“It’s good to see you,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for doing this.” I remembered the others and nodded at them as well. “It’s no small gift you’re giving me.”
Abigail presented me with a small candle. “It’s calming.”
I placed it on the end table, and she lit it, the scent of wax and lavender wafting, a curl of smoke rising to the ceiling.
We took our seats. George sat directly across from me, flanked by Abigail and Ralph. George cleared his throat but didn’t stand, didn’t raise himself above the rest of us. “I trust we all understand our purpose here,” he said. “I’m going to briefly review the process. It’s been a while for some of us, and even in the best of circumstances it can be challenging.”
He read from a piece of paper: “A clearness committee is premised on the belief that each of us holds an inner teacher, a voice of truth that guides us. We are not here to fix Isaac or give advice or save him. We are here to help him find inside himself the answers and strength he needs.”
There was more, but I couldn’t help glancing at Abigail, who kept her gaze lowered in concentration, the delicate purple around her eyes and the hollow curve of her cheeks softly lit in the room’s glow. Ralph too kept glancing her way. Something like affection rose in his face, and I wondered what right he had to such feelings for her. Her husband had been dead less than a year, and Ralph was married, though his wife had moved out a few years back.
“Ask only open questions aimed at helping Isaac go deeper,” George was saying, “rather than try to guide him to your preferred outcome or satisfy your curiosity. Not ‘Have you thought about . . .’ or even ‘Does that make you feel angry?’ Follow leads he presents: ‘What did you mean when you said “frustrated”？’ or ‘Does this remind you of another time in your life?’”
As he spoke, he stared into the middle distance, at times closing his eyes, so intent on the process that he failed to notice Ralph’s clear distraction with Abigail.
“The only answers that matter are those that arise from Isaac’s own inner truth. We are here to hold Isaac in the light, hold him in love, help open him to his own wisdom.”
Ralph, perhaps hearing a winding-up tone in George’s words, flicked his eyes toward me. When he saw my scrutiny, he dropped his head as if embarrassed.
“Isaac, in the last fifteen minutes you can decide whether you’d like us to mirror back what we saw and heard, or the process can stay open to questions or silence.”
Turning to Abigail and Ralph, George said, “Remember, if those of us on the outside inject our views, no matter how subtly, we will make it harder, not easier, for Isaac to hear the small quiet voice of his soul.” He then called us to silence.
As the focus person, it was my place to break the silence when ready. By tradition, that would mean presenting the issue I wished to address. But it took me a good ten minutes to settle my heart about Ralph. I kept rehashing his holiday ambush, and I was disturbed by his apparent feelings for Abigail.
Finally, I noticed Ralph sitting quietly, his eyes lowered in peaceful meditation, and a gratefulness struck me. Where else in this world of materialism and narcissism and ideological fractiousness would a grown man speak of the “small quiet voice of the soul”？ Where else could I find peers who trusted me to discover my own wisdom over their own? How lucky I was to be surrounded by those who believed that loving presence and listening hearts saved far more souls than the millions of words written by man in God’s name.
They would sit in silence for the next two hours if that was what I chose. And while being held in the light is a true gift, I wanted to speak, to do the work. But I couldn’t decide where to begin. When I finally opened my mouth to speak, the eyes of three Friends lifted as one.
“I don’t know how to start.”
We sat with that a few minutes, and then Abigail said, “Is there anything your mind keeps replaying and you don’t know why? Over and over, there it is?”
Many things looped in my mind, most for obvious reasons such as my last morning with Daniel or Evangeline’s “I hated your son.” But there was something else, from a few years back. And while at one level the reason was clear—it involved a conflict between Daniel and Jonah—my mind was searching its details for something more.
I said yes, a certain event did keep repeating in my mind, but I wasn’t sure there was anything to it. We sat in silence as I waited for Divine guidance. Finding none, I began on my own.
“A couple years back, Katherine and I and the two boys borrowed George’s boat for an overnight sail. Remember that, George?”
He smiled but kept his gaze down.
“It was September, one of those late-summer days, seventies and sunny. Perfect. We got into Desolate Bay late afternoon. The boys had been sniping at each other. Nothing big, just the usual bickering. I thought we’d use up some of that energy kayaking.”
I took a sip of water, reflecting. “About a half hour in, Daniel headed out the entrance into open water. It was calm, and all of us were strong kayakers, so I didn’t see a problem. When we got out there, the shoreline . . . it was strange. Hard to describe, really. All these smooth, low-slung boulders, one on top of another. I swung in closer, and those rocks, they started barking. Then they began to move, slide apart.”
The eyes of the three Friends were on me. “Sea lions,” I said. “Hundreds and hundreds of them. Now, George knows I’ve spent my share of time out in those islands, but I’d never seen so many in one place. I didn’t recognize them like that.
“Three of them slipped into the water and disappeared. The rest were wailing and barking at us, incredibly reactive. They must have had pups.
“Katherine and I knew enough to back away, but Jonah and Daniel paddled closer. I yelled to leave them alone, but I doubt they heard. A scuffle broke out. Jonah bumped Daniel, probably on purpose. And Daniel shoved Jonah’s kayak hard with his paddle. Almost flipped it.
“Then those sea lions popped up. Couldn’t have been more than twenty feet from the boys.”
My heart was racing, and I stopped, let it slow. The three Friends were still watching me, though when my eyes fell on Abigail, she dropped her gaze.
“You know how flat and black their eyes can be?” I said. “Like empty holes. They were like that. And they wanted us gone. I yelled at the boys. The boys did swing around, but they kept taunting each other. The wind had picked up, and I didn’t hear what they said. I just had this sense of bickering.
“Anyway, now these sea lions are following us, like they’re escorting us out of their territory, and I hear a splash behind me. I’m thinking it’s one of them, but when I check, it’s Daniel. The idiot is out of his kayak, swimming toward them. Then Jonah dives in. And those sea lions, they aren’t giving up any ground.
“So now there are the boys and the sea lions and the kayaks drifting. I yell, and Daniel stops, realizing his stupidity, I guess. Jonah too. One of the animals slips under, and the next thing I know, Daniel is screaming, his arm in the air, blood pouring from it.