Can There Be Peace In Palestine?

This was written in response to a trip I was lucky to be part of in 2007.  I thought I would repost it as we witness renewed violence in in the Holy Land.  Regardless of what one thinks of the theology, the details remain true.

"Can There Be Peace in Palestine?

- reflections on my trip to Israel"

Alison Longstaff, August 26^th, 2007

Church of the Good Shepherd

Psalm 122: 1-9; Matthew 24:1-13

                                                                                                     

            As many of you know, I went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land this past Spring.   Because the Holy Land is not the most stable of regions, preparation for the trip included a day-long session on culture shock, cultural sensitivity and diversity, and post-traumatic-stress disorder, among other things.  In our information packets we found articles on how to recognize post-traumatic-stress disorder, both in ourselves and in our fellow travellers.  We learned that we could be affected by the general atmosphere of trauma-survival among the peoples we would be visiting.  We discussed how we should care for ourselves and each other should violence occur.  It was sobering.

            Above all, we were taught, "The situation in Palestine is complicated."  We must try to withhold judgment.  We must avoid taking sides, and instead, simply keep our eyes and ears open. Apparently, westerners characteristically assume that the problems over there could be easily fixed if someone just said the right thing or took charge the right way.   It is not so.

            I was immediately struck by the warmth with which the Israelis in the airport greeted us.  They welcome all visitors.  The arrival of tourists helps them not feel so isolated nor so judged and feared and cut-off from the rest of the world.  We also met our tour guide at the airport, a Palestinian Arab Christian Israeli.

(picture: The Lion's Gate in Jerusalem. Notice how bullet-riddled it is.)

            His name was Husam, not Hussein  but Husam.  He advised us to call him "Who? Sam?" to remember the correct pronunciation.  His name was as unfamiliar in my mouth as his identity was to grasp in my brain.  An Arab Christian Palestinian Israeli. He was an Arab, which is a blood-line or ethnicity, but he was not Muslim, like many Arabs are.  He was a Christian.  There are many Christians in the Holy land still, Christians descended from the Christians who have been there since the time of Jesus.  He is Palestinian, which means his family has lived in the Palestinian territories for centuries, but he is not a terrorist.  It is terribly unfortunate that the western media has somehow gotten many of us in the Western world to equate "Palestinian" with "terrorist." It is an emotional and fearful association and entirely uneducated.  There are so many good and peaceful Palestinians. To think every Palestinian is a terrorist is as accurate as thinking that, because I am a woman and a seminarian, all women are seminarians.  (Picture: Husam [white hat] talks to some of us on the school steps. See the clear, brilliant blue of the sky.)

            And, Husam was an Israeli.  Both a Palestinian and an Israeli?  At the same time?  Yes.  He was born to a Palestinian family in Palestinian territory, but he is one of the lucky few to have an Israeli passport.  He is recognized as a citizen of Israel.  Many Palestinians are not, for all sorts of reasons, which is a huge part of the problem over there.  But he is.  So He is an Arab Israeli Palestinian Christian.  Even he doesn't know where he fits.

            There are so many ways I could describe our travels over there.  I could speak of the land, the light, and the locations.  I could describe all the many churches vying to be sitting on the "original spot where" something religious maybe happened.  I could describe the crazy mix of old and new, and the march of time in a place nearly older than time.

            But I choose to describe my observations of the people of the land, the desperate religious sincerity, and the age-old battles for dominance and control.  I choose to describe both the beauty and courage, the resilience and hope in the face of the repeated failures of the peace efforts.  And the heart-breaking violence that seems to have a life of its own.  

(Next two pictures: school children, Christian and Muslim, playing soccer together in Ramallah. Will they also grow up to kill or be killed?) 

            At no time did we witness open violence.  We were never exposed to any real danger, ever.  But we witnessed evidence of the tension everywhere we looked.  From the thick razor-wire topped walls that Israel is unremittingly erecting around section after section of Palestinian territory, to the machine gun toting soldiers, to the bullet holes riddling the walls of Jerusalem, we could not help but be aware of the tension.

