bells resonance

i have spent most of my life very acutely aware of my "issues." therapy and "deep talks" were just a part of everyday life from a very early age. my parents are, as i often say, intensity junkies and deep talkers. superficial small talk is nearly non-existent when i am with them. most of the issues and most of that acute awareness of self i have experienced has served me well and i find myself often counseling (with permission or not ;) ) most of my friends and even some acquaintances. to be candid, i often think i have a fair amount of understanding of self and of how to navigate those tumultuous emotional waters tossing and turning beneath our surfaces. but often i turn to look in me and i find myself covered in salty, dark, heavy waves i cannot even recognize as the sea at all. i find that all the navigation i thought i had done sometimes leaves me back in the same place i began.

i am currently taking a class on spiritual formation that i am convinced every single person who claims to follow jesus should take at one point. it is filled with the most simple truth and profound reality that i have yet to encounter in my faith... all the hints of what felt right in different christian settings and all the glimmers of what hope might look like in conversation and all the deep wisdom of such profound texts seems to be reflected in the content of this course. i dont want to be one of those people who says "try this [book/class/church/group/____], it will change your life" but if i had to choose one thing that i would say that about, its this.

i cant even go into all i have learned so far... its all so fresh, but at the same time, all so timeless, ((argh, i could write a book))-- but tonight seemed to illuminate something in me. so much movement happened in my heart, so many things rang true, so much was spoken just for me, it felt. a knot has been knitted in my throat, emotions just waiting to become real, its scary to think of letting that floodgate go. its still there, making it slightly hard to breathe.

you see, i am learning/understanding how to articulate a profound truth that we all see and experience life through a grid. first, before the grid, i learned that our perceptions of the world are formed very intensely in two periods of life-- a collection of images in our pre-verbal stage and a dependence on physical touch from others builds our early experience and impacts how we understand our place in the world and our value to others... am i accepted? am i lovable? am i worthy? before we are 3, mom is the primary giver of our acceptance, love, worth. then, in our pre-teens, we move away from dependence on mom (we were connected so deeply in the womb, we must naturally seperate and find ourselves away from her) and seek approval from dad, who tells us how to behave. if i am his daughter, i define the reality of my feminity based on how dad reacts to my change from girl to woman. if i am his son, i define my very masculinity on what he shows me and how he accepts me.

so the grid. through it we see our life. much of our grid can be good-- accomplishments, moments of love and acceptance, growth, healthy development. we see clearly through these spots, experience the reality of how life should be. but we also have these marred parts of the grid. the parts where things went wrong. mark #1: dad left before i became a woman... i can't trust that anyone will actually love me and stay with me... i am afraid of being left. mark #2: mom was chaotic and untrustworthy... i won' t be safe or provided for... i must be totally self sufficient. our marred grid spots keep us from the freedom to live without fear, keeps us from living in the fullness of how our creator has made us.

putting the intensity of my already hyper-aware mind together with the way this class articulates how we experience life at these deeper levels, i find this to be the best thing ever. not because it solves all the problems and not because it makes things easier. it just gives me voice. and words. makes these dark waves a little more clear.

so... do we have to live with these marred grids? must we always keep coming back to the same spots, realizing they block our view, making our perception of reality false?

they are etched into us, yes, and will always be there... but we have a choice as to whether we live by them, or whether we live in the freedom we find beyond them.

there are those bells that ring in those quaint small towns on the hour. you have to pull at them, those ones in the big bell tower. even after you pull on them enough times as there are hours, they keep on ringing, the ropes moving up and down with the bells weight. but as the bells stop being pulled, their sound gets fainter and fainter, the resonance lighter, till you can't really hear them anymore. we always have the bells, and they ring... but maybe when we know them well enough, know what they are, and why they are, we only experience the fainter resonance of their sound... once a day... then once a week... then once a month...

then, just once in a while.