david hayward. artist. cartoonist. teacher.

You, my readers, have become familiar with my good friend Sarah who lost her boyfriend, soon-to-be-fiancé to suicide on January 8 this year. Read here and here and here to catch up if you aren’t aware of what’s going on. The other day Lisa and I were visiting with her, having drinks and chatting, when she told a story that I thought you’d all like to hear about. It’s about how she’s felt God guiding her through her grief. I asked if she’d mind writing a post about that for nakedpastor. She sent it to me the other day. She also gave me the accompanying photo which I embellished with words. Nato took the photograph. Those were happier times. I doctored the photograph and received Sarah’s permission to post this creative endeavor of mine. I feel it expresses so many of the things she’s going through. By the way, she appreciates so many of the kind words this online community have given to her. So bless you!
So, here’s her story in her own words:

“My Guidance Through Darkness”

Before Nato died, a few days before, I felt I should read psalm 57…”Be gracious to me O God, be gracious to me, for my soul takes refuge under the shadow of your wings. My soul will take refuge under the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed”. It didn’t really mean anything to me at the time. Then he died. He took his own life…’my soul will take refuge under the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed’. When we got home from Ontario, Nato’s funeral, the Lord said, “You’re going to be out for the next three weeks, lie down, but don’t worry, Nato and I are making the plans”. So I laid down. Again, later he said, “the next 4 days are going to be dark’, so I told my mom, “I feel that the next few days are going to be very dark, pray for me and take care of me’. And they were dark.

In March I sat outside one night having a smoke and was overwhelmed by starkness and terror that my love, my beloved, was gone, and that he took his own life. I felt the Lord say ‘ the third month is going to be the worst’. I came inside and told mom, and she told me that statistically the third month is the hardest because there is no shock left to buffer the pain and suffering. I’m glad I didn’t know that before. In that same moment outside with my smoke, I felt, or saw, the words ‘March 21st’, and ‘equinox’. I didn’t know what equinox meant, so I looked it up and the definition said, “When the day is longer than the night”. When the light becomes more than the dark. And March 23rd, I got dressed when I woke up, the first time I have felt like it since Nato died.

Though I may rant and cry through my grief and suffering that God is not faithful, He is.

For years now I have been interested in brain science and studies. So I was pleased when I came across a recent article in Time called, The Mystery of Consciousness. Check it out for a fascinating read. Steven Pinker writes that it is an illusion to think that the feeling we have of there being an “I” that “sits in the control room of the brain, scanning the screens of our senses and pushing the buttons of the muscles“. Consciousness doesn’t reside in a “soul” that uses the brain. “Consciousness IS the activity of the brain.” And one of the brain’s most skillful talents is spin doctoring. It will use healthier parts of the brain to explain away the weaker parts. This is a unified function of the one self. Pinker asserts that “few scientists doubt that they will locate consciousness in the activity of the brain.” He believes this is a “terrifying prospect” to non-scientists because it throws the whole concept of “soul” into question.

I think the discovery of science is exciting and challenging. But it isn’t only science that is making these discoveries. So are philosophers and theologians. For instance, read Krishnamurti:

So, according to your culture, according to your conditioning, according to your knowledge, you are going to seek that which you call truth, happiness, what you will. It is according to the past, to your experience, to your knowledge, to all your accumulated memories, that you are going to seek. That is,