduate school at Oral Roberts University.
The most recent such encounter occurred this past week when I read an essay my twin brother forwarded the link to a me few weeks ago simply stating, “Read this, I think you will like it.”
The article was Barret Swanson’s Lost in Summerland published in the December 2019 edition of The Atavist Magazine. The summary of the article states “At the world’s largest gathering of psychics and mediums, two brothers confront a painful secret.”
Please check it out yourself. No spoilers here. I won’t give away any details other than to say it describes the trip two brothers now living across the country from each other make to Lily Dale one summer to experience all that the Spiritualist camp there has to offer and in the process, not only does a greater awareness, acceptance and understanding of each other occur but an unexpected healing and self awareness occurs.
Barrett Swanson has a gift of making non-fiction draw you in to the tale like a close confident and old trusted friend as he tells you about Andy’s traumatic nearly fatal assault and the impact the special trait Andy is left with had on their relationship over the years and how it brought the two of them on their journey to Lily Dale. As the story unfolds, Barrett draws the reader closer into his confidence leading to its culmination as Barrett and Andy attend their last gathering at Lily Dale.
Summerland, that astral locale of Spiritualist heaven and the Theosophist soul weigh station between incarnations, where souls like C.S. Lewis, Peter Gadol, Michael Lowenthal and Barrett and Andy Swanson and myself get a glimpse of the interconnectedness of us all and the reality of never being truly alone. Encounters like these give hope that not only we may see and honor this interconnectedness, but all will someday see and honor it and respect it.
From Shadowlands, to life in the real world, to Summerland, keep the hope alive.