Ok, I will. Here it is:
Tear Down that Wall
When is it that we learn to hide ourselves?
When is it that we take the first steps away from our essential selves, erect the first portion of the barricade around our hearts?
At what age do we begin to connect knowing with loving, begin to believe that we will not be loved if we are fully known?
It seems we are born expecting to be known and loved for what we are (and for God, knowing and loving are one essential act: He knows-loves us), but at some point we discover that human love is all too often conditional. At the point at which something makes us believe we are not lovable, we make work of suppressing those things that we believe MAKE us unlovable. In that moment, we begin to find ways to keep our true selves hidden, even from ourselves, because we are afraid that if we are known fully we will not be loved. We build barriers and try to hide those things behind the wall, and act other than we are. Then, like East Berliners, we learn to ignore the wall and go about our business as if it isn’t there. But it is always there, keeping good things out, holding bad things in, threatening to reveal the truth.
We erect walls and then at some point grace illuminates them and we begin to try to dismantle them. We reach toward Heaven, we desire God’s love, and He says, “I love you already, but you’ve got to get rid of that wall you’ve erected around your heart if you want Me to come in.” And gradually He teaches us that we can’t remove one stone without His help (even though we put them all in place on our own!). So He gives us the grace to remove the barrier that keeps His love out and our true self hidden. One by one, He helps us identify the obstructions, and one by one He helps us knock them down, and at each victory His light shines through more fully until at last our true self is revealed.
Now we should be free, but…
But it seems that wall has come to mark a false boundary, so that even though it is demolished by His grace in us, that interior space is avoided, our newly-emancipated true self is not entirely free. It has forgotten how to reach out, how to trust fully, how to be loved freely. And our thoughts, accustomed to going about their business ignoring the wall, still routinely avoid that core space. The essential self has been guarded for so long it no longer remembers how to reveal itself confidently, without expecting to be driven back behind the wall, or perhaps even wishing it were pushed back there. An ambivalent dance.
What’s the point here? Why does the subconscious, the level of “sub-experience,” insist on pushing toward the light of consciousness? As if it wanted to reveal its story, in some way to inform the conscious, rational part of the mind with what it knows. Is there buried treasure there, or only more stone to weigh us down? How much does our “internal history” need to be consciously experienced?
Inasmuch as the true self may be trapped underneath the rubble, perhaps the seeking has value. Beyond that, who knows? But there is one answer that is inescapable and that is always correct: Christ is the answer to the question posed by every human life – His love reveals the ontological worth of each person, penetrates each life, gives each one a dignity that precedes any conscious act.
In order to realize this innate dignity, we must go beyond ourselves, we must reach out to the things and souls around us, allow ourselves to be affected by them. But this is only part of (a condition of?) the fulfillment of our unique humanity. The key to fulfillment lies beyond us – it’s a vertical transcendence, not horizontal. We are called to surrender the self that we are so that we can become – by God’s love alone – the self that He created us to be. Genuine change takes place on the condition that we choose to open ourselves to His transforming power.
We choose, but not all at once, because we cannot see the choice to be made all at once. We determine our course by small daily decisions – it is our liberty to decide, our daily actions, our exercise of decision over daily options, our integration of all we are and know and have done before as well as our willingness to transcend ourselves incrementally that determines what we are as persons. We recognize, initiate, determine, act, and are thereby transformed…
We say “free will” as if our freedom lies in the will alone, and as if every decision were black and white. But the measure of freedom in the person is more complex – it is more like the degree to which the person has integrated the many complex facets of consciousness and the many “dynamisms” within. To the degree one is able to achieve such integration within his whole being, he has realized the inherent and unique potentiality of his personhood, and he is free. Liberty is not in what we know in the intellect or decide with the will, but in our active self-determination. Every action affects the whole person and changes us, for better or for worse.
Without God, we can do nothing but lose ourselves, dis-integrate. But if we allow His love to penetrate us, surrender what we are to His mercy, correspond with the grace He continuously sends, we begin to act as integrated persons, whole and free. With His Spirit informing each action, we learn to act like Him, and our will gradually conforms to His; as our will becomes more united with His, our actions and choices continue to transform us into the persons He created us to be.
