by Sally Quinn
Donna and I took the bottle to Gawler’s funeral home. These people are consummate professionals, but you can imagine their faces when they saw the bottle. Nonetheless, they were very accommodating and didn’t blink. Mother was to be buried with Daddy in his grave at Arlington. As we all—only family and a few close friends—gathered at the gravesite, two uniformed white-gloved soldiers were waiting. When the Gawler’s sedan pulled up, they ceremoniously reached into the sedan and gently pulled out the champagne bottle with my mother’s ashes.
In lockstep they carried it to a platform set up under the canopy next to my father’s grave and placed it in the center. The bottle was surrounded by white gardenias, her favorite flower. We were laughing and crying at the same time. My mother’s favorite shoes were a pair of black velvet Stubbs and Wootton shoes I had given her with red devils embroidered on them. In fact, I had given them to everyone in the family for Christmas one year so we all wore them. I wore a black sweater I had bought for her in Paris with big red lips and a smoking cigarette embroidered on the front.
The poor army chaplain didn’t know where to look, glancing nervously at the champagne bottle as he continued to refer to it as “Mrs. Quinn.” He didn’t know her, but his brief eulogy was beautiful about how military wives were the unsung heroes.
After the ceremony, we went back to the house to prepare for the memorial service that evening. I had placed small round tables with chairs in different rooms and had a buffet of all her favorite recipes, including chicken and dumplings, butter beans, pickled peaches, black-eyed peas, her famous spaghetti dish (Johnny Marzetti), and ambrosia. As guests, including about one hundred of her friends and mine, arrived they were served a glass of Perrier-Jouët. A gigantic poster of a photo of her (taken by Barry Goldwater) holding a glass of champagne with her leg wrapped around a lamppost in London was hung on the living room wall. Bottles of champagne graced the mantels like sentries. A combo from her favorite orchestra played the romantic music she loved. Members of the family and her doctor spoke and toasted my mother. I spoke last and somehow managed to remain completely dry-eyed. I don’t know how I got through it but I did. At the end we all sang the song that was played at my parents’ wedding, “Because of You,” which ends “Because of you my life is now worthwhile and I can smile because of you,” leaving everyone in tears. I drank so much champagne that I collapsed in the front hall and the caterer had to carry me up to bed.
* * *
My mother was dead, but all that love wasn’t gone. Somehow it seemed to flow into me. I felt an almost physical infusion. Where does that abundance of love come from? How does it multiply the way it does? How is it possible that it grows and never runs out? Sometimes when I feel I can’t possibly fit any more love into my brain or my body, I’m filled up again. I’m never on empty. Never have been. In the end it’s the only thing that matters. I really think how you love is what defines you.
What did I do, what have I done with all this love that keeps coming at me? I pass it around. Give it away as fast as I can because I know it will be replenished.
That makes me happy. That knowledge gives meaning to my life. It took me a long time—too long—to learn love’s lessons.
I also figured out the big question. Where does it come from, this never-ending waterfall of love? It was still mysterious to me, but I was increasingly aware of a meaningful spiritual presence much greater than myself. There was a larger force guiding me, but I wasn’t quite ready to call it God.
Chapter 18
Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith.
—Paul Tillich, A History of Christian Thought
I always thought that my marriage was perfect, that our love was inviolable and eternal, but on January 8, 2003, Ben and I sat in the waiting room of a highly respected Washington psychiatrist named Steven Wolin. We were miserable. Our once glorious marriage was tense and strained. Neither of us understood what was happening, and it is only now, nearly fifteen years later, that I can more fully understand the why of it all.
My incredulity in 2003 at Ben’s behavior is quieted now that I can see the picture as a whole. Retrospectively, I see how each piece of life’s puzzle, each stone in the path toward enlightenment, is strategically placed, which led me toward a revelation—for me it was the road to finding faith. The key to finding meaning is the awakening that allows us to finally see these nudges, synchronicities, and opportunities for what they are—invitations to meet the divine. We can choose to ignore them for as long as we like, but eventually, the persistence of the invitation will become so obvious, so earth-shatteringly loud, that it refuses to be ignored any longer.
As unlikely a place for me to wake up—in a therapist’s office—and as late in my life as it came, I am now incredibly grateful for the struggle between Ben and me that led us to couples’ therapy that day and to Steven Wolin, in particular. This was one of my life’s biggest nudges. One that, finally, I was unable to ignore.
But on that cold January day, I was devastated by Ben’s change in attitude and behavior toward me. His personality had always been sunny and optimistic. Now though, where he had been affectionate and loving, where he had been funny and insouciant, suddenly he had become moody, downbeat, and in some instances outright hostile. Nobody else saw that side of him. It was only directed at me. I was crushed by the changes in him. They had come on gradually, but now it was clear that this behavior was intensifying and not going away.
I always loved the way he called me “Sal,” as though he had slathered honey all over each letter. I had recently read an article in which a group of children were asked to define love. A little boy, age four, responded, “When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.”
