old friends

A week off! This is the life. or, perhaps not, as the case may be.

I have been working my way through a new book by Diana Butler Bass titled, A Peoples History of Christianity. Mostly vignettes from the history of the faith juxtaposed with remembrances from her faith journey. Her theme is the great commandment of Jesus and how it has informed Christianity in spite of the structures of the church throughout the ages of the faith. A good, thought provoking and uplifting read.

Over the past few weeks I have found myself reflecting on my persistent failures in relationships with women. I leave out of the category of women my daughters, my mom and various wonderful older folks of the female gender who have graced my life.

It is troubling to me that I seem to approach relationships with women with all of the right intentions and then go quite wrong. Troubling because, like many people I am possessed by a desire for the intimacies, small and large, that clothe two lives shared. Troubling because sharing the journey that I am on with another who is, the one, seems necessary in a way that very much transcends my desire to not be alone. Troubling because underlying my relationship failures there is an elemental failure, a contrary and subversive refusal to trust.

There is that faith hope and charity thing again. Charity cannot be, absent an essential trust. Trust in God, trust in ones self, trust in the other...

Well...in some important way the following memory is at the heart of these reflections.

When I was five, six and seven, we lived in Marville, France. Dad was in the RCAF and we had an apartment in a complex about twelve miles from the base called, Cite Canadienne. Twelve miles was considered a safe distance for the military dependants if the Russians started the third world war. The world was quite naive in those days.

A memory of those days, one that haunted me well into my twenties, was of a terrifying nightmare that I would have, quite regularly, through my preteen years and, less often, during my teens. In the dream, I was in an oppressively dark place. I clearly remember having the sensation of no body. Floating in a smothering darkness. Into this darkness would come the whimpering of a child. Quiet, sometimes accompanied by small sobs and occasionally the words, harshly but quietly spoken, be quiet. In the dream my need to do something, to protect, to comfort, was overwhelming and my inability to do anything, my isolation from who was crying was terrifying. The dream, as they tend to do, would end with me awake and shaking and frightened. And wet. Little boys, this one certainly, tend to pee the bed when frightened.

At some point in my late thirties I spoke to my sister about this dream and about a person I remembered as Stu. Stu was the, probably late teen aged, son of a neighbour, who used to mind my sister and I when our folks had social engagements at the Sargent's Mess on the base or were off to a movie or other night out. Stu, it transpired would make visits to my sisters room when I was safely abed and act out whatever degree of deviance possessed him. Sue would cry. I, separated from her by the space of a sliding wall that divided one room into two, would in my own way, suffer with her.

Not as rare or uncommon a story as it should be. A story that, for me, bred a childhood of nightmares.

I can't help but wonder, looking back over all of these years, if the seeds of my inability to partner completely with women weren't sown on those frightening nights when I listened helplessly to my sister, then nurtured my fears and inadequacies in my dreams, my nightmares.

Wherever Stu is now, if he is still alive, he must be in his late seventies, I forgive him for the harm he caused me and I pray that he has found it in himself to seek forgiveness from those he harmed.

I wonder if I have ever really forgiven myself for my part in this story. I was a small child and I could not have understood what was going on, but I know that I did feel small and useless and though needing desperately to comfort those cries, unable to.

We are all broken people. Faith brings saving grace.