Holy Thursday; Wholly Present

Today is Holy Thursday, the day the disciples reclined around the Passover Table with Jesus – leaned with their whole selves and listened to the words, “This is my body . . . this is my blood . . . eat and drink in remembrance of me.”  This is the day Jesus took off his garments and washed the feet of the disciples.  This was a humble gesture, Jesus making himself a servant and cleansing the dust trodden feet.  A symbol mercy and forgiveness and instructions to do the same for one another. 

I try and picture myself in this story.  What would I do?  How would I react?  What would I do with the words I heard?  I find it easy to wash the feet of strangers.  As a nurse, I have patients come in soiled and dirty and I find it a privilege to help clean each person up in their time of need.  They are vulnerable and helpless, and I can help.  We have homeless come into the hospital with dirty, calloused feet and mud-caked bodies and for a moment I can be a source of tenderness.  I consider it an honor to be in this position.  In my previous career as a therapist, I had clients come in with their “soiled souls.”  They laid their shames, fears, and hopes out in the sacred space of the counseling office.  What great risks these clients took.  What great hope they had that in this space they would find healing and tenderness and not judgment and condemnation. 

In a physical and mental sense, it costs me very little to be the giver.  I risk little cleaning someone’s body.  At most it costs me physical energy that is easily replenished with a good night sleep, a quiet walk in the woods, and if needed, a massage.  I risk little listening to another’s story.  My job is to be a mirror and reflect their pain and grief and help them process their emotions.  I risk little if I stay in my intellect or use my physical strength.

I just finished a little read, The Way of the Heart by Henri Nouwen.  The book laid out the wisdom of the Desert Fathers and the paths of solitude, silence, and prayer.  Solitude – getting to that place where we can face our great struggle and encounter God apart from distractions.  Silence – the space that sends us on a pilgrimage to hear God and where we guard this mystery and not lose it with superfluous babble.  And finally, Prayer of the Heart – opening our soul to the truth of God and ourselves; where we hide nothing from God.  Nouwen states, “The word heart in the Jewish-Christian tradition refers to the source of all physical, emotional, intellectual, volitional, and moral energies.” 

The greatest commandment is to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind and to love our neighbor as ourselves.  In other words, love with our entire being.  Open our entire selves to God and to one another.  I can love with my body – I love doing things for other people.  My favorite summer to date is the summer I spent building houses in the outskirts of Tijuana, Mexico.  Mixing concrete, hammering nails, providing shelter – I loved my tired, sweaty body at the end of the day and the 2.5 gallons of non-potable water I had to “shower” with.  I can love with my mind – I love thinking, reading, and learning.  I love sharing the knowledge and insights I have gained.  When it comes to the heart and soul, this is where the struggle gets real.  I am confident and feel a sense of control with my mind and body.  My heart and soul are vulnerable, and I spend a great deal of energy guarding it from what comes in and what comes out.

At the Last Supper, St. Peter initially refuses to have his feet washed.  If I put myself there, I imagine that Peter understood that this was more than a physical act of cleaning.  He was being asked to open his heart, soul, mind, and body to the tenderness of Jesus.  I imagine a light bulb going off in Peter’s head – he understood and then asked for his entire body to be cleaned.  This is big.  This is vulnerable.  The invitation to be open and then offer this openness to one another.

These past few days I have mediated on one line from Psalm 23, “The Lord is my Shepherd.”  When I think of a Shepherd – the protector, leader, guide, I feel the door to my heart and soul wanting to close.  I do not want to rely on someone.  I do not want to risk disappointment.  And I see this as really old fears.  I see myself as the lost sheep backed into a dark cave surrounded by wolves with no Shepherd to protect me.  There was a time when I was alone and terrified.  With my mind and body, I fought my way out of the wolf cave, but I left my heart and soul lagging behind.  I do not have answers as to why bad things happen – why bad things happened to me or anyone else.  My mind knows about free will and therefore people are free to choose to be either sheep or wolves, lovers or haters, nurturers or destroyers.  And if I am honest, I know I can and have been both a sheep and a wolf.   But knowing about freedom to choose does not erase the damage done to the person.