Free to love fully.
I always come back to that. We are made to know and to be known. We are made to love and to be loved.
Made BY love, made TO love, made FOR love.
But we put so many things in the way - so many barriers to our knowing and loving. And yet, there are no barriers beyond which grace cannot reach. Christ penetrates every darkened heart and mind with His unwearied invitation to light and truth. From all eternity He pursues every person with His love.
Sometimes that pursuit involves helping us untangle what is knotted within the subconscious to free what is trapped inside.
Tear Down that Wall
When is it that we learn to hide ourselves?
When is it that we take the first steps away from our essential selves, erect the first portion of the barricade around our hearts?
At what age do we begin to connect knowing with loving, begin to believe that we will not be loved if we are fully known?
It seems we are born expecting to be known and loved for what we are (and for God, knowing and loving are one essential act: He knows-loves us), but at some point we discover that human love is all too often conditional. At the point at which something makes us believe we are not lovable, we make work of suppressing those things that we believe MAKE us unlovable. In that moment, we begin to find ways to keep our true selves hidden, even from ourselves, because we are afraid that if we are known fully we will not be loved. We build barriers and try to hide those things behind the wall, and act other than we are. Then, like East Berliners, we learn to ignore the wall and go about our business as if it isn’t there. But it is always there, keeping good things out, holding bad things in, threatening to reveal the truth.
We erect walls and then at some point grace illuminates them and we begin to try to dismantle them. We reach toward Heaven, we desire God’s love, and He says, “I love you already, but you’ve got to get rid of that wall you’ve erected around your heart if you want Me to come in.” And gradually He teaches us that we can’t remove one stone without His help (even though we put them all in place on our own!). So He gives us the grace to remove the barrier that keeps His love out and our true self hidden. One by one, He helps us identify the obstructions, and one by one He helps us knock them down, and at each victory His light shines through more fully until at last our true self is revealed.
Now we should be free, but…
But it seems that wall has come to mark a false boundary, so that even though it is demolished by His grace in us, that interior space is avoided, our newly-emancipated true self is not entirely free. It has forgotten how to reach out, how to trust fully, how to be loved freely. And our thoughts, accustomed to going about their business ignoring the wall, still routinely avoid that core space. The essential self has been guarded for so long it no longer remembers how to reveal itself confidently, without expecting to be driven back behind the wall, or perhaps even wishing it were pushed back there. An ambivalent dance.
What’s the point here? Why does the subconscious, the level of “sub-experience,” insist on pushing toward the light of consciousness? As if it wanted to reveal its story, in some way to inform the conscious, rational part of the mind with what it knows. Is there buried treasure there, or only more stone to weigh us down? How much does our “internal history” need to be consciously experienced?
Inasmuch as the true self may be trapped underneath the rubble, perhaps the seeking has value. Beyond that, who knows? But there is one answer that is inescapable and that is always correct: Christ is the answer to the question posed by every human life – His love reveals the ontological worth of each person, penetrates each life, gives each one a dignity that precedes any conscious act.
In order to realize this innate dignity, we must go beyond ourselves, we must reach out to the things and souls around us, allow ourselves to be affected by them. But this is only part of (a condition of?) the fulfillment of our unique humanity. The key to fulfillment lies beyond us – it’s a vertical transcendence, not horizontal. We are called to surrender the self that we are so that we can become – by God’s love alone – the self that He created us to be. Genuine change takes place on the condition that we choose to open ourselves to His transforming power.
We choose, but not all at once, because we cannot see the choice to be made all at once. We determine our course by small daily decisions – it is our liberty to decide, our daily actions, our exercise of decision over daily options, our integration of all we are and know and have done before as well as our willingness to transcend ourselves incrementally that determines what we are as persons. We recognize, initiate, determine, act, and are thereby transformed…
We say “free will” as if our freedom lies in the will alone, and as if every decision were black and white. But the measure of freedom in the person is more complex – it is more like the degree to which the person has integrated the many complex facets of consciousness and the many “dynamisms” within. To the degree one is able to achieve such integration within his whole being, he has realized the inherent and unique potentiality of his personhood, and he is free. Liberty is not in what we know in the intellect or decide with the will, but in our active self-determination. Every action affects the whole person and changes us, for better or for worse.
