As a deer longs for flowing streams, my soul longs for you, O God. Psalm 42

   Frozen into abandonment, isolation & suffering, a woman suddenly experiences the mystery of grace from the Magdalene. Delivered from some corner of eternity, the grace is real & invisible. 

   Famed writer Anne Lamott offers this: "I do not understand the mystery of grace," she writes, "only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us."

   Neither do I understand the mystery of death. But my visit to eternity has not left me where it found me. Nor will it you. Among life-changing experiences this one cuts deep. 

   Why explore eternity? Because it informs earthly existence.

A Spirit Visiting Earth

   Physics tells us what goes up must come down. Spirituality tells us what comes down must go up. 

   During eternity my body accomplished the first part, my spirit the second. Our spirits exist separate from our bodies & thus separate from the earth. 

   This is good because, as science teaches, not only the earth by all matter is finite. Infinity has no "material." 

  I was a naive earthling whose spirit has visited the edges of heaven through prayer, art & other ecstasies. My perspective is reversed. 

   Now, I am a spirit whose body is visiting the earth. You too? 

   The risk of hyperbole is significant. After all, this is not a cliff hanger. You know that I returned.

Surrender

   But I jumped off a cliff into an ocean where I was not sure I could swim; because there was the chance of discovering new meaning in yet another consciousness.  

   Ketamine has been legalized for treatment of depression. But I am now mostly free of that plague. My jump was about a different issue: Surrender.

   So none of this is about the drug. 

   Does peace comes through surrender?  My life taught victory, not retreat. I preach persistence & tell my offspring, "Chapman's don't give up."

   Surrender is foreign, unless it is the relief that ensues after hard work, the serenity that attends meditation or the peace in the trough below love-making's crest. 

   These kinds of "surrender" yield rewards. The rest of life is striving. Right? 

   People my age & stage are expected to ease up. Not me. 

   Yet, it feels crucial to cultivate that path of surrender. By money standards, my friend Greg Webb confesses limited career success. So what? He is successful because he understands surrender &, in line with Buddhist thinking, practices it. His aura of grace suggests that. 

   Back to the "fall of the sparrow" referenced in Part 1. Why does Hamlet's friend try to talk him out of a sword fight?

   Hamlet replies that no one can surrender to Providence.

   If Hamlet could choose, he chose wrong. His duel with Laertes leads to multiple deaths including his. Can we choose to surrender to peace & still live love by helping others? 

   Here was a learning: When I surrendered in the death experience I expected immediate joy. Instead, I was shocked into an odd nightmare. Peace did not come until after that nightmare evaporated. Only then did Love appear.

   Surrendering to pain eases it. Yield to pain as part of helping others. Accept suffering as part of the mystery of grace. Joy ensues later. 

   There is more. 

-Erie Chapman

   Part V (Wednesday) How other drugs other restore brain connections. 

Photograph: "Magdalene Graces A Suffering Woman" Erie Chapman, 2021