Restoring Life's Missing Pieces: The Spiritual Power of Remembering and Reuniting with People, Places, Things and Self

By Caren Goldman and Dr. Nancy Copeland-Payton

A powerful and thought-provoking look at "reunions" of all kinds as roads to remembering and re-membering ourselves.

“Reunions with people, places, things, and ourselves happen every day around us and within us. Whether to participate or not will always be your choice.”
—from the Introduction

Explore humankind's timeless, universal and deeply spiritual desire to reunite for the sake of healing and wholeness. Whether we wander far from home or reminisce from our favorite armchair, people of all faiths or none whatsoever undertake journeys to remember, restore and re-member the missing pieces of our stories, psyches and souls:

• Do you occasionally Google a person from your past in hopes of “catching up”?
• Do you leaf through old address books to try to call someone for the first time in decades?
• When you visit gravesites or memorials, can you pinpoint what drew you there?
• Have you felt an urge to revisit your birthplace or travel to your ancestors’ homelands?
• Do you feel compelled to attend an upcoming high school, family or other reunion? If not, why not?

Delve deeply into ways that your body, mind and spirit answer the Spirit of Re-union’s calls to reconnect with people, places, things and self.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
• Release date: May 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781594733512

Caren Goldman

Caren Goldman, award-winning journalist and spiritual retreat leader, is author of Restoring Life's Missing Pieces: The Spiritual Power of Remembering and Reuniting with People, Places, Things and Self and Healing Words for the Body, Mind and Spirit: 101 Words to Inspire and Affirm, associate editor of Bible Workbench and contributing writer to www.explorefaith.org. Hundreds of her freelance articles on spirituality, health and religion have appeared in national magazines including New Age Journal, Natural Health, Yoga Journal, Intuition and Spirituality and Health. She also works as a conflict resolution consultant to churches, synagogues and not-for-profit organizations. Caren Goldman is available to speak on the following topics: Restoring Life's Missing Pieces: Discovering the Spiritual Power of Reunions with People, Places, Things and Self Healing Words for the Body, Mind and Spirit: The Amazing Power of Words to Heal and to Harm Finding Jesus, Discovering Self: Living the Questions of a First-Century Jew Between the Lines: Seeing Jesus the Jew with New Eyes Call Me Skewish: The Spiritual Joys of a Both/And Marriage Click here to contact the author.

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Introduction

reunion (noun)

1. An act of reuniting: the state of being reunited.

2. A reuniting of persons after separation.

Was it a month ago, a week ago, or just an hour ago that somebody, somewhere, asked you to friend them on Facebook or to attend a wedding, bar mitzvah, baptism, or anniversary celebration? When was the last time someone died and you knew unquestionably that you would drop your plate and everything on it to get to the funeral? After staying away for years, do you suddenly find yourself heading out to worship in community for Easter, Rosh Hashanah, or Eid-ul-Fitr? Have you recently felt an urge to revisit your birthplace or to travel to your ancestors’ homelands? Do you occasionally Google a person from your past in hopes of catching up? Or do you prefer leafing through an old, yellowed address book, then trying to call someone for the first time in decades? When you visit loved ones’ gravesites or memorials for victims of wars or other tragedies, can you pinpoint what drew you there? Do you have a high school, college, family, or other commemorative gathering coming up for the fifth, tenth, or fiftieth time that you have never attended? Will you go to the reunion this time? If yes, why? If no, why not?

All of these are samplings of the various ways that people of all faiths or none whatsoever have felt called to connect and reconnect with people, places, times, and things that have shared a moment or maybe an eternity on their life journeys. Be they welcomed or not, each invitation to look back or go back somewhere in your inner and outer worlds can propel you to take a journey for the sake of an over arching objective: the gifts of holistic self-healing that can come from reunion. The American architect Frank Lloyd Wright said: Form follows function—that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union.¹ Throughout this anecdotal and experiential book, you will discover that the form of a reunion serves as a venue or host for its primary function: to reconnect you with people, places, objects, and even forgotten or seemingly irretrievable memories. A re-union, however, is not one of those events; rather, it is a potential consequence of them.

