Come

October 16, 2014

A Sunday after I first visited Mount Rainier.
I would have just started my Sophomore year in college, visiting home for the weekend.
I had just turned 20, but we found a bottle of vodka and made an occasion of it.
A treasure of a memory, perhaps with my most intimate moment with the Earth, singing to a little mountain stream with my ukulele.

I now use the word "Call" to embody this sentiment of "come"
Forgive any triggers you find around the bible, it's verbiage was how I felt connected to and processed spiritual ideas. I used the word "sin" in place of what I would now express as shame. ("I have sinned" = "I am ashamed of my action or inaction")

I use the word "temptation" in a self-judgment sense. I used it to express my struggle with a mix of  activities to the ends of "numbing out". I use the word drowning to describe feeling caught in a cycle where numbing behavior begets the suffering that inspires the numbing behavior to begin with.

These were my reflections immediately following the mountain trip:

“Come.”

I experienced a really spiritual kind of melancholy the other day. My ultimate goal tonight is to start my writing with where I am, and arrive at the top of a joyful hill. My invitation is to be open in yourself, breathe, and take a walk with me.

This is the spiritually celebrative part:

When Jesus walked on water, he invited Peter to join him in a very simple word.
For me, his beckoning in the story captures the wash of peace God uses as an invitation to the grand love fest.

Simplicity makes me think of silence. I’ve considered the honesty found in silence and the expression found outside of words, so I thought about swallowing these meditations for once, but God made me a writer, so I will write.

Right now, I am working from a self-designed bad day to sitting atop the lofty embrace of joy, because that’s where I want to end up. I want to invite you, too.

Here’s how today starts, and where the shadow work is: I have sinned.

I steeped my knees in carpet for forgiveness, as I do. My knees dried and I turned around to sin again before dinner. I do not like to be without God, but to be without him is more immediately enjoyable. I dwell with myself, loose my bad habits like a spoon trying to dig a salt shaker. I am not alive in these moments. Though God fights these waves of temptation for me, still I drop, I rise, I drop.

Two days ago, I celebrated the song of a streambed down Mount Rainier with an old friend. So sure of God’s whisper, I sang in awe of the vista, the listening, and the heart. Upon returning home, my foot sank out of faith into temptation, the wind blew some distraction like it does.

Leaving the comfortable understanding of the universe I had, we tore doubt in our faith together to consider the other’s view. I, in some arrogant evangelism thought I could recite a candle to life. While this lost yelling goes on, still, supernatural grace brings me warmth. What selfish, power-hungry and corrupt human would engineer such a thing as grace?

I am thus drawn to continue exploring this grace-given love. Still, I grieve over these word documents I fall into. I look and suckle light into these fiber-published fonts, but I am afraid that I only dilute, fog, and dim the good words that are already there. After all, doesn't fire ruin a good wick in order to be fire?

So, I’ve been ignoring and forgetting God in key darkness where His strength can shine brightest.
This is where the story shifts.

I recently learned about the introduction to 1 Corinthians and I am reminded again that more noise does not merit greater listening. It is the whispers in these small places that deep wisdom dwells. According to the sermon I heard, the Corinthians had forgotten Paul’s teachings after all he sacrificed to teach God’s love. I am the Corinthians.

I am lost, and here at home, my frequented comforts are the easiest and simplest to find. When love does not find me, I claw at everything I have to drown the suffering of love. My heart becomes heavy and seeks drowning between temptation and loneliness.

I leave, I return to God, but what has stopped me from returning to that dry fountain? I have returned again and again, and each time I lose more faith in myself. When will I consider myself old enough to be too mature for and so finally capable of overcoming temptation?

Only when I make room in my heart for more than myself can I stave temptation. I am already holy, and I take it for granted, so I’ll forget all that I have promised and all that I have released for a quick fix. I consider myself, then.

What do I keep in my life?

If only I had just a floor and a bed. A mattress and a floor and this light. Could I live without this guitar? Can I be without these screens? These cameras? I could be with a pen and paper. I would be with God’s words. Yes, I could write poetry, as well as read it. I have been blessed with reminders of what it was like without internet. What if I only kept anything given by God?

