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Wild Goose Publications - Donald Eadie

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137 pages

English

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Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	Wild Goose Publications
Date de parution	09 avril 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781849526616
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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Shortly after becoming Chairman of the Birmingham District of the Methodist Church, Donald Eadie was told that he had a degenerative disc disease. Following three major spinal operations, he was forced to retire, and to face the letting go of identity and role, feelings of marginalisation and abandonment – living with the death of the old life, and not being able to imagine a new one with meaning and purpose.
Jesuit priest and writer Gerard Hughes accompanied Donald during this time. ‘The borderlands are the place of exploration and discovery. They are the new centre,’ he said. And paradoxically, in time, Donald began to experience the move away from the centre of a busy life to the edge as a journey deeper into the heart of things.
‘There will be new companions,’ another wise old friend promised. And to Donald’s great surprise and joy this has been true.
Much of Donald’s time is now lived in ‘a loved room’, visited by people who are also pilgrims within the borderlands.
Into the Foothills of Transformation is a collection of Donald’s reflections and journal writings, and letters, prayers and poems.
Donald’s previous book is Grain In Winter .
www.ionabooks.com
Into the Foothills of Transformation
Donald Eadie
Copyright © 2019 Donald Eadie
First published 2019
Wild Goose Publications 21 Carlton Court, Glasgow G5 9JP, UK www.ionabooks.com Wild Goose Publications is the publishing division of the Iona Community. Scottish Charity No. SC003794. Limited Company Reg. No. SC096243.
PDF: ISBN 978-1-84952-660-9 ePub: ISBN 978-1-84952-661-6 Mobi for Kindle: ISBN978-1-84952-662-3
Cover photograph by Tommy Lisbin, used under a Creative Commons licence.
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.
All rights reserved. Apart from reasonable personal use on the purchaser’s own system and related devices, no part of this document or file(s) may be transmitted in any form, by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Commercial use: For any commercial use of the contents of this book, permission must be obtained in writing from the publisher in advance.
Donald Eadie has asserted his right in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is dedicated to my wife Kerstin , our daughters Nicola and Annika and their families.