            These people have lived through things I can't even imagine.  We had to pass through heavily guarded check points.  We had our bus driver yelled at by an angry Israeli guard at one check point.  We had soldiers barely out of their teens march through our bus, examining our passports, machine guns slung on their hips.  One pulled off his sunglasses, and looked just like our neighbour's son, except he had darker hair. 

            Israel is a military state, and every young person must spend two years in the army.   Imagine if we lived there.  That would be every young person you know, taught to handle guns. To shoot to kill.  To obey orders.  To see violence as a common occurrence.  Jake and Sam, Stephanie, and Megan and Kate, Heather and Joshua. . . .  Both my girls, and eventually, Jordan.  And this, not in Canada, but in a country born in the holocaust, and shaped by a lifetime of hatred and oppression.  I simply can't comprehend it.

(picture: overlooking the school's playground in Ramallah) 

            We stayed in Bethlehem first, beyond the wall.  The Palestinians nearest Jerusalem live in some of the worst conditions.  Though our hostel was spacious, clean, and quiet, we saw the rubble and neglect in the streets.  The severe water restrictions were evident in the bathrooms though never shoved in our faces.  Some of us blithely and ignorantly took our long western showers, not realizing the desperate need for every drop behind the walls.  You see,  Bethlehem, a scarce five miles from Jerusalem, is Palestinian.  It is the distance of about eight kilometres from here to the St Jacobs farmers market or from here to Sports World.  For that matter, from here to the Carmel Church, our Swedenborgian cousins.  By now, development is as continuous between Jerusalem and Bethlehem as it is between Good Shepherd and St Jacobs.  It could be one big city except the Israelis have been and still are erecting a wall all around Bethlehem, and all around Ramallah, and around many other places.  Imagine having friends who lived near the St. Jacob's farmer's market who were walled in, and never allowed to leave.  Imagine them cut off from their jobs, their doctors, their families.  Imagine trying to invite them to a wedding or a funeral, and them being refused permission to come.  This is the reality of many Palestinians in Israel.  No wonder many have resorted to violence.  Some are cut off from their family vineyards which have been their livelihood for centuries.  It is arbitrary, cruel, and they are completely powerless.  There is 70% unemployment within these walled areas.

            Seeing the conditions behind the wall and hearing the stories, it was hard not to take sides against the Israelis.  On the first day, a group of us went to visit a Christian school in Ramallah.  Because our bus and tour company had all the right passes and papers, and because tourists bring welcome dollars to Israel, our bus was allowed to traverse the two heavily guarded check points in order to make this trip.  Ramallah, yes, the Ramallah in the news, is another stone's throw out the other side of Jerusalem.  We travelled from the dusty, broken, and run-down Palestinian streets of Bethlehem into the clean, new, well watered and beautifully landscaped Israeli neighbourhoods on the right side of the wall, and then back into the pock-marked, rubble-strewn, and neglected streets of Ramallah.

            We met some of the most courageous and called teachers and volunteers at this school, as in the many other Christian centres we visited.  The school in Ramallah has several hundred pupils from Kindergarten to about grade eight.  They are Muslim and Christian.  Yes, this school welcomes Muslim children, and educates them as Muslims.  The Muslims have separate religion classes from the Christians, but also, all the children have religion together once a week, where they learn about each other's religions as well as the many other religions of the world.  The Christian and Muslim families in these Palestinian territories are bound together by their shared hardship.  They want only peace, and for their suffering to end.