Tonight was not a joyful night.

I laughed and ignored my family again. I grow fear in my heart in the face of wide goodbyes and new hellos that litter my horizons. I step through mountains into plains, and I often grow sad looking back, remembering the mountain’s wildflowers.

Tonight I looked back at the peaks. Some small fruit of joy in the past risen against the dry soil I choose to roll my bare legs in. Ahh, these self-inflicted woes, what joy is there in them? There must be, since as best as I understand it in Christian faith, I have been saved from sin so that I may write joy.

So, if I am saved, I remind myself that, when the majestic peak fades from the HERE to the background, to return to the wild mountain flowers at the foot so often overlooked in considering the peak. I hope to learn about them again so that I might cry again with the lord, and feel his hand on my heart again.

I am frayed knots of lost spirit. Tonight, I am woeful by my own design as my spiritual pangs fill these wings. Tonight, I write in the joy of writing for the sake of my heart and spirit, for the joy of writing what joy God has to give in the space of this self-induced middle class misanthrope.

I leave you here to consider the small, unappreciated introductions at the beginning of grand creation. The wildflowers at the base of a mountain.

A Process in Forgiving Myself

 

 

I share my process today from a lonely, tender, heart-nook place. 

A confession of the Truest Loneliness of my humanity. 

An exhale, of sorts:

~~~

I have had a hard time believing that my close relationships will share their "no" and today and yesterday that fear was realized twice. 

This mistrust is rooted in that I, myself, regularly withhold my "no" to spare my friends feelings, or for the pride of being "good", or so nobody knows how picky and slow and frustrating I am. So I can be an "adult". So I can be the better man. If I am the better man, I cannot be shamed, you cannot speak shame to me, hypocrite, I am justified because I have done my part. 

So I carry my fear of others doing the same to me, and so I carry my anxiety to be hypervigilent for unspoken truths. Anticipating and manipulating. I make myself responsible for tending to my friends because "I am better than that," (meanwhile I am wholly negligent to others and the guilt eats me up, but that's for another time). And in that hypervigilence, even surrounded by love, my heart is alone and thirsty and unable to drink, convinced the well is poisoned.

Today and yesterday I was told I ran blind across two "crossed boundaries" and I'm finding it very difficult to forgive myself and this is why:

1.

There's an old group of friends in my nervous system interpreting the pattern as an indicator of wrong-doing. I am Job. There must be something wrong that I did. Something wrong about what I'm doing. That I am oversharing and inconsiderate to the needs of The Other. The judge says good people do not make others uncomfortable like I am starting to do more often lately. I say I am learning to love myself. The judge says I am alienating myself and being inconsiderate and selfish and nonsensical and rude. I say I am looking for God. The judge says if I was living right I wouldn't have to worry about looking, that God would be here already. 

2.

The ache is coming from fear of a trend towards more and more broken connections. I believe these broken connections are the path to falling apart into what my spirit truly is. Phoenix. Resurrection. The judge says these whims are pulling me from my connection with God. The judge is saying "people are your connection with God, and you are making yourself farther from that relationship by being so selfish and hurting them. It is the opposite of God. You are hurting God by your selfishness. He will not love you until you resolve your selfishness." 

"You are not worth X until Y" is a message I carry deep in my body as I navigate life's dance floor.

3.

I received the idea of exhibiting 

"The wrong kind of curiosity"

Wrong curiosity.

The idea of a "wrong curiosity" lights up a core fear that what I am doing, that what brings me light, is only a selfish act of cruelty. This is a fear I have been waiting for because I am convinced it must be well-founded. How could I be good and live a good life that fulfills me? Certainly I am not taking on my share of the load. How much other unspoken hurt have I sown with my wrong curiosity? I am not worth a good life without working and suffering. I am not worthy of attention and love until I have proven myself. 

~~~

The judge tells me this is a pattern now, a trend, that I should stop being so foolish before it is too late. That I should be quiet and careful. I am afraid that the judge is right, that whatever happened is from a piece of myself I'm not willing to compromise on. That I will lose connection with others unless I bury my heart like I did. 