Defining a Re-union

After looking through many lenses, I see a re-union as a multifaceted, hyphenated noun. When coupled with reunion, the pair gives rise to a spiritual union of form and function that has the power to reintegrate—to re-member—missing and wounded pieces of our bodies, minds, and souls. Indigenous peoples worldwide believe that whenever our essential vitality and fundamental nature are compromised, we can become ill. They use the term soul loss to describe the root causes of suffering that can affect us psychologically, physically, and spiritually. These stresses may cause us to feel as though a part of our whole self has been stolen, misplaced, disowned, or smothered, or as if it has become otherwise inaccessible. Sometimes we may even think or say out loud, I don’t know what it is or why I feel this way. It’s as though some part of me has died.

Obvious precursors of those experiences are traumas, physical and mental illnesses, or other events that have dramatically affected our lives. For example, survivors of head-on crashes do not remember the split second before impact. It is as though something within them screamed I’m out of here to avoid seeing, experiencing, or remembering the moment. Victims of domestic violence or sexual abuse report similar effects and may suffer from repressed memories that they cannot grasp or verify. However, most events that result in life’s missing pieces and subsequent yearnings to restore them do not have to be so dramatic or have psychological labels. Under the right conditions even a thoughtless comment can diminish, numb, or obliterate some part of us. It may just take a moment, but it is the right moment for us to suddenly and unexplainably feel as though we are not good enough or that we have lost heart, soul, sight of something, or even our mind.

Take singing, for example. How many of us never sing? Is it because we physically cannot? Or is it because we feel that we have lost our voice, or that perhaps it was stolen from us? Early on, did a thoughtless teacher, parent, or lover silence your voice by saying You can’t sing or Shut up! moments before the ability to sing the song in your heart disappeared or hid somewhere? My husband enjoys dancing and dances well, but he does not initiate going out on the dance floor at parties. When I asked him about this, he said that as a teenager a girlfriend whom he had loved dearly told him not to dance. She said I had lousy rhythm, my husband explained. That I moved like a klutz. Dancing hasn’t felt like a part of me ever since. I can’t see myself doing it.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

—Deepak Chopra

In native cultures shamans are medicine men and women who heal holistically. They function as mediators who travel at will between the human world and the spirit world. They undertake healing journeys for many purposes—one of which is to bring back the missing pieces of our lives that can help restore us to wholeness. From a Western psychological perspective, the shaman’s journey is a metaphor for the role an intercessor takes to travel between our conscious and unconscious realms and help us to bridge them. Worldwide in real time and through dreams, fables, myths, and fairy tales, cultures personify real, spiritual, and imaginary shamans, mediators, and intercessors as mentors, crones, or power animals. In many religions these figures are called spirits, angels, and deities.

Throughout this book you will come to know the Spirit of Re-union as such a special mediator. This Spirit is a powerful transmitter of tools and resources for discovering and discerning the missing pieces in your life. Like a growing number of physicians and healing practitioners in the Western world, this Spirit believes that the lingering pain and suffering—the dis-ease—that results from what’s missing are never merely pathological problems waiting to be fixed. The missing pieces represent intangible spiritual wounds—troubles, puzzles, and mysteries that yearn to be acknowledged and healed, restoring you to wholeness.

Reunions with people, places, things, and ourselves happen every day around us and within us. Whether to participate or not will always be your choice. In the chapters ahead you will discover both why and how the Spirit of Re-union invites you to those reunions. The Spirit makes you attentive to the benefits and downsides of your choices. It is a faithful and dedicated servant: a teacher, guide, and healer that points the way not only to reunions but also to re-unions. The Spirit of Re-union is a powerful presence in all of our lives, whose greatest wish is that we become our own instruments of healing to midwife our most authentic and whole selves.

Until recently, I was one of those who tossed unopened invitations to reunions into household trash bins. E-vites went directly into the desktop recycling bin on my computer. Now, however, I don’t do that—at least not without pause. My knee-jerk negativity to these organized gatherings shifted a decade ago, when my mother, Muriel Oglesby, died. On the way to reunite with my only surviving parent for the last time, a dear friend and mentor, Bill, met me at the airport during a pre-9/11 layover. I know she is dying, I said. I think I’ve prepared myself for that. Bill sat quietly for a few moments, looking as though he was reaching into his past. Tell me, he said. Are you prepared to become an orphan? His question stunned me. The thought had never occurred. I was not prepared.

