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It's difficult to know how to introduce this multi-media reflection.
At heart it is a story, and song, about overcoming the pains in our lives
and rekindling hope. It has been put together as a collaborative endeavour
by Amanda McKenna, Cliff Baxter and Brian Coyne. All three of us have
experienced deep pain in our lives of totally different varieties. This
reflection hasn't been written to advertise or grovel in our pain though.
It has been put together, and is our humble offering as a resource which
we trust might help others who may encounter pain of any description in
their lives and are seeking a message, or place of hope. Amanda wrote
the original song but it was Cliff's idea that the three of us jointly
collaborate on putting this reflection together. Cliff has written the
commentary, Amanda wrote and performs the song, and Brian has contributed
the context and the visuals to bring it altogether.
Let me first explain the context. You can read some of Amanda McKenna's
story in an interview that was published in Sydney's Catholic Weekly
on 21st September 2003. It is available online and can be viewed HERE.
If you are not already familiar with Amanda's story perhaps it is best
if you read the Catholic Weekly article first and then return here
to follow the particular context of this song and to undertake the reflection.
This is not an exercise you can undertake in a few minutes. We strongly
suggest you set aside at least fifteen minutes of quality reflection and
meditation time to get the most out of the experience we have prepared.
Amanda was raped at the age of 14. For more than 15 years she largely
suppressed the pain of that experience not even telling her immediate
family and largely blotted the memories out of her day-to-day life through
immersion in her work on television and in the music industry. She even
married and became a mother to her own children.
Fifteen years later at the approximate age of 29 a sequence of unrelated
events to that rape suddenly unleashed a living hell in her physical and
mental being. The trigger for these events was the death in quick succession
of her father, her own daughter, and the sister closest in age to her.
Not only did she suffer a complete mental breakdown but her physical body
suddenly erupted in trauma that necessitated extensive surgery over a
ten year period. Her mental recovery took at least the same time.
Two of the symptoms of her condition was that she could not cry and she
had lost almost all feeling of things like hot and cold or the sensations
of taste, smell and touch. She wrote this song during her time in St John
of God Hospital in collaboration with another young patient who was dealing
with a diagnosis of being HIV positive. It was the outworking involved
in writing this song that eventually led to Amanda being able to cry again
and experience many of those other sensations of taste, smell and
touch we all tend to take so much for granted.
During her rehabilitation at St John of God Hospital the doctors used
to get Amanda to sing this song for other patients as they found it helped
them reclaim their feelings and emotions as it had done for Amanda.
Today, approximately 17 years later, Amanda has fully recovered mentally
but continues to be challenged by some physical impediments in her life
as a result of the trauma left by so many operations. She is presently
employed by the Catholic Education Office and Diocese of Parramatta on
a two-year project to compose liturgical music settings that intersect
with the musical experiences of teenagers and young adults. It is considered
there is much liturgical music for younger children, and for adults but
research has indicated there is a dearth of music that appeals in that
middle range. A couple of years ago Amanda McKenna and Brian Coyne met
through the CathNews discussion board when they collaborated on the production
of a multi-media reflection for Easter based on Amanda's song, Take
This Cup Away. That song also was composed during her time
at St John of God Hospital and is based on Christ's agony in the Garden
of Gesthemane. Amanda and Brian were divorced long before their meeting.
Brian has recently received news that his annulment has been approved
and Amanda is still awaiting the outcome of the Tribunal decision in her
case. Subject to the outcome of Amanda's annulment they plan to marry.
If the music is still playing at this point we suggest you now stop it
with the controller below and then proceed to read Cliff's reflection.
At the end of that you may wish to hear it again without the distraction
of our words or any pictures.
Amanda McKenna moves the listener to the core.
Her words strike deep, into the Heart of the Matter:
It just seems impossible to let it all go
Cause it's too-too damned hard to cry
To just let the tears flow
Like the drought-ravaged Earth cannot release its waters to express its
sorrow over the mortal wounds we have inflicted.
There are times when our eyes are quite incapable of releasing the tears
to wash away our suffering. There can be no baptism of the secret agony.
Cause it's too-too damned hard to cry
To just let the tears flow
The grief is locked within the heart, like a poisonous gift. It is freezing
cold and dry, and wrapped with the tinsel of guilt and shame. We are like
Prince Andre Bolkonsky in War and Peace, riding through the dark forest,
noticing a barren oak tree that had ignored the call of Springtime, and
feeling it was right to refuse to bud and bloom again. The prince escapes
into a retreat of cold diffidence, yet within the dungeon within there
is the solemn bell tolling of his personal tragedy, his blindness, the
catastrophe he cannot ever change.
And if I start to cry - I may never stop
And that surely means I'd have to feel all the pain
Pain, we are told, is a sign that we are alive. Lepers are one of the
few who do not feel any sensation, which is the reason they are so easily
injured. That is very small comfort, however.
