Saying YES in the ashes

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about doing life on purpose instead of by accident, even when it feels like we are being dragged through a difficult experience or season. Recently I asked my old friend and teacher Alexander Shaia about how we say YES to the journey of healing and growth, in the midst of devastating loss: “Our world totally falls apart, which is probably the most usual way. Where we wake up one day, we're sort of in our habitual world, and collectively, there's a 9-11. Collectively, there's an earthquake, there's a volcano, where everything seems in our life to get swept away.” And so many of us have experienced that more personally in the loss of a relationship or community, loss of job, a sickness, etc—and what comes with that is a loss of faith and identity—both of the person we have been, AND the way the world made sense to that person. Alexander tells us “And usually our response to that is to desperately reach back for what was. We want to recreate what we had. But that's not the answer of the journey.” (And it never works anyway.) “The answer of the journey is eventually to realize we're standing in the ash, and it's a time for deep grief. And something in that deep grief, will flower.” It’s painful and counter intuitive, but, while we may want to speed though it, it’s crucial to stay there. Like the Biblical character Job, we need to sit in the ash and say and feel all there is to say and feel. As Alexander says, “Live in this ash place without the beauty, without the old plan. And find out who you are now. And then, from that place, begin to dream a new dream. But that's hard.”* It’s the hardest thing—I think it’s what Fr Richard Rohr is saying when he talks about our moments of deconstruction and disorder becoming “Holy Disorder.”** But like Job again, eventually, some new insight comes. It reminds me of a most beloved poem by James Crews:

—Kintsugi Again—
“In the Japanese art of mending ceramics
with powdered gold, no one ever talks about how they'd leave the pots,
cups, and cracked bowls broken
for a while, sometimes whole generations.
And so I say to you: let your heart stay
shattered in your chest, let it ache.
Some may claim you've now been
broken open, and can let in the light.
This might be true, but before you rush
to gloss over the wounds, filling
the holes with gold so they glimmer,
try to find beauty in the broken places too,
proof of where the fire left its marks on you.”

These moments find all of us. Fr Richard says the sooner or later, if we are on any kind of classical spiritual schedule, we will fail at something or something will fail us. Loss will find us. He calls this “Falling Upwards” invitation.*** But it’s so not easy. I am convinced we may as well lean in, and take the journey of grief on purpose, rather than by accident. (I think half of living life well is about saying YES, and choosing to do things on purpose rather than by accident, but that’s a different post.) It is possible that our wounds can lead us to new wisdom, our losses can lead to us to new love, and our detours can lead us to new directions. But if you cannot trust that, then I am at least reminded of how powerful it is remind ourselves we have agency, a choice, always, in what to do when life breaks our plan or breaks our heart. As the holocaust survivor psychologist Viktor Frankl says, the last of our humans freedoms is always that we get to choose our attitude in every circumstance, and we can choose to MAKE meaning even when we can’t find it.**** But holy smokes, that takes time. And sometimes it starts with simply saying, I will say YES to wherever this is taking me. What about you? Have you ever said YES when the escalator of life seemed to be taking you down? Have you experienced a disorder that became a holy disorder? Are you finding the courage to do so right now? I’d love to hear about it. And yes, please do listen to my conversation with Alexander on the latest episode of Healer with a Thousand Faces. It’s so good. He offers ancient wisdom for navigating this. For literally thousands of years humans have been going through this and passing on their experience to the rest of us as encouragement and advice. We may as well lean into the road maps left for us by those who have been through it. And then it becomes our turn to share. Speaking of, what has this been like for you?

*From The Healer With a Thousand Faces: Four Paths to Healing with Alexander Shaia, Feb 5, 2026
**The Tears of Things, Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage 2025
***Falling Upwards: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, 2011
****Man’s Search for Meaning, 1946
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