Inner Gathering: Introduction (Chapters 1 & 2)

We know that the wildest and most moving dramas are played not in the theatre but in the hearts of ordinary men and women who pass by without exciting attention, and who betray to the world nothing of the conflicts that rage within them. —Carl Jung

Introduction

1

The morning I first saw my ego, my great protector—in the pre-dawn darkness of a dingy hotel room, my wife sleeping with her back to me, our newborn son snurgling in a Pack ‘n’ Play wedged between our bed and the wall, his older brother drooling on a pillow in the adjacent bed—I had no idea what to call it. I remember thinking of it, in the moment, as “a prison of my own making.” It would be years before I’d see that the ego is less like a prison cell and more like a panic room. Not a barred jail. A safe harbor.

But on that first morning, all I saw was a prison.

I’ve never written about that first morning in its entirety, with all the details put back in it. Not for my readers. Not even for myself. Sure, I’ve mentioned parts of it in a couple of books, but those were the useful parts. Not the indescribable parts. Not the parts too wonderful for words. How do you write about the day your life—your sense of self, your capacity for love, your calling—changed on a dime? It’s daunting to write of something that can only be diminished in the telling of it.

Here, for the first time, I will be undaunted.

2

It’s Father’s Day morning 2008. I’m thirty-one years old. I’ve got a wife, two boys, a mortgage, a Ph.D., a burgeoning practice as a psychologist, and an intractable case of clinical depression.

I come to consciousness slowly, first wondering whether or not I might have drunk too much the night before at my sister-in-law’s wedding reception. A quick scan of my senses suggests I’m a little hung over, but only a little. You drink differently when you know two little boys will be waking you up at the crack of dawn. Inexplicably, on this morning, I’ve beat them to the punch. Or, perhaps, not inexplicably.

The next thing I notice is that I’m furious.

This, in and of itself, is not particularly unusual. In recent years, I’ve spent a lot of time a little furious and a little bit of time a lot of furious. I’ve also spent those years trying to rid myself of the anger. My motivations for this self-improvement are myriad.

For instance, I’m trying to be a good husband. My wife didn’t marry an angry guy. She married a relatively happy guy who could be a little neurotic but mostly adored her, and it seems like a terribly unfair bait-and-switch to have become this depressed and angry husband of hers.

Also, I’m trying to be a good father, and I can see how my anger is wounding my boys, like that Mother’s Day morning when Aidan pulled a potted plant off of his dresser onto new white carpet. Who puts white carpet in a toddler’s bedroom? In my anger, I don’t slow down to ask such questions. The ego never interrogates itself.

Not to mention, I’m trying to be a good Christian, and Christians don’t get angry, they get saved—mostly, it seems, by being nice. The Jesus I was taught about in Sunday school is endlessly patient and forgiving. They didn’t tell us the stories inconvenient to this image. The one where he calls the Pharisees “a brood of vipers.” The one where he calls his right-hand-man “Satan.” The one where he tells a woman with a sick kid to buzz off over and over again, because he’s trying to get a little rest. I know those stories now, but the roots of Sunday School Jesus run deep.

And underneath it all, unconsciously, I’m trying to be a good boy. It’s my lifetime project actually. To be a good boy. To please people. And to receive the kind of love in return which will finally make me feel at home. The equation makes some sense, I guess—make people happy and they’ll make you happy in return. Never mind that it has never worked for more than a day or two. That, I tell myself, is other peoples’ fault—the people I get angry at—and I just keep working the equation, trying to solve for the answer I want.

Just a little bit of happiness. Just a little bit of home.

So, in my quest to solve the equation, I’ve spent recent years reading countless self-help books in a plethora of categories: spiritual formation, personal transformation, relationships and communication, happiness and health, mindfulness and meditation. Great books. Helpful books. At least for a week or so. Until a kid spills potting soil all over his bedroom floor. Then it’s back to square one.

I have enough awareness to see the books aren’t working, so, on the eve of 2008, I make a New Year’s Resolution—I’m going to stop reading books and start practicing the things about which I’ve already read. Mindfulness. Meditation. Contemplative prayer. I’m actually going to go on the inward journey, rather than merely learning about it over and over again.

When January arrives, I begin. Each morning, when I wake, instead of starting my day right away, I breathe for a while. On the exercise bike at the gym, instead of reading, I reflect. When I pray, instead of asking for things, I start listening for things. I cheat on my no-books policy, just a little, and I allow myself one author. His name is Henri Nouwen. He becomes my guide into the human heart. He points me in the direction of my soul.

In May 2008, I arrive home from the gym one morning. My wife asks me how my workout went. I give her an answer she couldn’t see coming.

“I realized this morning that, my whole life, when I’ve imagined standing before God, he’s always pointing a finger at me and saying, ‘Kelly, you can do better, I’m disappointed in you.’ But that’s not the voice of God. That’s the voice of my shame, and I’ve been calling it God. I’ve never actually heard the voice of God. I’m going to start listening for the voice of God within me, the voice that calls me beloved.”

My wife looks at me like I’m crazy, and I am, if you define crazy as untethered from reality, which I am. I’m untethered from the reality I was given. I’m trying to listen my way into a new reality.

However, on the day of my sister-in-law’s wedding, on Marine Base Quantico in Virginia, I still haven’t heard that new voice. I’m suspended between realities. And I’m trying to be a great husband and father, supporting my wife while she participates in the bridal party by caring for the boys mostly on my own. Marine bases are short on toddler-friendly fare and I’ve grown short on patience, keeping my calm by focusing on that light at the end of the tunnel—the end of the evening reception, when I’ll finally get a little help with the boys and a little bit of attention from my wife.

The reception ends and we return to the hotel room, do all the bedtime things, and have just gotten the boys to sleep, when my wife’s phone buzzes. It’s her siblings—the party is just getting started at her sister’s house and they want her to be a part of it. I can’t blame them for wanting her there with them. After all, I married her because I wanted her there with me. And there’s the rub, of course. I believe I’ve earned her presence—that’s what the equation says should happen—and she’s screwing up the formula once again.

She leaves to celebrate with her family and, by the time she returns, I’m sound asleep, nursing a silent fury that will function like an internal alarm clock.

So, I’m not hungover when I awake, but I am angry. It’s Father’s Day morning after all, the one day every year I’m supposed to get what I want. And I do not want this tiny hotel room, or this lumpy pillow, or this saggy mattress, or the chore of children and packing and driving, or the loneliness at the center of me into which I resist falling with my equation and my good behavior and my anger.

Nevertheless, I have a new habit now. I don’t get up. I breathe. I move inward. I listen. I recall the words of Nouwen that I read the day before.