Without God, we can do nothing but lose ourselves, dis-integrate. But if we allow His love to penetrate us, surrender what we are to His mercy, correspond with the grace He continuously sends, we begin to act as integrated persons, whole and free. With His Spirit informing each action, we learn to act like Him, and our will gradually conforms to His; as our will becomes more united with His, our actions and choices continue to transform us into the persons He created us to be.
Free to love fully.
I always come back to that. We are made to know and to be known. We are made to love and to be loved.
Made BY love, made TO love, made FOR love.
But we put so many things in the way - so many barriers to our knowing and loving. And yet, there are no barriers beyond which grace cannot reach. Christ penetrates every darkened heart and mind with His unwearied invitation to light and truth. From all eternity He pursues every person with His love.
Sometimes that pursuit involves helping us untangle what is knotted within the subconscious to free what is trapped inside.
posted by KathrynTherese at 8:37 AM
17 Comments:
I remember nearly each time when I started building a wall. The spanking that was increased when I was stupid enough to ask what it was for; the overheard singing that was laughed at; the smirking, wordless blocking of a nightly porch formerly hung around on; the running down the street like the wind on a day with no asthma and hearing a peer's neighborhood-wide shout, "For God's sake, Honora, you need a bra!" The dual wound from an admonition not to wrestle with my father at my age (12) as it may make him go a bit wonky.. Ah, so I can never be the boy he'd never have, and worse, I am my father's temptress?
It went downhill from there.
We learn what to say, do and hide and stand where we have the most protection. Sometimes, that is nowhere. And that creates not only a me, but perhaps a bin Laden, a Charles Manson, a Madonna Ciccone. Where would I be without Jesus, willing Personal redeemer of all humiliations and rejection? Well, I might be a terrorist, a killer, or a slutty entertainer.
God created us with an automatic wall building function...but ultimately, if we want to make room for Him in our hearts, we have to tear those walls down.
Thank goodness he has xray eyes and looks beyond our walls, right into our hearts. Knowing this gives us the courage and HOPE we need to tear down those walls.
You've reminded me of Francis Thompson's "Hound of Heaven." Thanks, Lady K :-), for all you do.
FMN, it's not my walls I'm worried about anymore.. most all them can now be broken through with one teardrop or sigh. And often are.
You folks, too?
Welcome, Servant ;-)
Yes, we are all afraid in some ways of being rejected, and so there are parts of ourselves we hide. Sometimes, we even hide these things from ourselves, by refusing to face them.
But in doing so, we really scramble our own true happiness, because we eliminate the possibility of being known and YET LOVED. Loved for what we are. If we hide, then we tend to de-value the love we DO receive by subconsciously saying something like, "Yeah, but they don't know what I REALLY am. If they knew, they wouldn't love me like that." That's why mother-love is always the pure standard - in theory, and in true practice, mother-love is unconditional. And mothers KNOW. And still, they love us.
God does too (as FMN said, he has "xray eyes" and sees beyond our walls - He knows us better than we know ourselves), but His love is difficult to accept until we have had an experience of unconditional love on the human level. He can reach past our woundedness and demonstrate His love without this, of course, but He usually works through natural conduits.
But our pipelines are so clogged. There are few who keep them cleared enough for everything good to get through - we need to be free of our own agendas and our own selfishness. I've known a few of these in my lifetime, and what a blessing they are to the planet. I often say that my spiritual director is "all conduit." He doesn't clog up the works with his own complications.
Of course, cleaning the pipes is messy business, and painful too at times. Are we willing to endure our own cleansing?
Honora, I re-read your first comment and I'd just like to say that at some point, He wipes those memories away. You can still recall them, but it takes great effort, and it seems almost like a dream, or another person's memory.
The purification of memory is a dark night in itself, but it crystallizes our hope to diamond brilliance.
I pray He takes you there.
