There is that familiar saying, ‘As one door closes another opens’. We can see this in the example of Moyia O’Brien recounted earlier when she used the ‘opportunity’ of the crushing loss of her twin sister to start a new chapter in her life. She used to say to us in the midst of her grief,

‘I don’t want to go back to how I was before Dorothy died, although we shared such wonderful years. I want to emerge like a butterfly from the chrysalis of grief and relish every single moment of the rest of my life.’ And this she is so obviously doing.

I’d like to share with you two other short stories of people who succeeded in extracting the gold of purpose and contentment out of the base material of their suffering. The first concerns a man who helps prisoners meditate and the second is Christopher Reeves, the man who played the role of Superman in several movies.

Bo Lozof (www.humankindness.org) and his wife were hired hands on a boat that sailed the Bahamas out from Miami, Florida, along with skipper Wayne and brother-in-law Pete. Bo and Sita abandoned the boat once drug smuggling was discussed and spent the next 4 to 5 years living in a yoga ashram – a monastery – in North Carolina. Wayne and Pete were caught with a load of marijuana on board and received severe prison sentences – Pete, 12 to 40 years and Wayne 3 years. Their grief and despair at such extreme loss of liberty was profound.

Bo began visiting his friends in prison and shared with them his flash of insight: ‘serving time’ in prison had so much in common with spending one’s life in an ashram or spiritual retreat. There was nothing to do, the rules were strict, you were alone much of the time and the food was plain and monotonous. So, treating prison life like a 10 to 40 year stint at an ashram in India, more and more prisoners began to meditate, chant mantras, pray, practise silence, fast (not eat) one day a week, and took opportunities to be of loving service to others.

The effect on those prisoners who joined the ‘Prison-Ashram Project’ was truly remarkable. They evolved month by month. year by year, into extraordinary human beings. Bo Lozof wrote and published a book called ‘We’re All Doing Time’ which is distributed free to any prisoner anywhere in the world following their written request. Imagine prisoners – in their hundreds of thousands by now - who are not only transforming themselves but also radiating peace and love to the rest of the prison and the surrounding communities. Each one made the choice to regard their loss of liberty as an opportunity to discover the ‘giant’ within.

When Christopher Reeves – better known as Superman by the movie-going world – became totally paralyzed in 1995 after his horse threw him off at a simple jump, his loss was incalculable. He could not breathe without mechanical help, and was not able to move or speak in any way. He was totally dependent on others without hope of recovery.

After facing the abyss of grief-filled suicidal depression, Christopher decided to use the opportunity of his calamity to create a better world. He learned how to speak in short bursts after each pump-activated breath, and then how to manoeuvre his wheelchair by blowing puffs of air through a straw. Now his campaign in support of stem cell research began in earnest. There would be no cure for his own damaged spine for he knew that he had only a few years to live. He was doing this for those who would have broken spines 10 to 20 years after him in time.

In 1996 he appeared at the Academy Awards. When he wheeled himself onto the stage, alone under the spotlight, and began to speak the whole audience went wild with tear-filled applause, rising to their feet to acclaim the power of this man’s spirit.

Only one year before Christopher Reeves had been in the prime of his life. Then he was struck down by fate. He was like the ripe sugarcane which is burned, crushed, boiled and then dried, losing all of its recognisable strength and form. And what was left? Sweet sugar which had been hidden inside the ripe cane all along. This star of the screen was now another form of hero, one who could lose everything, only to discover something so pure and sweet inside that he would touch the hearts of millions the world over. He went on to direct and act in more films in his wheelchair – and died in 2004 at the age of 51. His book is titled ‘Nothing is Impossible’.

If you have suffered a tragic loss we hope and pray that you too will be guided to see it as an opportunity to go forward to your own remarkable destiny, one you could never have imagined before you lost all.

If you are a lover of that great American essayist of yore, Ralph Waldo Emerson, you will appreciate the following conclusion to his essay ‘Compensations’. His words describe so exquisitely what I am seeking to convey:

And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of a new one more friendly to the growth of character. It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances and the reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to the next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide neighbourhoods of men.