If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

—Wayne Dyer

During the rest of the journey—from my mother’s hospital bedside to her funeral and forever more—Bill’s question accompanied and continues to disturb me. As I walked away from her graveside and looked back at my relatives, new meanings of orphan came to mind. A part of me felt strangely empty, and in that moment I knew I wanted more than ever for my mother to heal my aching heart by wrapping parental arms around me. I wanted to hear her say, It’s all right, Caren. Wherever you go, I’ll go. Thus the genesis of a shift in my response to reunions in the midst of reconnections, reconciliations, and love that was seeded in a change of heart, mind, and spiritual awareness. This life-changing shift came alive in me as my sisters, children, granddaughter, and I recited Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, and longingly bid a tender farewell to my mother.

Today, this abiding change activates a beehive in my head every time an invite arrives. Remembrances unfailingly awaken concentric rings of curiosity. They nudge calls to action. I want to know why any of us feels driven to reconnect scattered, multisized dots that create pictures and maps of people, places, and other stuff left on the convoluted byways and highways of our lives. Why do we conclude that some invites may merely be calls for solitary reflection? Yet other invitations, even before we know all the details, scream Get going! Many years ago, after contemplating this shift, I felt compelled to do something. What, exactly, I really didn’t know. I began by merely confessing I will do something to the intrusive Spirit of Re-union.

The Inspiring Spirit of Re-union

Initially called my Muse, this Spirit had pestered me for years to explore my stubborn resistance to high school, college, and especially family reunions. This inspiring Spirit first showed up in the form of a five-by-seven monochromatic sepia print of a man with long wild hair sitting in front of a mirror shouting Buy me! at an art fair. Who, me? I asked. Yes, you, the Spirit replied. So I did, and ever since, this fictitious person, who once sat on an easel in a beautiful, sunlit botanical garden, has hung on bathroom walls to ensure daily attention. Why might this drawing continually spark my interest in reunions with others and re-union with myself? You see, my wild-haired man sits before a mirror wearing a mask. The mask represents the face of a rather unattractive man with a vapid expression. On the table supporting the mirror lie several other masks––some happy, others sad or angry, a few milquetoast, and still others that look one way to me on Tuesday and another way on Friday. The caption across from the artist’s signature reads: Deciding who to be.

In all those years, through seven household moves, this pen-and-inked man continues to decide and make choices. However, he has yet to reveal his original face. Each time I look his way, he reminds me of my own collection of masks and decisions to wear this one or that. Masks I wear consciously and sometimes unconsciously to disguise, cover up, and protect aspects of my true body, mind, and spirit. Masks that help me to fit in where I might not otherwise. Masks that give me permission to be or not to be, or even to try on other ways of being as I go out into the world. Masks and more masks scattered on my dressing tables or those safely closeted within myself until needed.

In the Abrahamic tradition our longing to be known, found acceptable, and loved by others—and to ultimately know and love ourselves and God—is at the heart of the Bible and the Qur’an. This longing is ultimately at the heart of this book as well. In the Judeo-Christian tradition the drama that unfolds in the first three chapters of Genesis describes the evolution of the primal relationship between humankind and God. The story opens with a void and an orderly process to fill it that differentiates everything in the newly created universe—everything above, below, and in between. The completion of this holistic universe is followed by accounts of naïveté, temptations, tests, betrayals, and the dawn of self-consciousness that lead to humankind’s banishment from the Garden of Eden. It is a shameful separation from a secure paradise that leaves the first humans, Adam and Eve, and all their descendants eternally pondering a choice: If I truly desire re-union with my original, unspoiled, shameless, vulnerable, and naked, unmasked self, I must brave guardian demons and the fiery ever-turning sword guarding the Tree of Life. Is it worth it?

Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle.

—Lewis Carroll

The biblical sagas that follow lead us to Moses’s encounter with a bush engulfed in flame but not consumed. Upon learning that the source of the voice masked by the bush is humankind’s progenitor, a terrified Moses turns away to hide his face. God then tells Moses he is the one chosen to rescue his exiled people and lead them to the Promised Land. Moses responds: When I come to the Israelites and … they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them? God replies, "Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh"—three words that defy translation in any language and remain as mysterious as the faceless One that enunciated them (Exodus 3:13–15). Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh—an oblique name often abbreviated YHVH or YHWH. Topping the list of attempts to make sense of God’s puzzling self-disclosure are the phrases, I am who I am or I am that I am. I will be what I will be is an acceptable variation. I am whatever I choose to be, claim some contemporary scholars—a translation that opens doors for us to own the same whole and holy beliefs about ourselves.

