Hungry For Peace

Hungry For Peace

Written By: Amy Bird

Hungry For Peace

“You
have me sitting at this table
You’ve prepared for me
in the presence of my enemies.

Here 
in the shadows I meet them 
mysterious figures 
snickering from across the way.

Sit
with them, You say-
dine with them, You say-
drink with them, You say-

Faith
compels me to make the first move.
I reach out for the cup,
and with fear, gesture to make a toast.

Light
shifts to reveal their faces.
Shocked, I can see each
as a lost part of my own self.

Breath
slowly returns to me as they
kindly raise their glasses
like they had been waiting for years.

“Cheers,”
we say in unison as if 
we knew just what to do,
and together, we toast to wholeness.

I
am sitting at this table
You’ve prepared for me,
in Your presence, hungry for peace.” 

Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk and one of my favorite spiritual teachers, says, “Powerlessness is our greatest treasure.  Don’t try to get rid of it.  Everything in us wants to get rid of it. . .To be in too big a hurry to get over our difficulties is a mistake because you don’t know how valuable they are from God’s perspective.  Without them, you might never be transformed so deeply and thoroughly.”  

I wrote “Hungry for Peace” during the Peace week of Advent in 2020.  During that season, our book club from church shared poems and prose that we enjoyed based on the theme from each week.  I took the experience further and decided to try and write an original piece for each week.  “Hungry for Peace” came from such a deep place within that its mysteriousness and darkness surprised even myself.  It didn’t portray the Christmas cheer that I thought maybe people expected, so I never shared it with anyone from the book club.  Little did I know that this piece would mean so much to me at the outset of 2021.  

When asked to write about the topic of “power” or “powerlessness” for this blog, what immediately struck my consciousness was something quite personal.  At the beginning of March, I found out that I was accepted into SMU’s Perkins School of Theology’s Certificate in Spiritual Direction program.  I haven’t been this excited about anything in my life since having babies.  I’ve discovered that nothing makes me feel more alive than sharing spiritual experiences and conversations, and the opportunity to pursue this path in a formal way has breathed new life into me.  I have been in spiritual direction myself for over a year now, and this experience has been life-changing!  

At the same time, I have arrived at a point in my own spiritual journey where pain stored in my unconscious is surfacing, and I feel completely powerless against it.  I keep hitting this layer of pain that seems to be surrounding my heart, but I fear sitting with its material and breaking through it.  One wall that I keep hitting is the presence of intrusive, obsessive thoughts about body image and the corresponding behaviors of restrictive eating and maintaining an underweight status.  Especially after some years practicing Centering Prayer and meditation, it is very humbling to be battling a part of my psyche that I feel powerless against.  These thoughts and behavior patterns have deep roots and are long-standing; they have been with me since middle school.  Their intensity has ebbed and flowed over the years, but I have never been able to overcome them.  

I am a high functioning person with disordered eating, but only recently have I felt like it has finally caught up to me.  Two weeks ago I hit a low of 95 pounds, which put my body mass index (BMI) at around 15.3.  That’s 3 points below an underweight BMI measure of 18.5.  When I hit that low, I literally felt my body shift into a different mode.  I was tired, faint, and actually felt ill.  And hungry.  Ravenously hungry.  I was as hungry as when I was pregnant and eating for two.  My body was telling me to eat, eat, EAT!  That physical experience scared me.  I had to make a decision to succumb to its power or to find the power to overcome it.

I reached out to a counselor who specializes in eating disorders and had my first session today as I am writing this blog. I told her over and over how powerless I feel against the intrusive thoughts and corresponding lifestyle.   I told her I feel helpless because I want to try to heal, but don’t know how.  I told her I need someone to help me process the pain that is at the root of the issue.  I told her I am terrified to feel my body change.  Basically, I was a blubbering mess. 

At first, the concurring journeys of seeking training to become a spiritual director and seeking counseling to overcome disordered eating didn’t sit right with me.  My ego told me that my weakness meant I didn’t have what it took to be a spiritual director.  But now I am beginning to understand on a deeper level that these two journeys are related in a very powerful way.  My book club friends encouraged me to not let any one part of my journey define me.  Through my personal readings and wisdom offered by my spiritual director, I was reminded that this is what spiritual growth and transformation is all about.  It is about admitting our own powerlessness and being willing to enter the depths of our own personal sufferings in order to have them transformed by God’s light.  Thomas Keating also says, “The power of the stars is nothing compared to the energy of a person whose will has been freed from the false-self system.”  I have faith that through this layer of pain lies the well of eternal and abundant life.  I believe my spirit, heart, mind, and body can be free to be filled and used by God to the utmost degree.  I have tasted this freedom in small doses, but truly long for its permanence.

Only now can I see how “Hungry For Peace” was prophetic at the time, especially considering this journey of healing I have now begun.  I also can’t help but notice its themes of hunger, the table, eating, and drinking.  And wholeness.  It was my personal toast to healing even before I knew what form that would take in reality.  Who or what are some of the enemies at your table?  Are you willing to sit with them?  Listen to them?  Befriend them?  Perhaps their true identity can be revealed as God’s light is shed upon them.  Perhaps God can transform you because of them.  Remember that God has prepared the table for you and that She envelopes you in peace as you choose to sit at it.

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Amy Bird (Pictured here with her spouse, Eric) was so happy to become a member of Arapaho United Methodist Church in 2018 after life-long involvement in the evangelical church. She is married to Eric Bird and together they are a blended family with 5 children: Sydney (17 yrs), Owen (15 yrs), Evie (9 yrs), Silas (7 yrs), and Josie (5 yrs). Amy still wants to be an astronaut when she grows up, but currently enjoys working as a social worker in a nursing home. Recently she has taken next steps to receive training as a spiritual director, starting at SMU Perkins School of Theology in April of 2021. She loves rainbows, legos and unicorns and enjoys reading, being in nature, gardening, baking, rock climbing, and skateboarding."