Friday, April 20, 2012
Sunday, April 8, 2012
pulling away to draw near
I've sensed a need in the past few months, fairly deep inside myself, to try and find a peculiar balance in the way I'm relating to my world. I'm drawing closer to maybe the most central part of myself and of my spirituality, in a vortexy sort of way--that inexorable feeling you get when you can't help but surrender to the sensation that you have to do something. Except instead of doing, I'm beginning the process of being. Being in a way that I've never quite been before, being more fully alive, more fully myself, more fully my God's. And this requires, as all great religious stories do, a sacrifice. I don't think it's a coincidence that this Easter morning is when it all is starting to congeal for me.
I'm coming to that place in my mid-thirties that I'm staring hard at all the decisions I've made. I haven't made a lot of super-bad ones, or ones that I'm having to pay serious consequences for, but I have made decisions that made sure there wasn't going to be a lot of time for spirit-feeding in my foreseeable future, and that set the course for the sorts of friendships and priorities I'd be able to have, at least for a couple of decades. In other words, I made sure that my life would be something of a crazy madhouse of activity, over-run by that sacred "pitter-patter of tiny feet" and by the needs of 6 sentient spirits looking for guidance and blooming. And that's been maybe the grandest adventure I could ever have imagined.
But I find myself looking ahead to that spot in the road where the traffic eddies out a little and I'm left to my own devices and needs, and I want to make sure that there's a person of substance and soul waiting there. I have to begin to make some tiny course corrections now in order to make sure that happens. So I've been pulling away in small ways, trying to draw near to my central self and the relationship that lives there, and it's not easy or even sometimes very nice.
I decided the other day that I just couldn't do Easter this year. You've all heard my Christmas rants and how much I hate the tide that washes over western humanity for months on end; this year it dawned on me that I'm feeling the same way about Easter. I can't center myself on the earth-shaking reality of a risen savior when I'm thinking about ham and eggs and baskets and the bastardization of the whole Oestre season. So I'm skipping it this year. It's time for church and I'm sitting in bed. There is no ham. No baskets. No resurrection eggs. No scarlet cloth. Just me, alone with my thoughts and the present quietness of me-n-Yeshua, hanging out in the silence after all the fanfare has passed. And I wonder if He's gotten as tired of my contrived Easterness as I have? I'm pretty sure He has. I'm pretty sure He's a party kind of guy in His own right (let's not forget how He saved that wedding party from being a severe bummer with plenty of primo vino at just the right moment), but I also sense that He's been kind of left in the dust in my life while I've made sure the Easter table was set to perfection and the kids' noses were all wiped.
So this pulling away is happening in other ares of my life, as well, in more subtle ways. I'm feeling an emotional pulling away from the beautiful place I have now lived for over half of my life. My connection to the landscape and all that is Colorado is fading in my heart, and I'm watching, a little amused, as it all happens. And as it happens with places of an oldish life that need to be let go of, like how I've always operated within my marriage, within my family, and within the context of my larger self and how I relate to the world. I'm becoming, slowly, much more myself in so many ways, finally shuffling off old, dead ways of thinking and doing. It still scares me to my core to think that these changes won't be welcomed by everyone I love and cherish. Some don't understand, but then, some never really have. I don't love them less, but I am coming to the place where my life isn't revolving so much around the sphere of public opinion, but is gravitating to that faintly glowing circle of my true self, alive and waiting for me to draw ever nearer.
--Teri.
I'm coming to that place in my mid-thirties that I'm staring hard at all the decisions I've made. I haven't made a lot of super-bad ones, or ones that I'm having to pay serious consequences for, but I have made decisions that made sure there wasn't going to be a lot of time for spirit-feeding in my foreseeable future, and that set the course for the sorts of friendships and priorities I'd be able to have, at least for a couple of decades. In other words, I made sure that my life would be something of a crazy madhouse of activity, over-run by that sacred "pitter-patter of tiny feet" and by the needs of 6 sentient spirits looking for guidance and blooming. And that's been maybe the grandest adventure I could ever have imagined.
But I find myself looking ahead to that spot in the road where the traffic eddies out a little and I'm left to my own devices and needs, and I want to make sure that there's a person of substance and soul waiting there. I have to begin to make some tiny course corrections now in order to make sure that happens. So I've been pulling away in small ways, trying to draw near to my central self and the relationship that lives there, and it's not easy or even sometimes very nice.
I decided the other day that I just couldn't do Easter this year. You've all heard my Christmas rants and how much I hate the tide that washes over western humanity for months on end; this year it dawned on me that I'm feeling the same way about Easter. I can't center myself on the earth-shaking reality of a risen savior when I'm thinking about ham and eggs and baskets and the bastardization of the whole Oestre season. So I'm skipping it this year. It's time for church and I'm sitting in bed. There is no ham. No baskets. No resurrection eggs. No scarlet cloth. Just me, alone with my thoughts and the present quietness of me-n-Yeshua, hanging out in the silence after all the fanfare has passed. And I wonder if He's gotten as tired of my contrived Easterness as I have? I'm pretty sure He has. I'm pretty sure He's a party kind of guy in His own right (let's not forget how He saved that wedding party from being a severe bummer with plenty of primo vino at just the right moment), but I also sense that He's been kind of left in the dust in my life while I've made sure the Easter table was set to perfection and the kids' noses were all wiped.
So this pulling away is happening in other ares of my life, as well, in more subtle ways. I'm feeling an emotional pulling away from the beautiful place I have now lived for over half of my life. My connection to the landscape and all that is Colorado is fading in my heart, and I'm watching, a little amused, as it all happens. And as it happens with places of an oldish life that need to be let go of, like how I've always operated within my marriage, within my family, and within the context of my larger self and how I relate to the world. I'm becoming, slowly, much more myself in so many ways, finally shuffling off old, dead ways of thinking and doing. It still scares me to my core to think that these changes won't be welcomed by everyone I love and cherish. Some don't understand, but then, some never really have. I don't love them less, but I am coming to the place where my life isn't revolving so much around the sphere of public opinion, but is gravitating to that faintly glowing circle of my true self, alive and waiting for me to draw ever nearer.
--Teri.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)