I cannot change the past.  I cannot undo what has been done.  What I can do is make a choice with what I will do at the table now.  Will I lean in to the heart of Jesus, the Shepherd, and hear with my heart and not just my intellect?  Will I approach the Table to receive the Body and Blood with my soul open to the tenderness or will I approach out of moral duty and theological understanding?  Will I be like Peter and offer my whole self to be touched and cleansed?  Will I risk offering my whole self to others?  

Healed Enough to Keep on Healing

U2 wrote the song “40” inspired by Psalm 40 in the Bible.  The Psalm goes like this, “Surely, I wait for the LORD; who bends down to me and hears my cry/ Draws me up from the pit of destruction, out of the muddy clay, sets my feet upon rock, steadies my steps/ And puts a new song in my mouth, a hymn to our God . . .”  U2 adds, “How long to sing this song.”  To listen, click here.

   

How long to sing this song?  In my search for perfectionism, “40” is the theme song.  How long until I am healed?  Until I feel this drawing out of the muddy clay?  Until I feel the firmness of the rock under my feet?  Until I have that new song in my mouth?  This is the last week of Lent – 40 days of spiritual cleansing.  40 days Jesus was tempted in the desert.  40 years the Israelites wandered in the desert working their way towards the Promised Land (40 years that should have only taken a few weeks at best.)  My impatience says I should take my “forty days” and reach my healing destination.  I should arrive and sing this new song for good. 

I heard someone say, “I have healed enough to continue healing.”  This resonated within me.  A couple of weeks ago, I read through some old journals from 17 years ago.  The journals I read covered the space of me leaving the youth pastor job at my home church (also my place of refuge) to moving to southeast Asia and my first several months living there.  There were themes throughout the journals – anger at God, impatience and harsh criticism with myself, passively looking for a savior and simultaneously hiding from anyone seeking to rescue me.  Much of the same themes penetrate my journal entries today.  And I ask, how long must I sing this same song?  How long until I reach that perfect healing destination?

What I have concluded, I heal enough to continue healing.  There is not a “You have reached your healed destination” sign at the end of the road, at least not here wandering around earth.  I peel back and heal one layer of brokenness only to find another layer exposed and in need of healing.  There are definite themes that run through each layer – those same brick walls of stubbornness I keep hitting my head on.  There is also growth.  I am do not occupy the same space I did 18 years ago.  While I revisit similar themes, I have healed enough to continue healing.  I am not stagnant.  As a new layer is peeled back and brought into the light, new insights are exposed and attained.

It may take me a full 40 years wandering through the desert until I reach the Promise Land.  I figure I have been intentionally wandering for 20ish years.  My impatient self wants to get there.   I recognize my impatience is fueled by my perfectionism.  I want to be right, good, and pure . . . all the time . . . by my own doing.  Because if I am right, good, and pure then I will not feel shame.  And if I do it by myself, then I will not feel vulnerable and exposed.  Healing only happens in the space of vulnerability and exposure.  I cannot hide in silent shame and expect to be found. 

40 (whether it be years in the desert or days of Lent) is a number representing healing and purification.  One thing I love about the Catholic Church is the Liturgical calendar.  Every year we enter the intentional healing space of Lent.  In this space I acknowledge I have healed enough to keep on healing.  I acknowledge I am still not where I want to be.  I have healed enough to pull back another layer needing exposed.  Healed enough to recognize I still need to be saved from myself and not by own self doing.    

Easter is right around the corner.  The season of singing the Alleluia – the healing and triumph has come!  A reminder that the Promise Land is indeed a real destination.  I have section hiked parts of the Appalachian Trail.  I love those moments coming out of the woods and ascending a bald spot on the mountain.  Up top on the balds, I have a clear view of where I came and to where I am going.  I need those views from on top of the balds – those moments of knowing I have healed enough.  But I cannot stay on the bald.  While beautiful, inspiring, and refreshing, not much growth happens there.  It is a place to rest and take it all in, but the journey must continue.

Losing my cool

If I could be any character in a play, it would be Jo March from Little Women.   Feisty, opinionated, tom-boy, not enjoying the dress-up activities that come with femininity, a closet writer . . . characteristics I know well.  There is a beautiful scene where Jo loses her temper (for the hundredth time) and Marmie comes to her side and talks about her own struggles with controlling her temper.  We never see the fighter in Marmie, but with her words she assures Jo she understands all too well her temperament. 