(Picture: Children cluster around Debbie Lou and others of us, including our tall photographer)

            Everything looked normal.  The children's happy voices rang out from the recess yard as we sat and spoke with the head teachers.  Debbie Lou, one of our group who is a music instructor at Wilfrid Laurier, went out to mingle with the children.  When the children learned that she loved music, they wanted to sing her their songs.  One little boy sang her "his song."  The interpreter described the story to Debbie Lou as the little boy happily performed his long composition.  It was a song about his grandfather, who was taken in the night from their home, by soldiers with guns.  It was about how he would never see his grandfather again, and it went on and on.

(Picture: in the crowd is the little boy singing to Debbie Lou.)

            The teachers told us that this type of song is a form of trauma therapy for the children.  That the primary task the teachers face, daily, is helping the children deal with the precariousness of their lives.  Almost nightly, Israeli soldiers come into some part of Ramallah and arrest someone or shoot up a home, occasionally just because they can.  It is a form of intimidation.  It is meant to keep the Palestinians off balance.

            The children come to school chattering about the soldiers being on their street in the night, much the way our kids might chatter about an extra violent thunderstorm or a tornado scare.  This is normal for them.  The safest place these children have is the school.  The teachers do everything they can to help the children, Christian and Muslim together, to feel safe and loved and cared for by God.  Even so, in 2002, the soldiers came to the school during the day. They blasted open the doors and shot up the walls.  When the teachers complained to Isreali officials afterwards they were told, "No one was hurt."

            "No one was hurt."  Imagine if a huge explosion rocketed those doors off their hinges and a mass of armed soldiers stormed in screaming and ordering everyone onto the floor, and then proceeded to shoot up our walls and windows.  Then after yelling at us all and calling us names like filthy terrorists, vile English, dirty Canadians, and threatening to kill us and our families, for several hours, they left. ? !  "No one was hurt," simply doesn't adequately describe the shock we all would have sustained

(picture: One of our Canadian peace-workers, one of the seminary professors, and the brave head teacher of the school.)

            Just looking at the blast-blackened and twisted front doors would be enough to bring all of the emotional trauma back.  And we would be left to pick up the shattered glass, and see our dear sanctuary all bullet-riddled, and try to decide how to go on.

            This is one tiny piece of one tiny reality in all of the stories and sights we heard.  I haven't even told you about the three empty dialysis chairs awaiting children who would never show up that day at the hospital.  The guards at the check-points refused three children permission to come get their dialysis treatments at the hospital.  It makes no sense.  Three children, who would be dead in two days if they are not allowed through the wall to the hospital for their treatments.  That was four months ago.  Are any of them still alive?

            If I think too much about it all, I get choked up.

(picture: The head teacher and some students.)

            The same day that we visited that hospital, we went to the holocaust museum.  We only had a half-hour for the museum, which needed at least three.  I could barely take it in.  I sat and wept and wept.  That night, tempers erupted in our group.  There was shouting and accusations resulting in withdrawal and tears.  We were all dealing with more than we could handle.  The scope of the human on human abuse and horror was more than we were capable of comprehending.  We were shattered.

(Picture:The school pastor looks on and our Canadian tour director talks to the head teacher.)

            We are very sheltered here in Canada.  And we kid ourselves if we think we are incapable of the behaviours we heard of and saw in Israel.  Everyone of us, under the same conditions, would exhibit much the same behaviours.  Just witness the small violence of barking, hurtful accusations that arose in our tiny, peaceful, Canadian group after the one day of witnessing the hospital and the holocaust museum.  We were overwhelmed.  The helplessness and grief had to pour out somehow.  We were able to apologize and heal within 24 hours.  These people are dealing with a legacy of trauma and violence that spans generations, crosses cultures, and touches every one of us.  It's not going to be a simple fix.

            Though it is understandable, the fact of the holocaust does not give Israel a right to bully and oppress the Palestinians.  A battered wife will take a long time, a LONG time before she will trust a man to treat her kindly.  How much more is Israel a battered wife?  The horror of the generations of abuse must work its way out somehow, and it will take time.

