A Gazillion Times A Day

I was taking minutes in an all day meeting this week and had to remind myself that I wasn't being paid to offer my opinion. I was being paid to record what others were saying. I thought I was less opinionated than I used to be but really I'm continually learning that the world will survive without me voicing my opinion, that's all.

Group dynamics are an interesting thing to observe when all you're there for is to observe, not contribute. Watching one person take things personally and confuse the issue with their very own selves gave me food for thought because I am much more like that person than like any other person in the meeting. I felt both compassion and irritation at her lack of awareness. What is that saying? There's how you see yourself, there's how others see you, there's how you think others see you and there's how you are.

I have two friends who drilled it into my head for years before I believed them, that what I thought of myself was far more important than what others thought of me. When I realized how much negative self talk I had going on I started to believe them. When you hear someone say out loud that they are such an idiot, stupid,......fill in the blank, then you can be sure what's going on in their head is much worse and more insistent. And they probably don't even know it. I had to train myself to recognize my internal negative self talk and re frame it or discount it altogether. In the beginning it was like being interrupted a gazillion times a day.

I'm of the belief that only when we get honest about ourselves can we like ourselves. For myself, personally, going to Confession has been the biggest gift in learning to like myself as I am. Which most likely makes no sense to some people who mistakenly believe that confession is a guilt trip, shame inducing, totally pointless thing to do because after all, Jesus has already forgiven us.

And really that`s the point. Knowing I was already forgiven (because if it`s up to me and not in the Hands of Mercy then I`ll quit trying right now) didn`t help cause that was a head knowledge thing. But process, the gut honest things I have said in Confession and received absolution for, has been so freeing and helped me own who I am in my humanity. It made it a heart thing. My shadow side doesn`t freak me out so much anymore. It`s just there. And always will be, so I can stop pretending that being a Christian makes it go away.

We all need someone, somewhere, to hear who we are at our worst and still accept us in order to even begin to change at a heart level. At least I did. Before that I was too busy spending energy on denying what I was capable of doing, what I had done. And if I didn't believe underneath it all that God loves me exactly as I am then I wouldn't even try. Man, I have cried some gut wrenching tears during absolution, God`s love so tender and full of mercy and impossible to comprehend.

(My apologies to Catholic apologists if I am slaughtering Church teaching. There was a time when I could and wanted to get all technical about all things Catholic (as in wanting to memorize the big green Catechism of the Catholic Church so I could have an answer to everything) and eventually I decided I just needed to live my story and hope to love in the process. People`s eyes tend to glaze over when I get technical or I get on my high and mighty need to be right horse and so far I haven`t learned how to be gracious and technical.)

Okay, time to chuckle, because this post is all about my opinion. It has to land somewhere. My head would explode otherwise.



Photo Credit

Building A Child

"It is infinitely easier to build a child than repair an adult."
via

If you click on the above link and then choose the very short video Baseball Season: Johnny and his Dad you'll hear more of what Earnie Larsen has to say surrounding the above quote. Every video under that section is worth a listen.

I don't have much else to say except that
I was one of those 'finding 5 things wrong parent'.
I'm grateful that life's given me enough time to learn a different perspective.
I'm also grateful for the people in my life who constantly cheer me on.
We all need a bit of that.

Home Sweet Home

I've never been a morning person, you know the kind that open their eyes and are immediately awake and ready to face the day? I'm not exactly a night owl either. Just let me sleep and no one gets hurt. This morning I was up at 2:30 AM my time and it's now just about 5 PM. If I last until suppertime before sliding between the sheets I'll be surprised.

The energizer bunny was all happy to see me and to show me two piles of doggy puke for me to clean up. Welcome home baby, welcome home. She even tried to kiss me, which is not allowed at the best of times, let alone after she's been sick. She's sitting on my lap as I type - tucked between my belly and the keyboard. Good thing I have long arms. She is sweet and I missed her. Her continued attempts to kiss me tell me she missed me, too.

On the plane I sat beside a young man who works for one of Canada's Christian Universities, not that Christian is an adjective, which I pointed out to him. Not sure what he thought of my peppering him with questions about the emerging church and Shane Claiborne and Donald Miller. One of the interesting things we talked about was his observation that the Church is not teaching kids how to think; what to think, but not how to think. If I had to choose between the two I'd take how to think any day, wouldn't you? One of my laments about home schooling is that for many years it was portrayed and I bought it hook, line and sinker that if I only taught my kids what to think then it would be a guarantee they would not only choose a certain path but walk it forever more.

Real life delivered something else entirely.
And better in the long run.

I've had and continue to have my own journey when it comes to learning how to think. I told him that I thought the Church was a great breeding ground for dysfunction. When he asked me to explain I shared with him how coming from a family where if one kept all the rules, spoken and unspoken, one was less likely to be in the line of fire. How that pattern dovetailed quite nicely into church life where there were all these unspoken rules one kept in order to fit in. Like always being "fine" and thinking Christian equalled never having problems. Or at least not ones you talked about.

Gee, I think I was a bit cynical today. Hmmm. Although I didn't say any of that sarcastically, or in a gee, I have it all figured out now, how could I have been so dumb before kind of way either. I believe in embracing the whole journey, for as Anthony DeMello is so fond of pointing out - that which we renounce violently we are forever bound to. I said the whole dysfunction spiel matter of factly. That doesn't come across when one types it without being able to type inflection as well. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Boy, typing all this is waking me up. Not sure that's a good thing. It's like I'm getting my second wind. Bear with me. The friend who came with me to Owen's told him I was nothing if not truthful. She forgot to say I was also still opionated as all get out. A few times the young man beside me in the plane picked up a magazine, picked up anything, to read. Then I told myself to shut up until he talked to me again. Which he did. Several times. Just before we landed he gave me a business card so perhaps my viewpoints weren't all that hard to listen to. Going through all that made me realize anew just how far I have to go when it comes to listening and being present and how much easier it is to chatter away, especially when I have a captive audience. I sat there in the quiet moments wondering what he would blog about our conversation. If he had a blog, which he doesn't. We talked about those as well and how the blogosphere is impacting the Church.

Anyhoo I am home and it feels good. I wonder if I will ever get over the marvel of plane travel and how it can be that I woke up half way across the country this morning and tonight I'll sleep in my own bed. I kept looking down at the fields and lakes below me all the way across this country and reminding myself what a privilege it is to travel. I also realized for the first time how one particular viewpoint I've had of God has changed. I was peering down at the ground 40,000 feet below me and thinking how small everything looked. I thought about what specks we are in relation to the universe. Then it came alive to me that truly God's spirit lives within us so it's no longer a God way up there looking way down here at little old me and you. It's God's spirit, moving amongst us, within us, growing and expanding with every breath.

I'll be quiet now and let you have a chance to talk.

The Skillful Master

"The cruel chisel destroys a stone with each cut. But what the stone suffers by repeated blows is no less than the shape the mason is making of it. And should a poor stone be asked, "What is happening to you?" it might reply, "Don’t ask me. All I know is that for my part there is nothing for me to know or do, only to remain steady under the hand of my master and to love him and suffer him to work out my destiny. It is for him to know how to achieve this. I know neither what he is doing nor why. I only know that he is doing what is best and most perfect, and I suffer each cut of the chisel as though it were the best thing for me, even though, to tell the truth, each one is my idea of ruin, destruction and defacement. But, ignoring all this, I rest contented with the present moment. Thinking only of my duty to it, I submit to the work of the skillful master without caring to know what it is."

~ Jean Pierre de Caussade in The Sacrament of the Present Moment