Life Happens…

Thoughts, like shadows, cling to my heart. I think of Peter Pan, his shadow in a drawer, and its reattachment when meeting Wendy. For me, there has always been something magical about reconnecting Peter with his shadow.

Shadows visually cease to exist without light and fascinate me. When only a sliver of light touches my body, casting a silhouetted likeness, I stop for a moment. The angle and intensity of light that touches me affect the direction, length, and shape of my shadow.

The beginning of my spiritual shadow, as I will label it, occurred when I was about 12 years old, living and going to school off an Air Force Base for the first time. I noticed a bus picking up neighbourhood children on Sunday mornings. My exposure to religion was nonexistent, yet I felt a stirring of something unidentifiable within when watching the bus. With parental approval, I readied myself for the next Sunday. Somewhat nervous but with eagerness, I ventured alone into the unknown.  I do not recall how often I went or why I stopped going, and when. Those first Sunday School experiences and an introduction to biblical characters and stories stayed with me.

Fast forward four years to grade 10 at Gloucester High School in Ottawa, where three things converged: a weekly magazine, inserted in the Saturday edition of the Ottawa Citizen, a class called Man in Society, and the Osmond Brothers, a musical group. Like a shadow, my memories from that brief childhood introduction to a religious organization stitched together my inquisitiveness and a measure of soul-searchingness. Unknown to me was the extent to which the direction, length, and shape of my choices would lead me.

A year later, I decided to join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Thus began a life filled with religious/spiritual experiences that included scripture study, learning, understanding, pondering, leading discussions based on the King James version of the Holy Bible (and other books of scriptures used by the church), while happily raising a family of eight children within its traditions, teachings, and culture through active participation in various programs and leadership roles. I accepted everything without question, savouring knowledge and feelings. Perhaps that was partly due to growing up in an Air Force family, a great sense of security, an abiding appreciation for the world around me, and natural inquisitiveness?

I was excited and thrived in the pursuit of scriptural knowledge. My inquisitiveness led me to interpret and seek real-life applications to my understanding of the recorded experiences. I found myself wondering how the characters portrayed may have felt in critical times. I wondered about the whole story, what came before and after an experience. I felt a closeness with God, whom I addressed as Heavenly Father. I felt my choices and life were in line with God’s plan for me.

Time passes. Contentment with my religious experience as a teen, then wife and mother, was about to undergo an unexpected transformation as I adapted to widowhood after 38 years of marriage. I continued to study, ponder, and pray. In the cultural and traditional boundaries of my religious experience, I began to feel, more often than naught, a disconcerting aching in my heart. Thoughts about what I was studying, pondering, praying, and teaching were experiential in nature, a personal perspective, perception, and interpretation. I often wondered if there was something wrong with me, feeling unsatisfied by standard answers that felt hollow, and a sense of unbelonging or disconnection. My shadow, affected by the touch of light, was becoming difficult to discern and needed reconnecting.

During this period of reflection, I met people affiliated with different religious traditions (and their variations), Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sufi, and Sikh. I felt a heart-wrenching desire for enrichment in a much more personal, one-to-one relationship with God, whom I addressed as Heavenly Father. My quest for that connective shadow of understanding, appreciation, and knowledge included exploring many viewpoints on spirituality, mysticism, and religion. I pondered and compared experiences recorded in the Tanakh, Holy Bible (King James version), Qur’an, and sections of the voluminous Shri Guru Granth Sahib. I discovered the contributions of Rumi, the Buddha, Guru Nanak, Muhammad, and others to the thoughts, traditions, and cultures of religion.

To me, espousing a singular, correct, or perfect ‘image’ of religious thought is futile and deceptively prejudicial. Many aspects of religious involvement, in my experience, involve varying degrees and forms of judgment, hypocrisy, reliance on the interpretations of others, compliance, patience, tolerance, and merciful understanding. Harmful and/or uplifting. The inherent nature of religious organizational entities can unintentionally denigrate the significantly important individual experience of spirituality. The individual in a society, taking me back to high school and Man in Society discussions.

I do not consider myself religious, if defined in terms of a prescribed form of worship. I view myself as one who seeks spirituality in an intimate, indescribable relationship between self, God, and His creations, as I understand me, Him, and them to be. Like trying to build a puzzle, religiosity and spirituality exhibit interconnectedness.

Oh, how the horizon of religious narrow-mindedness, once I perceived it as an unwelcome shadow following me, began fading, opening my view to a renewed realm of spiritual vistas. Since I relate to my environment through symbols and metaphors, it was like standing amidst the shadows and ruins of the Diocletian Palace in Split, Croatia. Another life-changing moment of realization. Through the photographs I shot that day, I perceive the power of light, angles, and shadows shaping my perspective, perception, and experience. What was it like in the moment? I was filled with awe at the structures, columns, and intricate hand-carved detailing. Remnants of a civilization, standing, some bolstered by supporting bands, silently sharing a piece of their storied history, captured my heart.

The direction and intensity of my feelings lift me to soar into a realm of self-realization where I feel at peace with God, in God’s creations and with myself. I appreciate the influences of my past and current spiritual and religious experiences in illuminating the shadow of awakening spiritual awareness within me. My perspective is like a shadow, shifting its direction, intensity, and length according to circumstances. I perceive my strengths and weaknesses, talents, desires, and needs. I feel like I imagine Peter Pan did after Wendy opened the drawer holding a shadow of himself, then securely stitched it in place; the unbridled, limitless connection of self held fast by the power of light, symbol of truth.

© All rights reserved Vicki Nicholls 2026