            "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem. . . .  How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not ready." (Matt 23:27)

            Before we become too depressed by the stories we've explored together today, before we decide that it is all hopeless and horrible, let's remember that God was born into this very place.  He did not and will not give up on us, though He himself, his beauty and love and truth was spoken into this darkness and treated much the same way.  Standing with and bearing the horror, and still staying open to love is the way out.  And I need not go to Israel to do this work.  I can find it readily in my own family and neighbourhood, and yes, even in our church.

            When you and I work to face and, without passing on the harm, express and release the hurts and little traumas and small betrayals we face within our lives here and now, we are helping to strengthen the great global consciousness of peace and forgiveness.  It has long been known that abuse will be passed on and on until someone is strong enough to stop the transmission.  The abuse will stop when the human race is ready and strong enough and conscious enough to stop it.  AND, what you and I do in our hearts, here and now, today, makes a difference.  Forgiving my brother, my sister, my father, for abuses and hurts in my family, is the way I help the world move toward forgiveness. (picture: watching the children at play)

            Yes, there are many active and hands-on ways we can try to help in Israel.  They need help.  They particularly need volunteers who speak Arabic.  I can put you in touch with any number of ways to provide support and caring if you feel called.

            But more than that, you and I can stand, hand in hand, and believe in peace and forgiveness.  You and I can look fearlessly into the horror and hopelessness and speak love into the darkness.  We are not alone in the desire for peace.  We have God on our side.  And God is infinitely patient and infinitely healing.  If our hearts break at the sights and stories, God's heart breaks a thousand times more.  But while we become weighed down by hopelessness, God has never given up and never will give up.  He knows what He's doing.  Nothing, absolutely nothing is hopeless in God's care.

            As we read in Jeremiah:

For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord,

plans for your welfare and not for harm,

to give you a future with hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)

            Thank you for listening.  Amen.

Special music  Calling All Angels    by Jane Siberry

The value of THE TRUTH, or "Was Jesus Married?"

The following is adapted from a recent assignment in seminary. The professor used an actual event from his own life to ask us to examine and put into words our own faith in response to such a situation.

Spiritual Reflection #2

By Alison Longstaff

For TH680 A

October 26th , 2012

The Scenario

     Maria and Susan have been colleagues for 10 years. They know each other very well and often enjoy their conversations while working at the Air Canada Check‐In counter at Pearson International Airport. Maria is from the Philippines and Susan from a small town in southwestern Ontario. They like to talk about current affairs. It is two o’clock in the afternoon when I arrive at their counter to check in for my flight.
       “So where are you headed?” asked Maria.
       “To a conference,” I responded.
       “Oh, that must be interesting. What do you do?” Maria continued.
       “I teach at a theological school,” I said. “It is a theological conference.”

With absolutely no one behind me and no one at Susan’s counter, Maria went on, “Really, that is interesting. We were just talking about Karen King; you know the one that found this old document that said Jesus was married.”
      “Oh yes,” I said, “I read about that in the newspaper.”
       Maria said, “She went running off to the press with all that stuff before she checked it out. Remember the St. James’ Ossuary (Burial Box)? It was a fake in the end. The Vatican sayes this document is a forgery too. I am a lifelong Catholic. I know what I believe, but Susan says ‘What does it matter?’ So you’re a theologian. What do you think?”

Here is my response for the professor, grade TBD.

     The question of whether Jesus was married or not typically threatens a long-held and well-established point of faith for many. It is possible that for one or both of these women the deeper question might be, “If ‘the church’ (the Vatican, the Pope, authorities through the ages, their own trusted ministers, etc) has been wrong about this all these years, what else have they been wrong about?” Looked at this way, my response could threaten the spiritual foundations of anyone still reliant on an official outside authority to define what they should believe (as opposed to their own personal, internalized synthesis of faith). That is, of course, if they didn't dismiss me out of hand, as I am neither a Catholic, nor even a man. The very fact that this original scenario was encountered by a mature, Anglo-Saxon male with a beard already changes the significance of how my response will be weighted by the questioners.