My name didn’t feel safe in Ben’s mouth anymore.
Steven Wolin was welcoming right away, and Ben and I both trusted him immediately. This was not Ben’s favorite thing. He didn’t like the idea of being “put on the couch.” He also didn’t like to be on the defensive, which he definitely was once I described the situation from my point of view. Ben seemed a bit confused when he heard me relate our problems, as though I were talking about somebody else, not him. Steven put him at ease by his friendliness and empathy. As I recall, Ben kept saying things like, “I can’t believe I said that or used that tone. That’s not who I am.” He would say, “But I love her. Why would I talk to her that way?”
Ben admired Steven, but he didn’t like going to see him with me. I could tell that he ended up feeling embarrassed and humiliated in our disquieting sessions, never actually able to refute what I was saying but not owning any of it either. We finally decided to see Steven separately and Ben enjoyed their sessions enormously. He wouldn’t talk about what they discussed except to say, “It was quite good fun.” For me, going to see Steven alone was one of the most enlightening experiences of my life.
He made me think in a different way. I was never particularly introspective before that. I had been fairly cynical of my friends who were “in therapy,” especially those who seemed to me perfectly healthy and normal. Now I see that nobody’s ever really normal. From my point of view then, they just enjoyed going to talk to somebody once a week. I asked one friend in New York, where therapy was all the rage, what he was getting out of this. Without missing a beat, he explained why he went: “It’s the pause that refreshes.” Being “in therapy” meant talking about yourself all the time and it just seemed like narcissistic, solipsistic navel-gazing.
Sharon had been different. I went to her to work on a specific problem. Quite belatedly and sadly, it began to dawn on me that learning about oneself, understanding oneself, might actually lead to becoming a better, kinder, more empathetic person. I had bought into the public impression of me as an ambitious, superficial, self-centered person. I didn’t l
ike the caricature I was seen as, and I didn’t like who I seemed to be becoming. I came to understand, thanks to Steven, that I wasn’t that person. I was a good person and also an authentic one. I was true to myself.
It was in therapy that I came to see the wisdom in the words of Socrates that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” It was also in therapy that I began to recognize that throughout my life I hadn’t understood what it was that I actually did or did not believe. It was in therapy that I became fascinated by religion and struck by the confluence between psychiatry and religion. It was in therapy that I first read William James’s book The Varieties of Religious Experience, which altered my whole attitude toward living, opening my eyes to the idea that there were many different avenues to faith and spirituality and religion. It was in therapy that I actually began to discover myself.
Steven is an observant Jew. His closest friend, Jim Anderson, is an Episcopal priest who had been in analysis for several years and who became a mentor to me. They were both therapists, priests, shamans, wise men. They both pushed me to take an inward journey of self-discovery. I accepted the challenge.
I never met with them together, but when I told each one of them separately that I was an atheist, they both had the same reaction. They laughed. “No, you’re not,” both insisted. At first I was insulted and annoyed that they weren’t taking me seriously. Then I began asking questions. “Why don’t you think I’m an atheist?” was the first of many. The answers they gave stunned me, especially in revealing the superficiality of so much that I had thought important.
I felt as if I were back in college, sitting up all night discussing the meaning of life. This time, though, it was for real. This time I had lived more than half my life and I knew how high the stakes were. I had experienced pain and sorrow, which had caused me to stop blithely designating myself as one thing or another. I would come to conclude much later that what I was looking for was the god in myself, the good, the imago dei in which I had been created. I felt compelled to really examine who I was, what I believed, what I wanted, what I valued, and what, in fact, gave my life meaning. It became this woman’s search for meaning, in the Viktor Frankl sense—not that any pain and suffering I had experienced was in any way comparable to what Frankl had seen and experienced himself.
Ben and I continued to see Steven separately. Although the hostility I felt coming from Ben persisted for some time, I used the confusion and sadness to push me further toward self-discovery.
* * *
Part of that self-discovery had been my experience walking the labyrinth at the spa and, later, for a number of years at my friend’s across the river in southern Maryland. Long ago I had decided I wanted one of my own. I viewed labyrinths as a spiritual tool. Ben planned to have a labyrinth built for me at Porto Bello as a surprise for my birthday, a copy of the one on the floor of the nave of Chartres Cathedral. Mine is on a high slope at the edge of the woods, overlooking the St. Mary’s River, on Indian sacred ground.
Naturally I had to have a dedication. In July of 2003, we invited friends to join us in the country for the ceremony. The path to the labyrinth was lit with candles and the sounds of drumming could be heard from behind the trees. Not only that, we had a full moon. It was absolutely magical. One friend read a Native American poem. After a reading I did, dedicating the labyrinth, Ben ended the lovely evening by reading a quote from the Bible, Jeremiah 6:16: “Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies, and walk in it and find rest for your souls.”
Then we all walked into the woods to a bonfire, took out pads and pencils, wrote down what we wanted to let go of in our lives, and threw the messages into the flames. When it was over, we walked quietly down the hill arm in arm.
