I can't speak to my friend's life, only to mine. Things happen while you are learning the rules as a child. These things become then, the unwritten part of the rules. For me, these are the critters that Teresa of Avila speaks of in the first three dwelling places in her Interior Castle. These rodents won't leave me alone when I pray, reminding me without ceasing that I am just not good enough, that I'll never measure up, that I am inherently 'bad.'
I was just listening to the radio, which got off on a wrong station while I was pretending to sleep just a bit more this morning. Yesterday I viewed the DVD, "Reinventing Leadership" with Edwin Friedman. He speaks to exactly what I seem to know interiorly. He talks about leadership in the context of the 15th century. About how the world was imaginatively stuck. It could not solve its problems because it thought it could "think its way through them." It is the classic, 'let's do a study,' "let's take a survey,' or 'let's create a committee' to figure out how to deal with our brokenness.
Friedman suggests that is a waste of time and energy. When we get stuck, we need an adventure. Columbus, de Gama, Copernicus...all thought outside of the box, all took risks...and were criticized...and all were sabotaged by their closest companions.
As to the radio show, I heard some long discussion about John Wiley Price. Seems some people took his words to use them against him. (oh my, this is a new technique!) and as I was listening, I was pondering not about the right or wrong of what happened, but rather about how we choose to deal with our problems. All that talk, and emotional consciousness raising isn't really helpful...we take the negative energy we get by listening to people who "agree with us" and then fling it as weapons onto unsuspecting victims which causes a spiral into emotional chaos and nothing good happens, people get hurt and the Devil laughs all the way to the bank.
We gravitate to the sensational. We are crisis junkies I think. We love to sound righteous and very much like Mr. Smith's last speech in "Mr. Smith goes to Washington." Look at me, speaking out for the oppressed. Damn, I'm good...
"We are living in a society that is more focused on safety than on adventure" Friedman.
I make a sweeping, shocking statement, "I believe God has called me to be a priest."
Please note I did not say, "I want to be a priest." I said I believed I am called to be a priest.
But what I have often done, I do say, at certain times "I want to be a priest." That can stop a conversation in its tracks. Now, what people can't see, is the story that lies behind the statement. The emotion that is driving the declaration.
What happens with some people, is a deliberate resistance to the words that came out of my mouth. What I am learning...again...is that it is not the 'shocker statement' I offer that causes the problem so much as the other person's internal understanding of what the word 'priest' actually means to them. Some people will go happily through their lives without really wondering or being concerned with the question, "what and who is the priest?" and that is just fine. Some people don't really think about what is sin and salvation, they just do what their parents did, or what they've been taught and all goes well for them. God bless them!
But there are others, like me, who grew up in a world filled with contradiction and hypocrisy, who had to work hard to create social rules to make the world make sense and how perhaps, a cup was not always a cup, but maybe a mug...or a chalice...and sometimes it held life but sometimes it held death. We who lived in those homes, we know each other and we share smiles when the great sin in another family is climbing over the fence to get into a hotel pool. We smile, because we had to learn the hard way...and we know there are others of us who lived much harder lives...and some of us never survived it.
I was taken by the series of events in the last seven days. I deliberately entered into some suffering of others this week and it wore me out. I didn't have to go so far, I could have protected myself...and of course, the hard part...I don't know if I made a difference...but I listened to the evils forced on others...and could see the generations of brokenness in front of me. I almost could have passed out if I had to allow myself to feel them as strongly as they were presented to me. I go into the dark places...because of who I am...because maybe inside their dark places I'll find another piece of MY puzzle, maybe by helping them, God will help me to see my own truth...and maybe my presence will help the other person not feel so alone.
I made a lot of mistakes on Sunday. Ten years ago, that would have sent me into a depression. I would have started to beat myself up for all my errors, because that is what would have happened in my house when I was a kid. We can spiral out of control into the emotions were learned early on, we regress into almost our limbic brains, where those labels of "slow" "stupid" "worthless" "ugly" reside. We can sabotage ourselves as we try to grow out of who we are into something new. We let the devil convince that we'll never be any more than that "carpenter's son from Nazareth."
Friedman says that the most common form of sabotage is seduction and undercutting. I could tell many stories here about the crisis moments in the last year of seminary for many of my friends and for myself. We stand before the precipice of the "new country" and we are not completely sure we want to go there. I would not be too far off if I called it "senior-itis." The realization of letting go of what was familiar and wandering out into the great unknown.
I remember how the doves nested in a planter next to my window back when I had my piano. I would play and they would be only two feet away from me, but protected from me by a brick wall and double-paned glass. But close enough to hear the Brahms and Beethoven.
I watched many eggs hatch, always just a pair of course, and little birds with mouths open for their food and then finally, I'd look and there would be just one...and then none...later mom and dad would come back and the life cycle would start all over again.
Once though, a rather large young bird would not leave the nest. I went outside and just stood there. He would not move. I looked out on the fence and saw mom and dad and sister sitting there, all looking at him. He looked at me, and out at them.
"Aren't you going to protect me?" I could almost hear him say to his family. "This human is too close. Come and protect me!"
But mom and dad and sis just sat on the fence and waited. I thought about reaching out and putting my hand very close to the nest...that would get him moving for certain. But instead, I went back into the house and closed the door. Better to let nature take its course. My interference might not make him the bird God created him to be. The next day, the dove was gone.
I find myself lost in my feelings about the changes that must happen now in my life. I don't think I'm completely ready for what must come next.
Had lunch with my wonderful priest friend yesterday. I insist in my heart that my eyes tell me that he is getting healthier. I am so grateful to God for this very unique friendship. How often, in his company, I feel he is taking care of me...when my goal has always been to help him remember how wonderful he is. Such is the character of real friendship. I suppose I feel that way about most of my friends. We share the beauty we see in each other. We call attention to it. We listen and are grateful for the listening. We find words we would not have found had our friend not been present.
I remember, before my biological mother died, in 1985, how I began to research friendship, in particular, the female understanding of friendship. Jackie (my mom), commented on what I wrote her about friends.
So I've gone off on another topic. But I began this two days ago. I am learning so much. I both hate it and love it. I don't want things to change. But they are going to.
Yesterday, at lunch, the priest gave me a fortune cookie. He had saved them from earlier in the week. I opened mine:
"Your present plans are going to succeed within a year." I laughed loudly, almost to the point of tears. He asked, "What does it say?" I tried to speak it but couldn't. I was thinking in my head the irony of it, Jeremiah 29:11f:
For I know well the plans I have in mind for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare, not for woe! plans to give you a future full of hope.When you call me, when you go to pray to me, I will listen to you.When you look for me, you will find me. Yes, when you seek me with all your heart,
I wondered what plans He might fulfill for me. I had a long list of them. But one seemed obvious. The one I fear, but the one I know I must do next. The one that is going to change everything. It will be fun to see what happens next.
And to let what needs to happen, happen. Not get in the way. Not listen to the voices that tell me I'm not good enough, smart enough, strong enough to do the work.
And I am going to be really late to Mass now...
so I will finish it later...
Love, Cindy
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