      Nevertheless, this situation calls me to examine how I view my role in relation to such casual yet deeply significant questions. I will likely never see these women again, and it is not my desire in any way to undermine their need to believe what they already believe. My heart desire is to support people in formulating their own faith in intelligent, conscious, and well-informed ways, and not simply to impose my understanding on them. While on the one hand I want to give them a response that invites them to continue to deepen their faith intelligently, on the other hand I do not want to so challenge their faith that they are thrown into crisis.

      Therefore, as I look into the eyes of these women, I must ask myself this: What is the most pastoral response that I can give, knowing that I am seen as a “religious authority figure,” and specifically not wanting my answer to stir up contention between them or precipitate a crisis of faith in the questioners?

Foundations

      My natural teaching style is to lead any student to their own understanding by reflecting a question back to them in a respectful and inviting way. A person’s own attempt to articulate what he or she believes helps them understand and integrate their own beliefs more deeply. I wish to show respect for both Susan and Maria’s faith traditions --- to do no violence to either one’s sacred beliefs while being yet true to my own tradition and formulation.

      Further, I am Swedenborgian and a psych undergrad. For me, spiritual and psychological development is entwined and inseparable. James Fowler’s stages of faith development shapes my pastoral response to these women. Fowler’s findings echo statements in Swedenborg’s own material, written over two-hundred years earlier.[1] If I could know for certain where each woman was in her spiritual journey, I could shape my response accordingly. But I cannot.

         In terms of my own doctrinal integrity in addressing the significance of whether Jesus was married or not, my tradition has two points that speak to this. First is the teaching that Sacred Scripture holds a continuous deep inner meaning. [2] This belief frees me from worrying about any literal accuracy, as the integrity and value lies in the inner meaning, not the letter. What may or may not be historically accurate is a curiousity to me, but in no way threatens the foundations of my faith. Secondly, Swedenborg promotes throughout his theology that marriage is a metaphor for the spiritually evolved or “regenerated” human. Marriage represents the inner union within a person’s psyche of intellect and heart, or true integrity---the intellect is suffused with a deep sense of love and connectedness with the rest of humanity, while the heart is steered toward useful service by the intellect. Jesus being “married” makes absolute sense to me through the lens of this metaphor. On the other hand, it has been in God’s providence so far that we have primarily believed that Jesus was unmarried. I trust God’s leadership and timing, and the detail of Jesus’ marital status is not significant to me.

             Finally, I also believe strongly that what we believe is not as important as how we live. This is also supported in Swedenborg.[3] Looking this way at the effect of my beliefs on my living was brought home to me during a lively debate with friends a few years ago. The question was whether or not hell was eternal. After debating back and forth within this group one dear friend said at last, “All I know is that believing that God gives us as long as we need to get straightened out, instead of us having to get it right in our short time on earth makes me a kinder, gentler human being.”

That one statement revolutionized the way I go about examining my beliefs. When my core value is the Golden Rule, the question, “In what way does this belief affect how I treat my neighbour?” is of more value to me than whether it is the “perfect truth.” Swedenborg would say that any truth that is not softened and informed by love ceases to be true anyway, no matter how accurate it is.[4]

I will leave it there. My response would be pastoral according to what and how these women responded to me. I would invite these women to tell me more about their beliefs, and I would respond further according to the tensions and unmet needs I might sense within their answers. For my part, it isn't about what is “THE TRUTH.” It is about what these two souls need from me to be more peaceful, more fulfilled, and more wisely loving. That is my job in this encounter, and that is all.

---

[1] Swedenborg describes at least four stages of faith or “regeneration” loosely paralleling Fowler’s six stages, in Arcana Coelestia (henceforth cited as AC) §3603:3

[2] This is most succinctly described in Swedenborg’s De Verbo, §1 and following.