Well, something you said jogged it all to memory; it (and far more) is indeed as if it happened to some other - that's what Christ does for you, if you're wise enough and brave enough to take it to Him and let Him apply scalpel and remedies that sting something fierce which can take years; and I could only do that for others' sakes, to become a wounded healer. But walls, others', had everything to do with a very loud razor blade one inebriated night while still in the old wineskin. After 25 or 30 years of every grace and blessing, light and solace there could be since then, however, that loss of hope, too, is as foreign to me now as is the former hope of happiness in exile. Our life is not of the world.
It's important to point out that we don't really clean our own pipes.
God does all the cleaning.
So when does He start? When He's good and ready. And we show that WE are ready by letting go of all the junk. He won't wrestle it from us, so He waits. And waits. And waits for us to stop hanging on to it. And when it's just sitting there for awhile as a pile of junk and we see it (partially - I don't know if we ever really SEE it all and comprehend ourselves fully) and we refuse to grab it back (this is more difficult than it sounds - sometimes, we think this junk defines us, but that's another post), THEN He sees that we are ready to be cleaned out. The debris has been loosened by grace and self-renunciation and acts of humility and charity, and now we can be swept clean.
Well, sometimes it takes a roto-rooter or whatever those things are. Sometimes it hurts. Almost always, it's a bit confusing and disconcerting. And if we start to grab everything back, He'll stop. He'll let us keep whatever we want.
As I've said before, in the end, we get what we want - if we want only God, in the end we have God, all of God. If we want ourselves and our junk, in the end we have ourselves, and only ourselves, and that is Hell.
God only needs our goodwill. But how do we know our will is good? We prove it to ourselves (HE already KNOWS, but He wants US to know) by our acts of penance and virtue.
I'm no good at acts of virtue, but penance is accessible to anyone.
Servant, if you haven't been to confession in a while, maybe now's a good time. Tell a trusted priest that it's been a while, and he may suggest a private confession appointment. If you are not Catholic, speak with your minister or deacon about things.
If you don't know how to start, and most don't, just say so. They will take it from there. We become paralyzed by certain things, even if not sin.. for many of us, only a holy nudge will get our lives flowing and fluid again.
With love in Christ,
Honora
I came by way of forget-me-not's blog. honora is another online friend. I am *very* pleased to have found you and will be linking you on my poetry/memoir blog. Boy, I have got some serious reading to do to catch up - you really write.
::thrive!
O
Hey, Owen! Good to see you here, and I'm glad you're ok. Yes, indeed, Lady K is a wondrous writer, poetess and photographer. :-) You two have much in common.
Servant, please pardon me for being presumptuous and please pardon if I am redundant.
I don't know what's going on, but let me offer that maybe sometimes we just try too hard. The Master wants in, on all of it. He says, "Come to ME.. I will give you rest." As Lady K stresses, we need to let go, and let God.
"Practicing the Presence of God," by Brother Lawrence may help.
You might re-read the Gospel of John, but now, see it as if you are writing it, living it, remembering it..
M. Scott Peck blew me away by mentioning how very intimate Jesus is in the Eucharist. Indeed. Like being "blood brothers" when we were kids, only far far moreso.. And certainly we are invited to rest upon Jesus' breast just as one of His best friends, the beloved disciple, did at table. Do it. Touch Him. Or.. touch His thorns, look Him in the eye, see what's there for you. Set aside a certain time of day to go with Him into Gethsemani, pray with Him shoulder to shoulder. Or place yourself on Dismas' cross.
Or maybe you and the Carpenter might build a table together, and talk all through it.
Or, you might apprentice yourself to a saint whom you suspect can help you the most.
Lady K, ccheryl has posted a question in comments over at FMN's, regarding your "School of Love."
Welcome to our Conspiracy, Owen. Ladies, I guess we're adding BBQ ribs to the menu. Do you grill, Owen? It's unbecoming for a woman to stand over raw meat and fire.
It's far more unbecoming for a woman to stand over a ceramic bowl with a swisher in one hand and Comet cleanser in the other -- I would gladly trade those for a long-handled spatula in one hand and bbq sauce in the other! (And this welding suit works well for either activity, so I'm ready if Owen or Servant needs a break from grilling.)
No, Honora, we need you to direct the work. I'll do the dishes.
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