Staying Present In the Absence

Do you remember this scene in the movie The Holiday?

In a moment of disorientation, on the heels of a breakup, Amanda swaps homes with Iris, a woman from a small village outside of London. Both women want to spend Christmas far away from home.

Though Amanda expresses that she doesn’t want to be around any men, the Universe delivers a kind, lovely widower to her doorstep — Iris’ brother Graham. There’s an immediate connection, and although awkward at times, Amanda and Graham find themselves very unexpectedly smitten with one another.

Along the way, we learn Amanda has not cried for years — not since her parents split up when she was in middle school. Graham, on the other hand, is deeply in tune with his heart and recognizes the depth of his feelings in a way he can clearly articulate.

While Amanda is drawn to Graham, she does not have language for what’s happening inside of her or experience relating authentically amid the vulnerability that always accompanies love.

Their time together comes to an end, and it’s time for Amanda to return home to Los Angeles. As Amanda and Graham prepare to part ways, with no clear plan for when they’ll meet again, they agree not to say “goodbye,” but instead sign off with “be seeing you.”

On her way to the airport, we see Amanda sink into a moment of tender reflection. Surprise, relief, and a conscious taste of aliveness rise and melt the defenses she has (understandably) erected against loss. Long longed-for tears spill.

In my imagination, her tears say: “You are home.” And she listens.

Amanda asks her driver to turn around. She gets out of the car and runs back to the little cottage, where she finds Graham having a good cry of his own.

I adore how the movie ends – Amanda taking one more step toward Graham in this unexpected entangling of hearts rather than a vague allusion to an amorphous “happily ever after.”

Why am I writing to you about a Christmas movie from 2006? This scene bubbled up in my memory last week. It stirred something reminiscent in me. 

Like Amanda, I recently found myself in a moment of tender reflection on the way to the airport for a return flight home.

As my Uber driver pulled away from The Mercy Center, and I began the journey home from wisdom school, I was suddenly surprised by a subtle, but strong perception. An intuition. A knowing. It was the unmistakable felt sense of homesickness.

Tears quietly filled my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. I was leaving something dear to me.

Unlike Amanda, I was at a loss about how to respond to this pang of homesickness. There was no one to run to, nothing practical for me to do but be fully present in the moment, to savor it. 

I tuned into the somatic sensations and took an inner snapshot—the metaphorical “hair on the back of my neck” rising, a warmth and ache in my heart, a familiar gravity in my solar plexus.

Once buckled into my airplane seat, I took out my journal and wrote these questions:

What is this sense within me that says I’m leaving home when, in the outer world, I’m heading home?

Who or what is my heart attuned to at a level imperceptible to my conscious mind?

If I close my eyes now, I can still sink into that moment — tune into my felt sense of it.

I knew.

I know.

But I can neither hold onto nor articulate specifically what I know. There’s an absence that still lingers in me.

I’ve written about the disorientation I’ve experienced since my return from wisdom school. I’ve been more attuned to the physical world, but less connected to my dominant way of perceiving the world. I’m less eager than I can remember being while still present.

Until Friday, I felt somewhat responsible for this absence. It’s not unusual for me to feel this way when my tried and true ways of connecting with God don’t seem to be “working” anymore, and I’m being wooed into a new context of relating.

As I wrote about in this article, my discomfort and guilt around spiritual restlessness often leads me to blame myself to the tune of a Taylor Swift lyric: “It’s me, hi! I’m the problem, it’s me.”

On Friday my heart was drawn to a new audiobook as I was collaging. As is very often the case, I received the very message I needed to hear — one that I may share with you in the future.

There’s a quote from The Eye of the Heart that has always felt familiar to me, and I recognized at that moment that it gave words to my experience these past few months:

“You have to endure the tedium till something emerges in it,” is how Rafe once put it to me. If you really want to find out what lies behind the mind, the first step is simply to stay present to the absence, not try to fill it with something more familiar, like joy or despair. And yes, at first it feels like death; everything is so deathly monotonous minus that constant roaring and churning you mistake for being alive, But if you push through and watch very closely, something does indeed begin to emerge, bearing the faintest scent of “that other intensity.”

- Cynthia Bourgeault

I think the gift of wisdom school may have been a stripping away of another level of habitual dross — another fresh encounter with my ego’s sneaky ways — another invitation to notice I’m bracing so I can choose to soften into a grace that I can neither earn nor fall out of.

This is not the gift I’d hoped for from wisdom school, but it seems to be the one I needed most.

I have compassion for myself as I reflect, knowing that this is the way humans learn and become. The spiritual life is a series of opportunities to open incrementally to being loved and to the risk of loving.

So, like Amanda and Graham, I’m meeting this next moment with a heart as open as I can muster, taking a step into the unfamiliar. I’m releasing the compulsion to understand how it will all fit together and unfold.

A Blessing

Wisdom meets us in so many ways right in the middle of our lives. It can find us through a movie or a song, as we witness an act of courage, or tend our houseplants. May we have eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts to perceive, and the patience to let it ripen in us at its own pace.

Love, Kirsten

Questions for Reflection:

• What does this essay stir in you?

• What is intuition like in your body? What somatic sensations do you associate with knowing?

• What’s it like for you when spiritual restlessness arises?

Want to talk about what’s stirring in you?

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