[3] Swedenborg promotes “charity” or loving-kindness first.  Kindness without wisdom still comes from the heart, whereas faith not lived in acts of service is seen as dead. AC §7884 and AC §1100

[4] Beliefs not informed by love actually slay loving-kindness as Cain slew Abel. AC §369

 References

Fowler, James W. (1981). Stages of faith : the psychology of human development and the quest for meaning. San Francisco: Harper and Row.

Swedenborg, E. (1983). Arcana Coelestia (J. Elliot Trans.). London, England: Swedenborg Society. (1748).

Swedenborg, E. (1934). De Verbo (J. Chadwick Trans.). London, England: Swedenborg Society. (1762).

A Note About Page Numbers in citations from Swedenborg Text citations from Swedenborg=s material do not refer to page numbers but to passage or paragraph numbers.  This numbering system is used consistently throughout all his editions. Citations may include Name of Publication as Translated, date the translation came to print, name of the translator from the Latin, and the passage number preceded by the symbol §.

Broken Open by Love

I recently returned from a gathering of my peers (fellow liberal Swedenborgian ministers) in beautiful Laport, Indiana.  I was asked to give the talk to the local congregation Wednesday night.  We had been fed and housed by the several generous, quiet, and amazingly kind ladies of this congregation as we listened, discerned, and upheld each other in love. This was the message, from our hearts to the whole congregation. 

Broken Open

Scripture: John 12 20-26

Rev. Alison Longstaff

The Laport New Church, Indiana

http://www.laportenewchurch.org/

Joint worship at the close of “Peer Supervision,” October 24, 2012

John 12:24 “Timeless truth I speak to you: unless a grain of wheat falls and dies in the ground, it remains alone.  But if it dies, it yields a great abundance.”

What do we do in peer supervision?

Do we discuss deep points of doctrine? 

Do we explore the deep underlying existential and theological implications of ministry in modern western global consciousness today?

Nope.

We come for fellowship.

We come to listen and to heal. We come to share in the one community that really gets us.

So what happens in these meetings?  A great deal of heart truth.  What happens in these meetings?  Listening, sharing, empathy, comfort, and support; insight, respect, often tears, sometimes heart-wrenching sobs, and always uproarious laughter.

And this was a point of insight for us --- that without the willingness to go into our depths of sadness and struggle, we would not also be opened to the moments of tremendous light.  Unless we allowed ourselves to be broken open by the love and safety here, we would tend to remain tightly bound in our need to be strong.  Pastors need pastors too. And so here we find that when we let ourselves be supported by each other --- when we let ourselves feel our deepest vulnerability, we rediscover our greatest strength, which is God’s relentless, persistent, unconditional love, experienced through each other.

Like the seed in the scripture falling to the earth, we must surrender.  We would prefer to hold on to “life.”  To feel strong and competent and capable.  It is much harder to look openly at our fears and insecurities.  It is much easier to be strong.  Who likes feeling vulnerable?  Yet through our descent into the dark earth of vulnerability, God cracks us open, and THEN the sacred and creative and the beautiful burst into life. 

It is a universal truth of the human condition: that deep in the heart of each soul is the terror of not being good enough.  Deep in each psyche lies the fear of being innately unlovable.  This is commonly called shame, and every mistake we have ever made piggybacks on this shame and seeks to convince you and you and me that we are somehow truly unlovable, and that some day, someone will figure this out and the game will be up.  We will be rejected, “as we deserve.”

But guess what?  There are no throw-away people. 

None. 

Every single one of us is the absolutely perfect, bright, and innocent soul that we were at the moment of our birth.  Nothing has changed, except that we have come to believe that we might somehow have lost our right to have love and human tenderness and connection, because our culture tells us so.

So let’s just admit it right now.  We all have warts.  We are all afraid of being just too broken to love.  And we are all completely beautiful and full of light!  And only through our vulnerability and heart-honesty, do we experience God’s presence among us, in compassion, gentleness, healing tears, and then deep belly-aching laughter. 

