Madonna - November/December 2008

Filling a hole in the soul - Chris Gleeson SJ

Writing this editorial does not always come easily. Writing of any description is rarely a steady flow of impressive words. Sometimes it makes authors vulnerable, open to criticism, even ridicule and rejection, yet it brings us into contact with our souls.

When Associate Editor, David Lovell, sent me a ‘hurry up’ notice this time, it seemed I had a hole in the soul. No great ideas were emerging, no movements of the heart were happening until, while drawing the curtains in my bedroom that same night, I dislodged a beautiful Waterford crystal statue of the Madonna and Child. It fell with a thud, but without breakage, onto my desk and suddenly I knew what should emanate from my laptop for this editorial. That statue is full of powerful memories for me.

As a school principal, one receives letters of many varieties, but by far the saddest I ever received came from a parent who had taken his life the previous day. Fully conscious that he was about to end his life, he wrote to ask me to take care of his boys. What a sadness that he could not imagine a future in which he would take care of them himself! No doubt he had a huge hole in his soul. The Waterford crystal Madonna was a gift from the family after the last boy had graduated from the school.

In his wonderful book, Already Within, a collection of his columns for The Tablet, Daniel J. O’Leary writes:

Suicide is, indeed a desperate way to die, but we must understand it for what it is, a sickness of the soul. And the God who redeems all manner of failures and mistakes, who brings new light into even the deepest darkness, will restore eternal hope and courage to those frightened hearts who leave this life too early.

I can remember an adolescent psychologist telling a group of educators that many of the young people who came to him for counselling said, ‘If I am not here, my problems are not here.’ They had a hole in the soul. Imagination is the eye of the soul and we are condemned to live out what we cannot imagine, as Thomas Moore once said very powerfully.

One of our principal tasks as carers is to give people a sense of their own beauty. We are to be prophets of beauty, to use Daniel O’Leary’s words. In brief, we want to show them that the best signpost for their inner journey in life is an appreciation of their own worth. In his book Walk to Jerusalem, Gerard W. Hughes writes:

It is because we do not value ourselves that we undervalue one another and our world, threatening its extinction in the name of security and defence … The heart recognises the signpost: it reads: ‘You are precious in my eyes. You are honoured and I love you’ (Isaiah 43:4).

In one of his many fine addresses, the Chief Rabbi of the Commonwealth, Jonathan Sacks, relates the story of the great violinist, Itzhak Perlman, who suffered from polio as a child and lived most of his life in a wheelchair. On one occasion he was performing a violin concerto when, with an audible ping, one of the strings broke in the first movement. Everyone waited to see what he would do. With astonishing skill, he continued as if nothing had happened, playing through to the finale using only the remaining three strings. The applause, as the concerto ended, was tumultuous, not only for his performance but for his coolness in continuing undaunted. As the noise subsided, he was called on to say a few words to the audience. Sitting in the wheelchair, a living symbol of courage, he spoke just one sentence: ‘Our job is to make music with what remains.’

Nearly thirty years ago while on tertianship, I gave a retreat in Hobart to a young lady studying medicine. Unable to complete her studies because of a spinal injury that now sees her bedridden and in pain for most of each day, she has been an inspiration to me and numerous others. Her rock-solid trust in God, her capacity to look on life as a rich blessing, have enabled her to be a mentor and spiritual guide for many people. Making music with what remains, she is a living example that there is no suffering from which good cannot come, no evil that cannot be redeemed.

There is much to be done if we are to fill that hole in the soul in people. Frank O’Connor, an Irish-American author, tells the story of his youth in Ireland when he and his friends loved to hike in the countryside. Often they would come to a wall separating one field from another, a wall that seemed too high to scale, and their solution was to toss their caps over the top as a motivation to climb over it. When obstacles seem too daunting, we need to help our people throw their caps over the wall. Hope dies the last.
Let me finish by returning to some beautiful words of Daniel O’Leary in Already Within.

Our wounded loved ones, who fall victim to suicide, are safe in God’s huge heart – safer by far than at the hands of those of us who, in our ignorance, tend to judge and condemn. The Christian response to suicide should not be horror, or fear for the person’s salvation. Suicide victims are met by a gentle Christ who, with a compassionate embrace, restores peace to their troubled hearts.
There is a hole in their soul no longer.