Too Messy for God?
I though so, until grief showed up.
It was morning of the day that would change our family’s life forever and I was driving to the hospital alone.
There, my father was awaiting the results of a biopsy. I clenched my hands around the steering wheel as the tears streamed down my face.
I didn’t need the results to tell me what was about to happen, I already knew.
Because while I was the only one in my car that morning, I wasn’t alone.
I can’t explain it, other than to say I had a keen sense I was being accompanied by a very distinct presence.
I feel silly writing this even now, but it was as if I was driving this presence to him, like a sacred kind of mission.
When I arrived at the hospital, I felt compelled to say something to my parents but I didn’t want to scare them, so I just said:
‘whatever happens next, just know that we are being held’.
A short while later, the diagnosis came. Lung cancer and it was terminal.
“A few short weeks, if not days” they said.
Three weeks later, not having left the hospital at all, my father slipped into unconsciousness.
The vigil began at 4pm.
Our family gathered round his bed. Praying, watching, witnessing a man who only 4 days earlier told us that he could feel death hovering over him but “told it to fuck off”, because he was not ready.
Are we ever ready?
Midnight was approaching and with it, an energy I don’t know how else to describe, but ‘expansive’.
It was as if the fabric of space itself was opening.
A sudden wind whipped up out of nowhere & rattled the window. My brother & I exchanged startled glances.
I remember being drawn to a spot on the ceiling and feeling as though there was ‘something’ there, witnessing the scene in a loving, sorrowful, triumphant kind of way.
And then, with the final flutters of his heart, my father took one last breath and was gone.
That night cracked something open in me.
I had always been secretly spiritual. But I never felt entitled to claim it, because I just wasn't ‘the type’.
I was irreverent. I cursed like a sailor and drank like a fish. I made messy decisions and never quite got the hang of behaving myself.
And I thought faith was something only the devout got to have.
But me?
I was defective.
I was a sinner.
I was too broken & didn’t fit the mold.
So I kept my longing quiet.
But, to paraphrase Paul Simon, ‘losing love is like a window in your heart, everybody sees you’re blown apart’.
That’s how I felt, blown apart.
And in the truth of it, in the ache and the awe of witnessing my father’s death, I realised I was done waiting for permission.
I didn’t need to be pure. I didn’t need to believe all the things religion required me to believe.
I just needed to respond to what was happening inside me. And what was happening inside me was a very clear call: Go to the window.
By the time dawn arrived, google had done its thing & led me to a place called An Chroí Wisdom Institute (An Chroí means ‘The Heart’). A modest, female led spiritual sanctuary that hardly had an internet presence at all.
I emailed them straight away.
That’s how I found Carmel. And that’s how I began reclaiming the thing I thought I wasn’t allowed to have.
What I’ve learned in the years since, is this:
Faith is not a performance.
It does not require perfection.
You don’t need religion, or a priest. You don’t even need a church.
And you sure as shit don’t need to be “good.” A rich spiritual life is not just reserved for the pious.
It’s also for the doubters.
The questioners.
The cracked wide open.
The ones who flinch when we hear the word “God” but can’t deny the feeling that something sacred is trying to get our attention.
And most of all?
You don’t have to clean yourself up to come to the divine.
The coming is the cleaning. The space in which we get to experience the holding. The unraveling. The being reborn.
After I hit send on that email, I drove to Blackrock Pier in Galway, just as I had done every day of my fathers hospital stay and plunged into the Atlantic Ocean.
But this time, the water felt different. Because I was different.
And as I cried into the cold, choppy waves, I felt the water holding me, rocking me; offering me a Grace I hadn’t earned, but was allowed to receive anyway.
That’s what this week’s podcast is about.
It’s a conversation with Carmel Boyle of An Chroí wisdom institute; my teacher, spiritual mentor and the woman who met me at the window I thought I couldn’t open.
Maybe you’ve felt something sacred stirring in you too. Maybe you’re longing for permission, for language, for place.
Maybe you worry it’s too late, or you’re too flawed, or that the fact you have questions, bars you from answering the call.
If so, I want to say this clearly:
There is no velvet rope. No gatekeeper. No test you have to pass.
The sacred is not waiting for your perfection, you are already perfect in God’s eyes.
And the path isn’t about becoming someone else.
It’s about remembering who you are.
A pilgrim soul.
Longing for home.
And so very loved.
Listen here 👇🏼
Music Credit: Holes By Bradley James Grace.
LINKS
Carmel’s Website, where you can see her retreat & musical offerings.
🔒 Inside today’s paid section:
Letting Yourself Be Held: Poetry & Reflection Prompts for the Pilgrim Soul
If this story stirred something in you; a memory, a longing, a quiet ache, the following prompts are for you.
They’re offered to help you meet the parts of yourself that still feel unworthy of Grace, connection, or a spiritual life.