Where There Is No Path

How Sacred Stories Guide Us Through the Deep Forest of Grief

Saying goodbye to Aden before placing him in the coffin.

Our first child, Aden, arrived into the world 25 years ago tomorrow. But something was wrong. He struggled to breathe and twenty minutes later was pronounced dead. It was a full-term pregnancy and up until that point there had been no question of viability. To have a child born and die on the same day without advance warning launched me into the deepest grief I had known.

In mythic terms, when a person experiences great loss, they enter a forest where there is no path. The stages of grief may be predictable, but the shape and contours of each of those stages is unique to everyone who walks the path. Each person has to find their own way. Some may pass through the darkest part of the wood early on. They may fear, as I did, that they will never find their way out. For others that section of forest comes later. Some come out into frequent clearings where the warmth of the sun hits their face. Others walk the whole wood never once experiencing the dappled light of day.

Sacred stories can’t give you the specifics of your particular path. Nothing can. What sacred stories can do, however, is provide reassurance that the dark wood you are in does not comprise the whole map. A sacred story will honour the forest, and the path that must be taken through it, but it will also reveal the forest’s limits and boundaries. A sacred story provides a bird’s eye perspective of the wide, sunlit landscapes on the far side. It’s this perspective that can get a person through the forest, that can give them the courage to journey deeper in.

There are many such stories in the biblical narrative. The story of Jesus is one of them. Like a lantern it casts light on the next step and then the next. His own journey through sorrow and loss and death invites us not to project our pain outward at those around us (which is the fallback script of a scapegoating culture like ours), but to stay with the pain. To bear the tension of it. And ultimately to trust that the path will lead us to new terrain on the far side of the forest.

The Christian tradition has a name for this ancient story. It’s called the Paschal Mystery.

Aden’s funeral took place six days later at the church where I was pastoring. The first thing I saw when I walked into the crowded sanctuary behind my son’s tiny coffin were the kids of the Eastside Story Guild sitting on the front pew. They were a group of a dozen or so ranging in age from 3-18, and represented an East Vancouver mix of ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds.

It was the very first season of the very first story guild, yet already, the kids were leaning against each other, arms intertwined with matching navy blue story guild t-shirts that read “Where my story and God’s Story meet’. I was comforted knowing that this group of kids knew what every kid deserves to know: that they were a part of a Story large enough to hold all of life, including theirs, in both its beauty and its heartache.

Every year on September 13 a riot of sunflowers on our dining room table holds the Mystery of Aden’s life and death.

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Aden’s Library

To mark the 25th year of Aden’s birth, a new Stories to Navigate By feature called Aden’s Library will launch next week. The first episode will be available free to all subscribers. Following posts will be available to paid subscribers only ($5/month or $55/year).

Weekly (in-season) additions to Aden’s Library will comprise a written and voice-recorded story retold from the Hebrew Bible or Christian New Testament.

THEOLOGICAL TRIGGER WARNING: Working off an insight that the unique offer of Yahweh and the genius of biblical narrative cannot be fully appreciated unless set against the mythic backdrop of the Ancient Near East, the stories will imaginatively weave characters from the biblical world’s ancient pantheons of gods directly into the storytelling.

IMPORTANT: This library of stories will be released over four years beginning with the David Cycle (Season 1 of Year 3). A new story will be told weekly in three seasons (Fall, Winter, Spring).

My plan is to use any downtime between Aden’s Library seasons and through the summer to add to the Story Guild and Story Arts handbooks for paid subscribers.

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Why move to a paid subscription option?

Because a paywall will:

1. Help keep the materials out of the public domain as they are still a work-in-progress with the intention to copyright in the future.

2. Provide a forum for honest feedback from thoughtful readers.

3. Support Burrard St. Story Guild with a portion of proceeds.

4. Give Tama flexibility in work hours so she can focus on writing and storytelling.

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CONTINUING OPTION: Free Newsletter

If you are more interested in big picture reflections on storytelling, imagination and the Bible and less so in the hands-on detail, you are welcome to stick with the Stories to Navigate By free newsletter will continue to be sent-out to all subscribers.

As a free subscriber you will receive a monthly newsletter that includes:

• Reflections on storytelling and the Christian imagination, including questions about theological and artistic license when it comes to re-telling Bible stories

• Narrative selfies at the juncture of my story and God’s Story

• Bite-sized samples of stories in Aden’s Library

• Highlights from story arts and story guild seasons and announcements on upcoming performances.

• Teasers from my yet-to-be-published middle grade fantasy series, The Spirit Bird Prophecy

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To all of you, whether “paid” or “free”, your accompaniment means a lot and is what keeps me pushing towards the completion of projects and ideas that have been a lifetime in the works. What more can I say, but thank you.