The Church teaches that suffering is a Mystery, an opportunity to offer
up our pain and join in the Divine Agony on the Cross. We still search
in our own way for the tendrils of hope, for a reason for the unspeakable
inner torment, the sensations of being alone in a dark and cold place.
Why did it happen, Lord? Where were you? Where are you now? How can I
live and have a future, ever again? How can I learn to hope again?
I've got to find hope and learn to start trusting
again
Choose the pathway to freedom and then
it won't be too hard to cry
Yet we hesitate. We shrink from going down into the lightless cellar
of our soul and confronting the death and destruction, the absolute failure,
the dashed Ambition lying there like a shattered cane chair or a broken
doll, a half-burned child's crayon drawing ?.
I have woven a web of deception
To hide all the guilt and shame
And if I start to cry I may never stop
And that surely means I'd have to feel all the pain
What would happen if we opened that door, for the world to see that monstrous
Shame, that hidden self-perceived Crime, or that Incident that sucked
away like a black hole in space all of the dreams, hopes for the future?
We look away so quickly when people say, What's up?
I've been hurting inside for forever now
I have hidden inside all alone
And I swore to myself that no one would ever know
But the hurt and the memories just seem to grow
I've got to keep it in - it's got such a strong hold on me
What would happen if I released the floodgates of tears in one mighty
catastrophic rush, a gigantic outpouring, engulfing all, this tsunami
of the soul generated by a final explosion from the smouldering volcano
within? Would I emerge unscathed from this mighty Ocean of Sorrow? Can
only drowning people see Jesus walking upon the water? Can I truly trust
Him to walk across the waves of tears?
Or shall I sink into a De
Profundis, gone without trace?
De profundis clamavi ad te Domine (From the depths, I cried
to you, Lord!)
Dare I let that controlling freak, that Genie, out of his box and send
him to the depths while I reach out my arms to the Lord?
It just seems impossible to let it all go
Cause it's too- too damned hard to cry
To just let the tears flow
The vanished child, the breakdown, the Crack Up, the broken promise,
the dream smashed into pieces on the tip like a discarded, rejected wedding
present.
The betrayal, the random chance or unhappy sequence that led to the doom
of it all. How can we go on? How can I go on? I am offered trite, neat
and well-meant verbal ointment, but it is no balm for the cold fire that
rages within.
This is the Pain That Dares Not Speak Its Name. How can I ever
be free?
I've got to find hope- and learn to start trusting again
Choose the pathway to freedom and then
it won't be too hard to cry
How can we heal the open wound within ourselves? Jean
Vanier once told me that the open wounds in others make us shy away,
because we are reminded of our own bleeding void within. To help others
we have to deal with our own wound, but how?
The late Scottish psychiatrist R.D.
Laing said that schizophrenia was wrongly described as 'split personality'.
Instead, he said it was the disease of a broken heart.
Laing was troubled by his own personal problems, suffering both from
episodic alcoholism and clinical depression (as was his self-diagnosis
in his 1983 BBC Radio interview with Dr. Anthony Clare although he reportedly
was free of both in the years before his death. He died at age 61 of a
heart attack while playing tennis.)
Laing argued that the strange behaviour and seemingly confused speech
of people undergoing a psychotic episode were ultimately understandable
as an attempt to communicate worries and concerns, often in situations
where this was not possible or not permitted. Laing stressed the role
of society, and particularly the family, in the development of madness.
He argued that individuals can often be put in impossible situations,
where they are unable to conform to the conflicting expectations of their
peers, leading to a 'lose-lose situation' and immense mental distress
for the individuals concerned. (In 1956, Gregory Bateson articulated a
related theory of schizophrenia as stemming from Double Bind situations.)
Madness was therefore an expression of this distress, and should be valued
as a cathartic and transformative experience.
This was in stark contrast to the psychiatric orthodoxy of the time (and
is still contrary to the majority opinion of mainstream psychiatry).
Lord, how can I heal my broken heart? How can I say again, Most Sacred
Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in Thee?
I've got to find hope - and
learn to start trusting again
Choose the pathway to freedom and then
it won't be too hard to cry
No it won't be impossible to leave it behind
No it won't be too hard to cry
To just let the tears flow
Let them flow
Let them flow

FURTHER MULTI-MEDIA REFLECTION ON A RELATED THEME:
Take This Cup Away:
A web version of the reflection based on Amanda's song, Take
This Cup Away, can be found on the web at: http://www.viastuas.net.au/Reflection.
Credits:
The words and music of the song, Too
Hard Cry, were composed by Amanda McKenna. The song was
recorded at Total Sound Studios, Sydney in 1991 but has never been previously
publicly released.
The female image used on this page is entitled Arkhee Tears. It seems
to be available at a diverse number of locations on the net. The copy
we have used was taken from the blog http://nirmalya.sulekha.com/content/blogs/img/arkhee-tears.jpg.
The Gerbera image used in the last header comes from stock.xchng the free
web photo source www.sxc.hu.
Photographer: Asta Rastauskiene, Vilnius, Lithuania
[Multi-media Reflection Archive]
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