Mystic Musings: Lent 3/17

“You can see forever in a single drop of dew.

You can see that same forever if you look down deep inside of you.”

Dan Fogelberg Magic Every Moment

Photo by Jonathan Mabey @blueguy590

I am sure to some people I look like an obsessive navel gazer. So much of my writing is based in my own experience, my inner thoughts and ponderings, and in my struggles and my discoveries. We were taught in seminary to be careful of putting too much “I” into our sermons. We were cautioned to make sure that we weren’t working our therapeutic issues out on our congregations. Therapy is for the couch. The pulpit is for preaching the Word.

Quite honestly, I do think that I came close to crossing that line in my early years of ministry. I was always able to justify my vulnerable and intimate sharing as supporting the passage or the theme of what I was preaching on. But I do think a few times my sharing would have been more appropriate on the therapist’s couch than in the pulpit.

But that changed over two decades ago. Increasingly I found that the more I shared the more people were able to relate to me. I started hearing parishioners say, “I have struggled with that too,” or “It’s good to know I am not the only one.” At first it was just a few individuals, but as I honed my craft I discovered that the deeper I shared the more in touch I was with the human experience that we all share. Literally, I went from standing on a pedestal to walking with my people.

Photo by Viktor Talashuk @viktor talashuk

“You can see forever in a single drop of dew. You can see that same forever if you look down deep inside of you.”

The irony is that we often share little of ourselves in order to stay within a safe zone of acceptability. Too much sharing risks a soft rejection, a raised eyebrow, a cold shoulder. But the truth is, the deeper we share, the more we discover how much we all are in the same boat of this crazy human experience.

Grief and loss, redemption and reconciliation, falling in love and out of love, despair and hope, joy and sorrow. Seriously, “if you look down deep inside of you” we all look pretty much alike. That is something to be celebrated and shared.

Sit quietly. Breathe deeply. Ponder these questions:

• Are you holding onto some experience or set of feelings that you feel would “be too much” for people to handle?

• Do people know the real you or do you mask some of who you are for acceptance?

• Who in your life can handle the full you? Who in your life should handle the full you?

• With whom do you need to practice good boundaries with regard to your full unchecked self? Children? Clients? Patients? Students, Etc.