Blitz

 

A close friend of mine, Jill, was raised in a very posh London suburb. Her parents were delightful, ‘frightfully proper’ people. (Her wedding reception held in her parents’ yard featured a footman who announced us as we made our way into the party!) Over the years I stayed with them many times. They were well-traveled, well read, and very comfortable.

On one visit, when they were in their mid-eighties, Jill’s mom, Eileen, and I sat drinking tea in their living room. During a lull in the conversation, I asked, “Looking back, what has been the best time in your life?”

Quick as a flash, she answered. “The Blitz.”

I looked around their beautiful home, the lawn rolling down to a gazebo, thought of their recent cruise through the Greek Islands.

As if on a split-screen, I replayed photographs I’d seen of the Blitz—its bombed out buildings, people sheltering in underground tube platforms, rubble in the streets. “The Blitz?” I asked.

Her eyes became distant with memory. “People pulled together, cared for each other, helped each other,” she said. “English reserve evaporated as we all worked for a common cause. Class seemed meaningless. It was wonderful.”

I’ve never forgotten that conversation. Years later, when I was researching and writing about people’s sense of passion and call, I read Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He and his fellow researchers at the University of Chicago had been studying what made people most deeply, fully engaged—something which they called ‘flow.’

What they found was that when people were doing something that demanded their all, that fit with what they most deeply cared about—a painting, an experiment, an act of compassion— they had similar feelings. They felt that time became irrelevant, that they were operating on some deeper plane.

Some of their ‘flow’ experiences were like Eileen’s—on the surface dreadful, but full of meaning and connection to the greater good.

We don’t choose when we live or what comes along while we are living. We would not have chosen to live during a global pandemic. And I’m very aware of the privilege of being able to reflect on this between hand-washings, while many in the world have little access to water or the option to distance.

But here we are. Like Eileen who found the best time in her life was when the protections of reserve and class, the comforts of home and garden—were stripped away, she could see and act on what really mattered.

Richard Rohr (through the Center for Action and Contemplation morning reflections) spoke of how this time is a stripping away—one that he has found to be central to initiation rites globally. There are things, he says, that we need to face, such as “Life is Hard,” “We are not the center of the universe.” Let’s allow this time to strip away some of our protections, our comforts, even our sense of what we have and who we are in the world. Let’s look for the true treasure of meaning, connection, compassion, and hope.

Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Mary Ellen Ashcroft, Vicar of Spirit of the Wilderness Episcopal Church.