Thousands of years later, Jesus of Nazareth poses a variation on the theme of Moses’s encounter with Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh to his disciples. Who do people say I am? he asks. After they reply that he is John the Baptist, Elijah, and one of the prophets, Jesus asks, "And who do you say I am? When only Peter impetuously blurts out, You are the Messiah, Jesus says neither yes nor no. Instead, he rebukes Peter and demands the disciple not tell anyone (Matthew 16:16). Why? Is it possible that Jesus himself doesn’t know, or that he has doubts, or that he just wants a secret to be kept? Today, two millennia later, we still don’t know why Jesus thought it was important to know what others thought of him; we don’t know the real reason for his stern warning to Peter. Moreover, we’ll never know Jesus’s answer to the most important question of all: Who do I say I am?"

Only once have I been made mute. It was when a man asked me, Who are you?

—Kahlil Gibran

Identifying Your Essential Character

Who do people say you are? Who do those furthest away and closest to you say you are? Who do you say you were yesterday? What information from near and far do you need to seek, examine, recall, rediscover, uncover, and piece together like a detective so you can connect dots and answer that question? Is there a single answer for you, or are there many? What curiosity leads you to hunt down clues about the person you believe was once the real you in the unarticulated hope of finding or affirming the one you really are today? The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote: There is nothing, absolutely nothing, a man cannot forget––but not himself, his own character.²

Think a bit about your essential character, the face you see in the mirror and the masks you wear or consider wearing. Identify and inventory positive and negative qualities, temperaments, dispositions, and moral fibers that you can see and feel disguised in your makeup. Imagine risking the status quo to search for, excavate, remember, and revisit the forgotten, lost, bottled-up, or disowned parts of that character to complete your accounting. Can you foresee the cost of that risk? The promise? Where in your psyche, soul, and the outer world might you begin looking to locate and relocate those absent and abandoned parts? How might you invite the Spirit of Re-union to help you get going, stay faithful to the process, and remain true to your own self?

In the world to come they will not ask me, Why were you not Moses? They will ask me, Why were you not Zusya?

—Zusya of Hanipol

When I was invited to write this book, I knew it would not be a handbook for dummies or idiots for planning a high school reunion or surviving Thanksgiving, Christmas, Passover, Ramadan, or some other dinner with your extended family around the table. Neither was it to be a guide to the best wallpaper to use on a Twitter page or the best face to post on a Facebook profile. As you might have surmised, I am not interested in the brand of china or the goodies you put on the table, or what the themed decorations you hung in the old gym or clubhouse look like, or your embellishments on personal pages in cyberspace. I do hope, however, this guidebook will accompany you and your Spirit of Re-union on your journeys to and from reunions to re-unions. For all that does not concern me about reunions, there is a lot I do care about. For example, I care about why you choose to go, what of value you discover, and who you might choose to be or not to be afterward. I care about what you choose to take away with you and why when you leave. I also care about the ways in which this book and the Spirit of Re-union have helped you to listen for and live such questions as:

• Why and when do you feel called and compelled to explore the back roads and intersections of your life to support your search for meaning?

• How do you acknowledge, prepare for, and undertake those journeys?

• What do you look for and hope for along the way?

• When, where, how, and why might the journey lead to blessings, curses, or both—or nothing?

• Having taken the journey, what do you as time traveler now know about reconnecting with the past and about yourself that could not be known any other way?

• Finally, how and where along your sacred path to re-union with the Spirit of Re-union might you look in the mirror and see the face you wore in the beginning—one made in an image of the Divine? An original, re-membered face proclaiming from the heart: I am who I am!?

Using This Book

Create a reunion/re-union journal for thoughts and ideas that come to you while reading this book. The journal can be a legal pad or spiral notebook, a more elaborate bound book (including a photo or scrapbook) with blank pages, or a series of electronic files nested in a folder on your computer. Begin a list of reunions that have been a part of your life. Start with obvious ones, such as family reunions, holiday gatherings, or class reunions. Note the date (or approximation) of the event. Include any reunions to which you were invited but chose not to attend. Then let your imagination take you to less obvious reunions that come to mind—perhaps a reunion with a place or a thing. Your list is yours and it’s open-ended, so you can add and subtract your real and imagined reunions at any time. As you read this book, go back to your list and add thoughts about those past events that come to mind. Don’t hesitate to use watercolors, markers, clay, photos, ticket stubs, and other media to express those thoughts. Other helpers might include music, guided imagery, body movement, art, and other modalities that give voice to places and memories deep within.

Throughout the book questions and