The labyrinth is like having my own private chapel. I walk it every day when I’m in the country, no matter what the weather. Sometimes I will sit in the center for hours and meditate, lost in concentration, often astonished at how long I’m there. I look at the river, listen to the waves lapping along the shore, watch the birds dart from tree to tree, and follow butterflies as they flutter around me. I take notice of the trees and watch the sailboats drift by dreamily. Time slows down. The pace of the whole place is so congenial, lending itself to contemplation. Noise from an occasional speedboat reminds me that we are often too much in a hurry.
My labyrinth walk is a form of prayer. There are moments when I feel as if I’m on the verge of being let in on a great mystery. Walking the labyrinth always makes me feel better, even if I’m starting from an already good point. During and after my walk, I often feel calmer, more content, more loving.
The labyrinth is outlined with small river stones within a slate frame. Underneath the stones I have buried gifts I’ve asked for from many of my friends and family. They are small, never expensive. Their value comes from the real meaning to and from the givers, so when I’m walking the labyrinth I feel surrounded by a loving community of friends and family who lift me up and support me.
Some people go regularly to religious services. I go, from time to time, to services of many different faiths, but for me walking the labyrinth is equally as powerful and transformative as most experiences I have had inside of a church or temple or any kind of structure, no matter how beautiful.
I love this quote about the labyrinth from the short story “The Garden of Forking Paths,” by Jorge Luis Borges: “I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars.” Mine does. Ad astra per aspera—to the stars through difficulties . . .
* * *
One day I was having lunch in New York with my friend Jon Meacham, who was managing editor at Newsweek, soon to be promoted to editor in chief. The subject of religion came up. I brought it up, actually. I sort of eased into it. I was so absorbed with the topic because of my sessions with Steven that I could barely think of anything else.
I found myself challenging Jon, testing him on his thinking about my self-labeled atheism: “I’m an atheist,” I announced, with, looking back, not a huge amount of conviction.
“No, you’re not,” he said without hesitation. There it was again.
“Yes, I am,” I insisted.
“No, you are not,” he repeated emphatically, and he proceeded methodically to lay out his argument as to why I was not. “You are not a negative person,” he began, “and atheism is negative. Atheism is about not believing in anything. It’s about denying the existence of God.” It was Jon who pushed my thinking to the point where “atheist” suddenly felt like a silly, fatuous word, an inappropriate and ill-considered label I had slapped on myself.
He also pointed out—fairly—that I knew nothing about religion. If I were to call myself an atheist, then I should have some idea of what I was talking about. He suggested I do some reading about religion, see what some of the great thinkers had to say, and embark on a study of the subject. Then, when I had learned something, I would be in a better position to speak intelligently about it, to frame my views in a cogent way, even to reappraise my own beliefs or lack of beliefs.
At the end of our three-hour lunch, my head was spinning. I was even more confused. Jon helped me out. He gave me a list of books to read, a starter library of religious literature, the titles of which I jotted down on the back of an envelope. Jon’s list: The Resurrection of the Son of God, by N. T. Wright; The Confessions of St. Augustine; Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, by Paula Fredriksen; Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic, by Reinhold Niebuhr; Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, by Abraham Joshua Heschel; Death on a Friday Afternoon, by Richard John Neuhaus; and Orthodoxy, by G. K. Chesterton. I ordered all of them and began to read—and think.
I had my work cut out for me. I took the project seriously. I read them all. I wasn’t looking in their pages to find Christ, to be saved. I was simply asking questions, especially those that would surely add understanding and dimen
sion to my search.
The most important thing I discovered is that, for me, there are few answers, but homing in on the crucial questions might help fill in the gap between uncertainty and doubt on the one hand and meaning and belief on the other.
We all have our own questions and should. Once armed with the ideas, beliefs, values, and perspectives of others—and our own—we simply have choices. What I did find, after this reading and all the subsequent reading I did, was that I had achieved a measure of clarity—an understanding that I needed to find my own path to leading an even more meaningful life.
* * *
By now we were well into the first decade of the new millennium. Where was I and what was I feeling? I had Ben, with whom I remained deeply in love, but whose new disturbing behavior was a constant source of anxiety. I had Quinn, whom I adored more than anything, but whose problems continued to overwhelm me. I had lost my parents, but I had my work, writing for the Washington Post part-time, which I was finding increasingly unrewarding.
At this point in my life, it seemed that nothing was working for me.
Around this time, too, I went to New York to interview Karen Armstrong about her new book, The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions. Despite my constant reading, I was still a total neophyte in the area of religion, but Karen knew me and I could be open with her about the fact that I had little to no idea what I was doing.
The Spiral Staircase, an earlier work of hers about falling away from her faith after leaving the convent, had had an enormous personal influence on me. It was as if she were talking directly to me. I totally identified with her and her story. She called herself an atheist at that time. “I used to hate religion,” she told me. “I loathed it in my angry days.” Yet she became (and remains) one of the preeminent religion scholars of her day.