I had a Jo and Marmie moment with my oldest today.  Ironically, her middle name is Josephine naming her after Jo March.  She lost her temper and threw her brother’s hair gel across the room leaving a trail of goop long and wide.  I saw the mess, grabbed paper towels, and firmly directed her toward the destructive path that was her responsibility to clean.  This then triggered a meltdown in the midst of the morning hustle of getting ready for school and work.  She ran to her closet and sobbed on the floor.  I took a deep breath and ushered her out of the closet and held tightly her raging body.  I told her I understood this anger, understood the passion that she feels, but now it is time to calm down and breathe.  Within minutes the tantrum was over (as compared to the hours it used to take).  As we got home from school, I revisited this morning’s episode and talked about how we all “lose our cool” from time to time.  It will happen.  It will happen again.  But what is important is taking responsibility for our actions – owning our anger and apologizing for our destructive reaction.   And again, I reiterated my own personal understanding of this anger.  My lovely said, “But you don’t lose your cool; you don’t understand.”  This surprised me.  Am I that good at controlling my emotions that she really has not seen me lose my cool?  Surely, she has seen this.  My husband laughed and assured her that yes, indeed, I lose my cool.  She was not buying it.

And maybe, sadly, she has never seen me lose my cool.  If we had a time machine, she would see a young girl just like her with destructive rage.  So much emotion, so much passion, such a strong sense of justice and rightness that I was ready to fight anyone and anything.  At some point in my life, that outward rage turned inward and became a quiet storm brewing below the surface.  My energy shifted and became more about controlling my emotions, containing my rage, silencing my terrors, and smothering my shames rather than fighting the monsters and injustices I felt around me. 

I gave up fighting because I saw it was not doing any good.  The monsters still came no matter how loud I yelled; no matter how many times I knocked them down, they stood right back up.  I hit a point where the rage felt so much stronger than I could handle – I needed someone bigger than my rage, someone not afraid of it.  I needed someone to hold me and help me feel safe.  I did not find that savior and so I stopped looking.  I stopped hoping.  I bottled up that rage, turned it inward and swore I would never lose my shit again.

Now, here I am at midlife realizing that all those years of playing the strong, controlled, stoic one did not make the monsters go away.  I was not able to smother out the rage, terror, and shame like I so hoped.  As it has begun seeping out now, I find I am losing my cool in a different way.  My temper tantrums are not stomping and screaming like they were as a child, but I am still doing the same act of pushing back.  My oldest is right, she probably has not seen me lose my shit in the sense that she does.  My adult tantrums look more like avoiding that which I know is good for me – reading, writing, prayer, meditation.  My tantrums are about staying busy and "productive" while ignoring the longings of my wounded soul.  My adult tantrums are about giving the parts of me that need to mourn the silent treatment (and perhaps the middle finger.)

I am committed to stopping the cycle of these adult tantrums for me, my marriage, friendships, my children, and my relationship with God.  My husband asked how long this was going to take.  I don’t know the answer to that.  I have been on this journey a long time and seem to take a few steps forward then a few back.  But it is slow, forward progress.  It is about giving permission to mourn.  Permission to feel the rage, terror, and shame.  But mostly, it is learning to be compassionate and merciful with myself . . . to be patient and loving with myself.  It is undoing years of self-condemnation.

Last Friday I saw Les Miserable for the fourth time.  It remains one of my favorites.  In the past, I have related with Cosette, the mistreated orphan longing to be rescued and taken to the Castle in the Clouds.  It was that secret hope for a savior.  This time seeing it, I kept singing to myself, “and I am Javert.”  Javert, the officer to follows the rules and works hard.  Javert that cannot accept mercy from another.  Javert who committed suicide rather than accept the grace offered him.  I saw the foolishness of his thinking, but at the same time felt deep compassion and empathy for this character.  If I do enough good, live enough right, THEN I will earn compassion and grace.  How quickly I choose to ignore that the very nature of grace and mercy is that it cannot be earned.  They are freely given, but they must also be received.