Tending to the Whimper and Whisper

 

“Call Addictions – attachments instead,” “Salvation is about coming home,” and “Sins are fixations that prevent the energy of life, God’s love, from flowing freely.  These are self-erected barricades that cut us off from God and from ourselves.”  The Fix by Ian Morgan Cron.

 

These three quotes from me summarize succinctly the human condition.  Or as I heard a psychologist recently say, “We are under-slept, over-fed, but under nourished, over-screened, and constantly told only you can prevent forest fires of all the terror and trauma of the world out there.  So go”.  No wonder we turn to something, anything, to both release and relieve the pain that our shy souls whimper and whisper in the stillness of the night when we are staring at the ceiling. 

 

I say this not because I want to add guilt or shame or blame onto your already fragile and fragmented feelings, but because this vulnerable honesty may help us see our beloved selves in a new light.  Vulnerability can open the shades that our addictions block us from encountering God’s unconditional love.  Cron goes on to talk about what he calls “Original vulnerability,” the human software system from the moment you were born didn’t come to adequate defense to fend off the unavoidable traumas, hateful messages, and emotional injury that all of us encounter at some point in life.  Even those who seem calm and in control are like a duck on the pond—sure, it looks smooth on the surface, but underneath their souls/hearts/mind, like a duck's feet, they're fluttering furiously! 

 

Today, hold and honor that this is the human condition.  Today, let God sit beside you, holding the “you” you try to mask (after all, Halloween may have been weeks ago, but every day we were multiple costumes!).  Today, know that you are known…all of you…even those parts you think you’ve covered and confined in some prison inside you…God sees you and loves you.  May this good news replace the gospels of the world, where success and consuming are seen as the only ways to a “good life”.  Indeed, Jesus told us that the truth of seeing ourselves as we are seen by God will set us free.  Amen.