I care so deeply for connection. 

Relationship is so important to me.

I have passively (and ":justifiably") manipulated so many people to create the falsehood of connection. Deceived them into thinking I am agreeable and nice when truly I am picky and particular (this careful eye also comes with many gifts, mind you, but I carry it as a burden). A connection founded on "charity" and manipulative jabs of mutual guilting to prod the relationship into the field is a conditional connection that does not celebrate Truth. I have not believed many of my friendships to come without condition. Only this year did I realize how mistrusting I am to be myself. In my heart of hearts I believe to "let it all hang out" is to be undisciplined, irresponsible, and worth abandoning. 

So what is the dance when I am not willing to compromise in the face of these fears?

What is compromise in my Self?

What is compromise in Relationship?

"[Maybe you should be different]"

In so many words, perhaps conditional relationship is human, the judge whispers, everyone will leave you even with all your effort to them. Everyone will let you down. So still my heart carries on its beating song:

"I will only find Unconditional Love if I hold out my Light in The Dark so Unconditional Love can recognize Me." 

I cannot experience Unconditional Love if I am hiding within the netty blanket of conditions and bank-loan friendships that keep track of who owes who.

"I was there for you, you owe me."

Or worse yet

"I was there for you, now I'm the better friend. You should be grateful for me."

Unspoken crossed boundaries can be spoken in other ways.

Unspoken resentments to fuel self-fulfilled pride rooted in dependency on and so fear of oppression by The Other. Lacking connection with Self. This is my path, my walk.

I struggle in my self-forgiveness and self-care. I death-grip cling to shame, especially in relationship. To be inconsiderate of The Other's experience is a primal sin. When time alone is a constant drain, the nervous system of The Other (a witness, a friend, support), becomes wildfire-important. Rest on my own quickly whispers promise of depression. Watching softly the ruins of failed friendship I fear I will shrivel up into Alone. That asking for what I need will eventually lead me to the end of the road where nobody is left and the sidewalk is gone. 

I reach out to my friends, increasingly hungry for support, but it is not just any support I want. I am particular. I am picky. So I am afraid to say what I need.

My fear of asking for help:

I am firstly exhausted by unsolicited "fixing energy," the urge to be taken out of my experience when The Other is uncomfortable at my discomfort. The energy to guide the fixing energy to the place in my heart that needs nourishing. I feel the need to justify my pickiness. So I shrivel deeper into isolation until somebody "owes" me enough to feel like I can cash out their patience the way others "cash out" on mine.

In the eyes of a friend who is only "returning a favor", or "doing their duty", or overreaching their own limits, I am a picky beggar. I am ashamed for asking too much, too soon.

I want my support group to know their limits and to first and foremost to take care of themselves. This is why I employ a network. To follow where the nutrients are, and to pass them along where I see my own excesses are needed. We are trees with knotted roots.

I want space-holding from a soul who is not only centered in itself, but curious for my own being, who delights in my process and desires to observe and notice the quieter parts of human experience together.

I now believe I am worthy of this.

-deep breath-

My soul yearns to be witnessed in its process of struggle. I do not want to be taken out of this experience (no matter how much my body sings to be taken from this experience) and I must swallow my thirst for escape. It is in that indulgence of thirst I stop listening. I want to learn to express my needs and release the expectation. So my friends feel good saying no if it is a no. So the humans in my life who are full of YES can find me. 

My heart only wants to be fed by another heart that will be nourished by feeding me. 

So I hold. So I continue to track what comes up. This weekend I practice quiet, I practice waiting for my ask to materialize as words. I practice expressing that ask and learning also how to fill it myself in my own Unconditional Love relationship with the holy matrimony of being in my body for my entire life. 

This weekend I practice allowing my human experience in for nobody else but me.

Allowing the discomfort. Allowing it to be and whisper quietly like a child who needs help but doesn't trust the world. So sings the song of Unconditional Love. 

My invitation today is to Be Gentle with the Self and The Other. We never quite understand what The Other's experience is. The beauty is we never will, and that is Always Good Enough for Love to take root.