Panning for Gold: Wake Up, Remember

This is a story about pain and love. I find it nourishing and important to speak directly to the weight of our collective moment and to share lived experiences of holding it, particularly.

A Note About Content: This post weaves stories together from the experiences of an EMT and touches on themes of trauma and suicide. Please take care, and take your time. If you can’t read about hard things right now, that is understandable. Save it or skip it.

Let’s ease into the story with a two-minute video about panning for gold

“See the darkness, know it’s real…light a candle anyway.” - Sarah Bessey

We got a family tattoo while all of the kids were home this year.

Each of us has endured at least one season of very low firelight when our spark was nearly extinguished. Each of us has taken turns holding the light. Because we know encountering darkness is a part of being human, we engraved a reminder of the ever-present reality of light on our skin.

“It is the light in the lantern which shows you the path, not the lantern.”

-A Yogi Tea Quote

Speaking about hope is no simple thing, especially in this moment of great collective uncertainty. How does one use words to describe what can only be truly known from the inside?

Because any spiritual perspective I offer these folks I parent will be anemic if it doesn’t speak to their realities honestly, I’ve gone back to the drawing board over and over — learning and excavating, following what I sensed, but could not yet say spaciously.

More vitally, though, I’ve had to cultivate the inner stability to be WITH them.

Micro-Dosing Human Tragedy

Until I saw what it is like for my son Ryan to face the unimaginable in his role as an EMT, I did not understand the gravity of suffering our first responders bear witness to as they enter into the worst moments of our lives. It is the call they carry 1 on our behalf.

Severe injuries are not the heaviest weight. It is the steady micro-dosing of human tragedy that wearies the soul.

“We begin to understand God as the presence that protects us from nothing, even as God unexplainably sustains us in all things.”

- Dr. James Finley

When I first heard these honest, poetic words 2, a knot within me loosened. This is the first description of God I have found robust enough to truly take comfort in, and it is one I boldly whisper to the hearts of folks that I love.

As I share Dr. Finley’s words with Ryan — words that have been helping me reconcile a loving God with the reality of suffering — I see something shift; he is taken aback, and then still for what seems like a full minute. He picks up his phone and reads from an EMT Reddit thread.

Another EMT pours out words to fellow stretcher-bearers that his family and friends cannot witness. After responding to a horrific domestic violence call, he knows without a doubt…THERE IS NO GOD.

Because bearing the weight of tragedy alone drains the color out of Ryan’s life, we hold it together.

Being Present to the Rocks and Sand of Suffering

Without violating HIPAA, Ryan recounts residue he is presently carrying but has not yet felt.

• Seemingly innocuous instances not felt in the moment are released on a drip once Ryan clocks out. He is cursed at, spat on, bitten, and occasionally even hit on. Early in his career, he was “sucker punched” in the face by the partner of a patient he was actively caring for. Any one of these dehumanizing assaults would be shocking to many of us, but they are not at all unusual to a first responder.

• As he revives a nearly lifeless body on the street with Narcan and gets the now stable patient into the ambulance, Ryan hears cries for help. Another soul has overdosed one block over and won’t make it until the next ambulance arrives. Regulations prohibit what he knows he must do. “He will die if you don’t do something…and it will be on you!” is seared into a first responder’s memory. This is not the first time a hurting human has yelled these words in Ryan’s direction, and it will not be the last. He makes an impossible split-second decision. The resuscitated patient will be safe with his partner. He listens to the inner voice, throws a starfish back into the ocean.

• Ryan climbs through wires and debris to reach a second-story apartment. A sick woman has delayed care as long as she possibly can because she is a caregiver for a non-ambulatory spouse with dementia. They do not have a backup plan; no one is coming to save them from this chronic emergency.

• On his way home from work, an angry driver flips Ryan off when he doesn’t immediately accelerate as the light turns green. This is the most isolating moment of the day.

A Fresh Reminder of Human Vulnerability

The advanced life support calls are heavy, too.

Ryan and six other first responders are dispatched for CPR. The patient’s family looks on expectantly while the team moves in harmony. Each one gives attention to the part they are playing and to the flow between them. As they silently recognize further efforts will not be life-saving, they seamlessly shift focus to dignity for the deceased and compassionate care for this family.

In the moment between this recognition and the life-altering news being delivered, Ryan sees smiling eyes, life, and breath in family photos on the wall — someone’s brother or mom. A child who will never grow up. A dad whose young kids may not remember him.

Ryan anticipates the medic’s next move and gets a blanket from the rig. He gathers trash and moves furniture back into place. From one moment to the literal next, life as this family knows it will never be the same.

The ride home is silent. At the station, they stay in motion, quietly cleaning and restocking supplies for the next call. The air is thick with a fresh reminder of just how fragile life is. Someone asks, “What’s for dinner?”