If we isolate and try to maintain the illusion of strength, we remain alone.  But when we allow ourselves to die, and to let our pride go, we are open to finding true intimacy and the abundant life of true heart-relationship --- which is the kingdom of heaven.

We came to these meetings holding it together.  

We leave whole and together. 

We came needing healing.  

We leave with such gratitude for this congregation’s quiet, amazing support and hospitality.  

Thank you for your light and love.  

http://www.memorise.org/brain-articles/laughter-affects-brain-00734.html

Holidays After Trauma

First let me say that trauma is a continuum.  Part of me doesn't feel legitimate naming myself as someone recovering from trauma, but enough friends and therapists have independently named me so, that I am accepting that.

Today is the Sunday of Canadian Thanksgiving weekend.  In the past I would have been planning or deep in the middle of cooking a big family dinner, complete with gorgeous autumn decorations and turkey.  I would have enjoyed finding as many chairs as possible and getting creative with table arranging so everyone had a place.  The older I get, the more this sort of ritual is meaningful to me it seems, and the more precious my family is to me.

My "broken" family.

Today I slept in and awoke with a headache (no, not an "Oktoberfest headache," the regular kind) and perimenopausal hot flashes, and discouragement.  I thought I would be content this weekend because my girls all have their partners' family meals to go to, and my son seems just content to be home and spending time with me, and later his dad.  I have plenty to keep me busy, including a backlog of graduate school reading, cleaning, and ironing.

Duh.  I'm still a classic codependent, eh?  "So long as everyone else is happy, I am happy."  I didn't have a sweet clue as to what *I* actually wanted or needed.  It didn't even occur to me that I might not be okay.

So, today I am inordinately sad (who gets to say what "ordinately" sad is?) that I am not doing a traditional  meal with my kids, going on a walk in the autumn colours, and generally enjoying my family.  Today looks like it will be a day of releasing more pent up sadness and loss and grief.

Yay.

It's okay.  There is no statue of limitations on grief, no matter how much our culture (including me!) is uncomfortable with prolonged sadness.  If "just being with and accepting" the sadness is what needs to happen today, so be it.
God knows, I am not alone.
 
It's NORMAL to feel more deeply during holidays.  It is NORMAL for the contrast between what is and "what should have been" to ache most intensely right now.

So I will cry some, write some, pray some, and be very gentle with myself today, and this too, shall pass.

In solidarity with everyone for whom holidays, for now, seem to be more painful than joyful:
You are not wrong.
You are not alone.
You can make it through.

Alison

Cultural shaming around feeling

In my experience, healing from psychological trauma and childhood abuse includes re-experiencing the feelings associated with those traumas. Very often, key appropriate responses to such abuse is anger, grief, and tremendous vulnerability. How challenging it is then, in a culture that shames us simply for feeling these things or for feeling them "too long."  When we combine that with our own aversion to feeling these things, I believe it is heroic indeed that we can allow ourselves to feel them anyway, with compassion, patience, trust, and faith in the process.

There is a way out.  There is a way through.
Go gently with yourself today.

Rev. Alison

What I Can Handle; What We Can Handle; What God Can Handle

I was sitting in my addictions counseling class yesterday reflecting on our cultural assumptions about what each other should and should not be able to handle.  One classmate is working with a gentleman who has been so long trapped in the addiction cycle that he is a year (or two at best) away from death due to damage to his liver.  He lost his family long ago, he lost his job; he has no self respect.
He has relapsed so many times and been told he is killing himself so many times that he simply "doesn't care" any more.  I suspect that  the pain of his existence---the pain of his "failure"---weighs so heavily upon him that escape from that pain by any means, including death, seems far preferable than trying AGAIN to show up in his painful, broken existence, to pull himself back together again for ... what?