‘So to claim back the night is to claim darkness as a time for growth and transformation. It is to free darkness of its overtones of evil and sin and see it as potential richness, fertility, hidden growth and contemplation, as nature broods and contemplates in winter, seemingly inactive, yet preparing for the birthing of spring. It is in darkness that new vision is born … But just as the “work of winter” is indispensable, so the period of darkness has its own tools and activity. Although there is no comfort and even no real hope experienced for the future, and memories of the past bring no security, the process demands that we move forward, with anger, rage and grief our tools, the solidarity of support groups our resource, trust in the absent God our guide – to an alternative we have no name for, only yearning.’
– Mary Grey in Redeeming the Dream , SPCK, 1989
Contents
In gratitude
Introduction
The foothills of transformation
Into the foothills of transformation
Echoes of an inner yet cosmic music
Changing the world, ‘Yes’ to rejoining the revolution (a work in progress)
On being human
Vulnerability as the heart of transformation
On the nature of being
A search for identity, living with adoption
A search for identity, living with adoption
Living with not knowing, holding and being held
A dream and a dream beyond that dream
The search for Joseph, the father in the shadows
Is this not Joseph’s son?
On returning home after the launch of the book Chosen: Living with Adoption
The body, wonder and pain: glimpses of transformation
The body, wonder and pain: glimpses of transformation
Discovering community, an unexpected solidarity
Scars and scar tissue
Wounds and blessings, a search for meaning
Learning to live with pain
The accident, ‘Receive the gift of the old man’
The muddy path of an older pilgrim
The Pain and Hope Group
What helps us in the management of physical and emotional pain and who comes to our aid
Praying the body, what could this look like?
Ageing, ‘Yes’ to the next stage of the journey: the consent to be transformed
An ‘Aha moment’
Transforming encounters
The arrival of asylum seekers in a small Swedish village: discovering the human being in each other
Where East meets West: Istanbul
The return of Godflesh: barking back
Epilogue
Another ‘Aha moment’
A letter
A prayer for handing over and entrusting
A Eucharistic liturgy and other resources
A Eucharistic liturgy
Other resources
In gratitude
I am grateful to Neil Paynter, editor at Wild Goose Publications, for his invitation, in December 2015, to share with him reflections and meditations written over the years: ‘I like a journey and discovering threads … I imagine some of those pieces will “just” need careful copy-editing, tidying, proofing, and some might need a little development, shaping …’
In the spring and summer of 2016 I experienced debilitating pain and a loss of confidence and energy. It was in the late autumn that I began working on both the completed and almost completed writing, seeking the threads, a possible shape, an overall theme and title. It has been, and remains, a work in process. I wrote to Neil, ‘I seek your wisdom to transform this writing into becoming more accessible and helpful.’ Above all he has encouraged me to work with what is emerging. His invitation has felt providential and I am profoundly grateful to him personally and to members of the Iona Community.
I am also grateful to Peter Whale, Peter Cole and Valerie Edden who saw more in the writing than first I recognised, encouraged me to ‘stay with it’, and advised on what would make the text more readable. Valerie knew when the time had come to ‘hand it over’, and more recently to ‘let go’ of the book permitting it to travel where it will.
Joanna Burnett has been a soul friend with the writing on adoption; she inhabits the dark, silent and lonely corridors of the adoption journey with such humility and wisdom.
Bernie Arscott and Merlin Young know the mystery of the human body and have become more than mentors: they are trusted companions.
Jane Walton has read and critiqued the body section of the book with shrewd wisdom and is much more than a retired senior nurse. Neil Richardson is a former colleague and a friend, a New Testament scholar and a man in the world.
Ursula and John Turner are our oldest shared friends, still waiting for me to write about ‘life’ in ways they can understand. So I will watch their furrowed brows, and hopefully, their creasing smiles.
Most of all I am grateful to my family, who have accompanied me through so much that I have written about. They have read and re-read different sections of the book, encouraging and challenging me – especially my language!
There is one more person. In June 2013 Father Stan accompanied me in an eight-day silent retreat at St Beuno’s Jesuit Spirituality Centre near St Asaph in North Wales. He urged me to write about the new life I am discovering.
Note:
John Turner died in September 2018.
Introduction
Increasingly I wonder about the nature of transformation and those transformative encounters that bring us to a place of wonder, gazing and trembling. It is within these foothills that I invite the reader to explore. It is my hope that all kinds of people will find enough resonances within their humanity to bring them to smile in recognition.
In my book Grain in Winter I wrote of our learning to wait within the ‘in-between times’, and what sustains us during periods of bewildering and messy transitions. It was written for those of us who face change in our lives but do not know what that change might entail nor where it may lead. The writing emerged during three long periods of convalescence following spinal operations in the 1990s. The new life that emerged was different to anything I could have planned or would have chosen and had implications for our family in ways we could not have anticipated. I am learning that sometimes within our loss and grieving, disappointments and rage, fears and tears there is a loosening, a cracking open and a fresh flowing of life, a freedom permitting a deeper yet hidden realignment, and a joyful inner homecoming. These experiences are essentially intermingling, not to be held as separate. I have struggled to find these words and hope they may resonate.
I find this same paradox resonating within Christian tradition and in particular in the life, the death that leads to entombment, and the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. We cannot box these transitions into three separate religious compartments; to do so is to miss what is essentially all intertwined within life’s wonder and perplexity.
I want to explore these transforming encounters within a wide variety of thresholds, including the basement of a textile factory; the experience of being adopted; a classroom of children; living with a body which knows both pleasure and pain; the arrival of asylum seekers in a small Swedish village; taking off our shoes in our local mosque … I describe these encounters in what some describe as ‘Donald language’, namely ‘third-day resonances’.
In recent years there have been two further periods in hospital. One for a bypass operation in my left leg leading to a fasciotomy, a surgical procedure resulting in a long wound that remained open for nearly f