the cracks are showing

Yesterday, I was talking to a friend and she introduced me to the French term "le non dit" which means that which is not said. One of the theories in certain streams of medicine is that when we repress and internalise traumatic and painful situations, leaving them unspoken and undealt with, they eventually emerge and manifest themselves somehow in the body.  If we run with this theory, then various pains, diseases, and maladies might be related to the dis-ease and unhealthy state of our minds, souls, and relationships. I can testify to the fact that when I have been wronged or have wronged another person and there is tension in my relationships, my digestive tract is affected.

I watched a video this week where a musician was talking about the story behind one of his songs, The Lord is My Shepherd. He said this:

"I think one of the hardest questions I have had to answer for myself is 'What am I going to do with my pain?' because pain is just a reality of life. I remember going through a really, really dark season. I was flying home from some event, and I was thinking of all the places that I have taken my pain, because I had only recently become aware of it.  And I'm like, oh, that season where I checked out in a television series for a week, yeah, that was probably where I was taking my pain. And I just said, 'Lord, I don't want to do that. I want to find real healing. I want to find real redemption in this, and I realise that the only place that I can find that is going to be in you. And I want to take my pain, when I'm in pain and my heart's hurting, I want to wait on you. I want to find you.'"   [1]

In our contemporary world, we have so many ways to avoid or "manage" our pain. One of the reasons that the first monastics retreated to the desert caves was in order to come face to face with their demons and temptations, not hiding from their broken humanity. They recognised that when they brought the place of their greatest need and deepest pain to God, his strong and loving spirit became manifest.  Their concern was not primarily for their physical well-being (which is a bit of an obsession in our current age). Their desire was to be transparent and honest before their Creator, knowing that he was the only one who could rescue them from their pitiful state.

And perhaps this is the first step in healing: to admit that we are pitiful, we are sick, we have maladies that we are not aware of, that things are not good. Theologian John D. Caputo says:

"If we could admit how bad things are, that would be the beginning of something good, of a kind of radical honesty with ourselves. … To confess the wounded, fractured condition of our lives – that is who we are! And that would be the beginning of wisdom in deconstruction, of something good.”[2]

Yes, let's get on the road to something good.

the photo: a cracked pot on my balcony that I tried to fix

[1] Jeremy Riddle. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxx7YBuObAI

[2] John D. Caputo, After the Death of God (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 128.

comedic timing

Comic by Joel Micah Harris at xkcd.com One of my favourite jokes goes like this: Knock, knock. Who's there? Interrupting cow Interrupting cow w--- Moooooooo!! Timing is important in both drama and comedy. A well-paced story draws the audience in and helps it invest in the characters, while a tale too hastily told or too long drawn out will fail to engage anyone. Surprise - something which interrupts the expected - is a creative use of timing and integral to any good story. If someone is reading a novel and everything unfolds in a predictable manner, they will probably wonder why they bothered reading the book. And so it is in life. Having life be predictable all of the time is not as calming as it sounds. We love surprises, especially good surprises like birthday parties, gifts, marriage proposals, and finding something that we thought was lost. Surprises are an important part of humour. A good joke is funny because it goes to a place you didn't expect it to go. Sim

soul refrigerator

I went grocery shopping yesterday and came home with three bags of food. After I unpacked them all, this is what my fridge looked like: really empty. How does that happen? How can I feel so full and ready for any food emergency one moment, and after one quick glance, realise that I have nothing, really? Today is one of those days in my soul as well. I woke up with gratitude and fullness in my heart, ready to take on this day and all the wonderful opportunities that it presented. Then I caught a brief glance of some emptiness in my life and bam - my buoyancy was compromised. For the past few hours I have been treading water, trying to keep my head in a positive space, bobbing in and out of disappointment, and catching myself whining with pathetic indignity at the cement blocks of other people's stupidity that are tangled around my ankles. When I am staring at the empty refrigerator of my soul, these are my thoughts. Where do I go from here? Perhaps I should slam that refrigerator

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go

outWORD by Matte Downey

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