It is so easy to judge someone like that.  It is so easy to assume that we, in his position, would do differently.

I wonder.  Would we?  Would I?

I DO know that western society used to judge (and many still do judge) hyperactivity, obesity, depression, alcoholism, homosexuality, and other politically incorrect human traits as spiritual and moral failings.  But now we see them as inborn traits, some to be accepted as is, and some that may require medical and/or therapeutic support in "correcting" them.  We have come a long way from telling a depressed and suicidal person to "pull up your socks and get it together!"  We have come a long way from judging to hell someone who succeeds in a suicide attempt.  Their life was already hell enough already anyway or they never would have gone that far.


I have also seen myself be brought absolutely to my knees by life circumstances and what seemed like unbearable emotional pain.  If I'd had the courage and opportunity, I would have killed myself.  I certainly have repeatedly swan-dived into chocolate or ice cream or jelly beans or macaroni and cheese (etc) to escape the pain.  That my method of escape from pain doesn't wreck my body as quickly or make me get in a car and kill someone is only a detail.  It's a roll of the dice.

Here is my question:  What if some traumas and circumstances truly are more that some people can handle?  What if we just stop judging so much?  What if the shame that drives us all to hide from each other and feel unlovable and abuse ourselves is a LIE?

"God never gives us more than we can handle" is a common platitude.  Sometimes that message can give people the hope and chutzpah to get through a really tough time.  But sometimes all it communicates is that if we are falling down and "failing" (nervous breakdown, poor choices, complete emotional freeze-up---you name it) WE are failures because "God is doing His part...."

I heard a wise minister say and I fully agree with him, "Actually, God frequently allows people to go through more than they can handle; it is just never more than God can handle."

That new way of phrasing it helps me SO much.

I have frequently felt like I was being asked to deal with situations, traumas, and information that was far more than I could handle.  I have broken down several times.  I know many people who have had nervous breakdowns, and those breakdowns SAVED them from continuing to try to deal with things that were untenable and unmanageable, but shame and "shoulds" and fear of looking "broken" made them keep trying.

All I know is that I'm still standing, or back standing again, and it isn't because I've handled life superbly.  It is thanks to just enough support at just the right times.  It is thanks to the fact that I haven't died yet, and that the human body and spirit is astonishingly resilient and capable of healing.  It is thanks to a good start, and many amazing people along the way and a decent mind that processes information pretty well.  I have been in WAY over my head, but I keep being set back on my feet, so I will keep trying.

Can you even imaging God saying to that poor broken man when he finally stands before his Maker, "Well done, good and faithful servant," because he had far, far more than we can possibly imagine stacked up against him, and what he did really was his very best?

For those of us overwhelmed by shame, the very thought can bring us to our knees.

Go gently with yourself this day,
Alison

Transcending Failure

"So many of us feel a sense of broken-heartedness or disappointment in ourselves for all the times we’ve tried

and failed. 

But imagine if every experience that you've had until now led you right here into this perfect moment?  What if it is all perfect?  What if it is not--- as many of our subconscious beliefs think--- that it is your fault, or you’re just not good enough, or you’ll never figure it out, or you’re doomed, or whatever tape you play in the darkest recesses of your mind; what if that is all a lie?  What if all of those beliefs and all of that evidence that we’ve stacked up against ourselves is just not true?" - Kristen Morelli

Today I begin again with new courage, to release my stories of being too broken to succeed, and I release my story that I should have accomplished this or that "by now." 

And I choose to show up in this moment with the freshness and curiosity and hope of a child.  

All I can do is my best in this moment, and I certainly do better when I release my backlog of disappointments and my stories of failure and my fear of being hurt and disappointed.

I call on the Spirit, or Divine Goodness, or God, or Higher Power, or my angels, or the love of my friends, or whatever there is that surrounds me with innocence and goodness; and I draw strength and hope and OPEN MY HEART AGAIN to life.

Amen.