When the Moon Is Dark We Can See the Stars
By Pamela Prime, The Printed Voice, 2008, 288 pages
Reviewed By Fran De Chant
Hidden behind a somewhat awkward title lies a narrative that is worth a read and study as sensitive as the way in which this author chronicles her life. I found deep satisfaction in Pamela Prime’s account of her evolution from privileged suburban Catholic wife into a powerfully aware spiritual director of others as they seek true spiritual paths.
The awakening woman shedding shackles of family, cultural and religious deprivation to achieve stature is the subject of a fair amount of current writing. Rare enough is the story, honestly told, of a materially pampered woman who finds wings strong enough to beat her way out of the “gilded cage.” This is Pamela Prime’s story. She will lead the reader through passages of intense spiritual experience, which she describes graphically. But the bed-rock on which When the Moon is Dark We Can See the Stars rests is an unusually compelling account of heartbreaking survival and growth.
Prime’s parents were materially advantaged and socially prominent. Like many parents, they loved their children deeply and proceeded to raise them in deeply flawed ways. Her mother’s desire for constant social approval, and her father’s lack of emotional support for his daughter, left the young Pamela with a poorly developed sense of self. Not surprisingly, Prime carried these deficits into a typical upscale marriage, a marriage which produced four living children and one who didn’t. A beautiful baby girl died in infancy of a sudden unknown disease.
Increasing restlessness with her stereotypical life in California led Prime to seek enrichment in graduate studies. Fortunately, she chose the right place to begin. She applied for graduate admission to the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley and was accepted. Anxious at first, Prime found she excelled in course work that gave a solid academic foundation to her lifelong intuitive spiritual gravitation. With encouragement from school faculty, she began spiritually directing students. A project Prime had begun earlier, La Casa, grew from a women’s sharing group into a full fledged center for spiritual therapy. Prime describes a liturgy at La Casa this way: “Women and men sat in a circle, and we prayed from our hearts, blessing the home-baked bread and one another as we remembered the love of Jesus.”
Pamela Prime’s life journey took her through two more heart wrenching losses. Women and men can relate to the loneliness and pain she suffered in the dissolution of her longtime marriage. Her means of finding solace in this loss and the tragic death of another child will not be everyone’s. But her insights as she grows and heals were helpful to me and would be to others.
Within her faith evolution, Prime was confronted with an interior crisis regarding the Catholic Church. Throughout childhood and earlier years of marriage, her privileged position guarded her against experiencing firsthand the oppressed position of women in the church. Aware of such discrimination for the first time, along with failures of the church to put into practice its own doctrines of social justice, brought Prime to the realization that the church she had once passively accepted in its entirety, stands in need of change and reform. “The possibility that God and the church might be on different tracks at times was a huge ahah! I knew I would have God’s love and Presence, even though I might not be welcomed in church as a Catholic in good standing,” she writes. Pamela Prime has selected FutureChurch as one of three organizations that will receive proceeds from her book.
As a woman who has also shared some of Pamela Prime’s life experiences, I found resonance in her story. I see in this narrative of spiritual growth against odds, inspiration for those younger than me, men and women. Courage and honesty have something to say to everyone.
Fran DeChant is a longtime FutureChurch volunteer and wisdom figure.