Glimmers of Gold

As we sift through the rocks and sand of suffering, glimmers of gold catch Ryan’s heart’s eye. Pain is not the only story. It may not even be the truest story. Because we know that negative experiences stick to us like Velcro and positive ones slip off like Teflon 3, we savor the heck out of gold.

• An unhoused couple knocks on the window of the ambulance. The husband is in pain and needs care. He is not dying, but unattended, he will get very ill, lose a finger or a hand. They kindly decline emergency transport, saying they will walk to the hospital. It is 2:00 AM in below-freezing temperatures. Ryan watches them walk away without spite or complaint. They do not spend energy bracing against “what is” and have no expectation of him in that moment. As they set out on the two-mile trek, everything in him screams, “You have to do something!” Ryan phones his supervisor to ask if he can give them a ride, and his request is met with compassion. Front-door service to the hospital is offered and accepted. Ryan buckles each of them in and carefully lifts everything they own into the aid car like the precious parcels they are.

• Later, as Ryan “posts up” in a parking lot in between calls, he sees a man lying on the ground. He walks over to ask if he’s okay. “Yes,” comes a reply. “I am just resting.” Another man sees this anomalous decency from a bench across the street and calls to Ryan, “Thank you for checking on him. My wife died of an overdose. I’ve overdosed twenty-two times, but I have been clean for two years now.”

• Ryan picks up the phone when a co-worker reaches out to share an experience of a call so devastating that it is barely bearable. Ryan knows what this is like. He knows the sensation of circling back through each moment of the call to see if there’s anything he could have done differently…to feel shock and anger…to feel alone in his pain. This may not sound like gold quite yet, but let me thread this needle for you. It is a very particular type of witness that is needed in these searing moments of moral injury. Ryan has everything he needs to hold space for his colleague tonight. He has lived through similar circumstances, gleaned wisdom from veteran EMTs and paramedics 4, and has enough distance from this situation to see clearly. Ryan validates this EMT’s disorientation and clearly states his grounded orientation — he will continue to be available anytime, anywhere. He speaks truth with compassion and deep seriousness. This felt experience of holding the light for another EMT is like taking a deep swig of gold.

The Felt Sense of Gold

The felt sense of gold is hauntingly sweet, heart-wrenchingly full of life. I want to bottle it up and spray the scent of gold all over the planet with reckless abandon.

What a wonder it is that one can drink this gold even when not cognizant of its existence in the moment 5. One can tune in to the aliveness it arouses at the core of one’s being.

If each of us is a drop in the same vast ocean, could there also be a fleck of gold within that becomes perceptible only in the flow of resonance between us?

Given how hard life is 6, it makes sense that we fall asleep to this oneness. The life Ryan experiences while listening to Tool has stirred recognition. In “Pneuma,” they plead with us to wake up and remember 7:

We are spirit bound to this flesh
We go round one foot nailed down
But bound to reach out and beyond this flesh
Become Pneuma

We are will and wonder
Bound to recall, remember
We are born of one breath, one word
We are all one spark, sun becoming

Child, wake up
Child, release the light
Wake up now
(Spirit)
(Spirit)
(Spirit)
(Spirit)
Bound to this flesh
This guise, this mask
This dream

Wake up remember
We are born of one breath, one word
We are all one spark, sun becoming

Pneuma
Reach out and beyond
Wake up remember
We are born of one breath, one word
We are all one spark, eyes full of wonder

“Through mechanical love, we all suffer. Conscious love heals us.”

- Maurice Nicoll in The New Man

When Suffering Hits Close to Home

I picked up burritos for dinner last winter when Ryan and I were at home together. At the kitchen table, we dropped into a conversation that neither of us will ever forget.

Earlier in the week, Ryan was dispatched to the home of a young mother. It is not uncommon for EMTs to care for folks whose acts of desperation did not bring an end to their suffering.

As his patient’s despair rose to an unbearable level, the only relief she could imagine was to no longer exist. She tried to end her life while her baby was sleeping in the next room. On the way to the hospital, excruciating physical pain was eclipsed by the emotional agony and shame of a choice made in the darkest moment.

That night in the ambulance, Ryan held back tears that were forming in his throat and behind his eyes. This was not his emergency. He provided medical care, compassionate witness, and words of comfort.

As he describes his felt experience of this call to me, we drop into tender territory. I ask Ryan if he remembers.

Seventeen years earlier, after enduring more toxic stress than my body could bear, I was on the threshold of letting go. I didn’t know how to metabolize the pain.

Ryan does remember.

He reaches for my hand and says, “Thank you for staying alive for me.”

He embraces me with strength and compassion, and then speaks words that pierce my heart. “I have been staying alive for you.”

Ryan can bear witness to suffering because he knows suffering from the inside. With tears in our eyes, we time-travel…

No one tells my seven-year-old son what is happening, but he can feel it. He sits outside my bedroom and stares at the door. As waves of darkness are taking me down, and his dad is working full-time, caring for three kids and a depressed wife, Ryan is alone to make sense of a terrifying experience.

Ryan is 24 now. In this moment at the kitchen table, I see him. The presence and witness I could not provide on those days he needed me is accessible now. I cannot take his pain away, but my heart stays open while he tells me about it.

“Love brings together what needs to be brought together.”

-Kabir Helminski in Living Presence

Hold These Polarities with Max

Ryan and I intuitively hold all of this together by turning on our favorite Tiny Desk concert. We close our eyes and sink into “On the Nature of Daylight.” We feel the pain no words can touch, co-present with gold. Instead of writing it off as “all good,” we breathe with it.

You never have to wonder if Max Richter is telling you the whole truth.

Richter makes an audacious choice. He tunes these players to the key of respite instead of rescue. There is a moment near the end when a tiny violin pierces the darkness; it cuts right through the impulse to let go of hope once and for all.

In the presence of this honesty, good and bad meld together until they are no longer distinguishable.

In the presence of this honesty, color returns to Ryan’s body as sensation from heart to fingertips and space in lungs that could barely recall what a deep breath feels like. Pain is purged as salt on cheeks.

In Ryan’s presence, I experience second-hand gold. I remember that I am and we are. I know in my bones that we are held by a love that “protects us from nothing, while unexplainably sustaining us in all things.”

Thank you, Ryan…

Thank you for doing this very hard work that you love.
Thank you for finding a why that sustains you in the hardest moments.
Thank you for caring for your patients like you would want another EMT to care for me.
Thank you for letting me see you and know you.
I love you.

To every first responder who is reading this, thank you for your service. In the most isolating moments, may you be reminded that your efforts matter and that your flourishing matters, too. And may the rest of us remember how vital it is for us to lean in with gratitude and care.

A Blessing

May glimmers of gold catch your heart’s eye as you are present to rocks and sand, and may there be a witness to hold it with you.

And if there is no witness, if gold is imperceptible, may a fresh wind blow through these stories to recall to your senses the gold which is always, already within you, and may you keep the eyes of your heart peeled in the waiting.

Keep going, friends.

Love,
Kirsten

A Panning for Gold Playlist

Because music is so foundational to our experiences of holding pain, Ryan and I created a playlist to share. These songs are internally congruent with these stories and played a role in shaping the words you are reading.

1

“The Call We Carry: Confronting PTSD in the Fire Service” is a documentary film directed by firefighter paramedic Cody Shea and is free to watch on YouTube.

“In a profession that few ever see, and even fewer understand, a crisis is brewing amongst today’s first responders. Over 37% meet clinical diagnosis for PTSD, and most go untreated and even unrecognized. In a culture where showing vulnerability means showing weakness, this ground-breaking documentary attempts to break down these barriers and smash the stigma of mental health in the fire service.

Follow the journeys of 4 Tacoma Firefighters as they share their stories of pain, sacrifice, and resiliency in the midst of an unprecedented call volume increase. The film provides an intimate glimpse into lives of those who put it all on the line everyday, in an effort to prove once and for all that NO ONE FIGHTS ALONE…”

2

Dr. James Finley has known great suffering from the inside, too. In the video below, he shares what has shaped his healing words. After severe and ongoing childhood trauma, Finley became a Trappist Monk. He then went on to become a therapist, spiritual director, and teacher. The quote above is from the “Sink into the Taproot of Your Heart” episode of the Turning to the Mystics Podcast. You can read the transcript here. It was recorded near the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic, just a week after his beloved wife died.

3

“Take in the Good,” a blog post by Dr. Rick Hanson

4

This Ted Talk has been meaningful and instructive to Ryan, “The Effects of The Suck it Up Culture: An EMT on PTSD.” Anthony, thank you for speaking these vulnerable truths out loud, for educating those of us who have EMTs and paramedics in our lives, for normalizing what has been stigmatized, and for accompanying those who feel alone in their pain.

5

The 1-Minute Challenge for “Taking in the Good” with Dr. Rick Hanson, a short guided practice with a bite-sized neuroscience lesson.

6

One of my favorite scenes comes to mind anytime I share these words…the “Bathtub Talk” from Garden State with Natalie Portman and Zach Braff.

Andrew: “Fuck, this hurts. so much.”

Sam: “Yeah, I know. But that is life…if nothing else, that is life. It’s real, sometimes it fucking hurts, but yeah, it’s sort of all we have.”

7

Ryan introduced me to Tool. Their music tells the truth about pain and speaks of this deeper reality that we are all woven into. What is it like inside when you give your full attention to this genius polyrhythmic drumming by Danny Carey?

Read More on the Soulspace Blog:

Moving Through A Dark Night of the Soul: A Spiritual Director Holds Space for Obscurity

Incredible Hulk Moments: Dr. Jacob Ham Demystifies Trauma

Please Come Home, A Poem by Jane Hooper