The Path

 

"Do I want this, or do I only want to want this?" In other words, am I a seeker, or do I just want to be able to call myself a seeker? Am I on a journey or an ego trip?

Those are the questions I'm asking myself when I ... you should pardon the pun ... contemplate contemplation.

Merton:

Tepitidy, in which the soul is neither 'hot or cold'—is a state in which one rejects God and rejects the will of God while maintaining an exterior pretense of loving Him in order to keep out of trouble and save one's supposed self-respect. It is the condition that is soon arrived at by those who are habitually ungrateful for the graces of God.

I love contemplation in the abstract, but I'm very afraid I'm tepid in practice. ("The spirit is willing, but ....") I suspect (fear!) I'm just plain tepid at heart. Tepid love for God. Tepid desire to personally experience Them. (Habitually feeling virtually no gratitude for Their graces.)

Worse, I'm crippled by an almost nonexistent belief that my heart will ever warm.

Contemplating the path leaves me—I was going to say cold, but it's worse than that. It leaves me unmoved (or ... you guessed it ... tepid). Sometimes it leaves me skeptical, sardonic, and/or resistant. 

And yet ....

My tepid heart paradoxically, stubbornly, persistently insists there must be More. More than dogma. More than theology. More than the Bible. Just More.

So while I resist stepping fully onto the path—or edge onto it halfheartedly—I can't completely turn my back on it.

James Finley likes to say that if you're reading the mystics, you're already on the path. But how can I be, when my heart feels so dry? When I'm only halfway committed to the possibility of mystical communion with the Divine? 

Who am I resisting? Why am I resisting? And why, in a real sense, can't I resist?

Ay, there's the rub.

Thinking too much again, no doubt. Trying to apply egoic logic to that which the ego can never figure out.

Bottom line, I can't do anything but what I'm doing, halfhearted though it may be, for now. The More I sense, the More I can't help but believe in, will, I hope, warm my tepid heart.

The he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones and say to them, 'Dry bones [or in my case, dry heart], hear the word of the LORD! This is what the Sovereign LORD says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life.'

Create in me a clean heart, O God .... 

 

Radical Acceptance

I understand—and I think understanding is deeper than knowing—I can't go back and change what happened, to me or to you. 

But can I accept?

Easier, I believe, when I was Victim. 

The difficulty arises from those times when I was Perpetrator. Remembering, I hold self-hatred and regret tightly fisted. Can I let go of one and allow myself to feel the other? Accept that reasons aren't excuses, and neither can change what was?

Self-condemnation is ingrained (but "you have to be carefully taught"). Guilt has become my default, shame my secret sackcloth. But what purpose do they serve? Do they help or are they chains? Can I, should I, attempt a Houdini? Will I find some measure of peace and healing if I do?

(Even as I ask, a snide inner voice hisses, "Bitch, you don't get off that easily!")

Do I have the right to accept what you might never be able to? Not accept in the sense of being okay with what I did or saying it doesn't matter, but radically accept in the sense of it happened, it's done, it can't be changed—no judgment, for good or ill, tagged on. Simple acknowledgement, allowing myself to feel sadness and regret without grabbing hold and holding on.

Does acceptance mean accepting the fact that your wounds exist, that they continue to throb, often bleed, will sometimes bleed all over me? How do I accept the fact that you continue to suffer, and while I caused some of it, I can't change any of it? Nor can I prod you to.

Do compassion and radical acceptance mix? Can I recognize and empathize with your pain without resurrecting self-condemnation, once I manage (if I manage) to bury it? How do I accept and move on, but keep my heart soft?

Am I even remotely capable of that balance?

I suspect I have to try for it—despite the fact that I still don't completely get the concept, despite the fact that it doesn't strike me as quite fair—because not accepting and allowing myself to sink under the weight of guilt and shame and remorse (not that remorse is bad, but it can become a habitual, self-inflicted scourge) isn't doing either of us any good. Love tainted by a constant whiff of apology is fearful, small, and selfish.

Will my acceptance, and whatever good might come from it, ripple outward to you? Yeah, I know I can't expect that, let alone try for it, but maybe I can hope and pray.

I foresee an ongoing battle, God help me. (And I mean that last bit literally!) Hopefully, it will be one worth waging, because me beating this same dead horse is getting both you and me nowhere.

Trust

Can I trust you?
I don't know you,
But you're credentialed for trust.
By that I mean, You can trust me
is the promise written in
the letters the state of Pennsylvania
let you tack onto your name.

But can I trust you
with the most awful parts of me?
The sad, bad, shameful parts,
the used-to-be me parts I keep
tucked away like pus-filled abscesses
in the darkest corner of my soul?

Will you listen to my story, 
one of twists and turns and
deep, dark pits?
Do you have the patience?
The compassion?
The wisdom to understand
what I still can't understand myself?

Can you forgive me?
Can you show me how
to forgive myself?

The Arrows of Time and Regret

Time is an arrow
On a one-way flight from then to now,
Implacable and irreversible.

Regret is an arrow
On a one-way flight from then to now,
Also irreversible.

Two one-way tickets,
One aching wish for a return trip
And a chance to do better.

I'm not the woman I was then,
But maybe not so different after all:
Lash-scarred soul
Still too desperate to please,
Too faint-hearted to be real.

Except for the regret.
The regret is real.
It has weight,
This remorse over wounds inflicted,
Harm that can't be un-dealt
And maybe never truly forgiven.

So I sit, weighed down,
Heart cramping,
Not for myself,
But for him.
It would be so much easier to hurt for me
Than to hurt, helplessly, with him,
Recognizing myself as the impacted thorn.

But time is an arrow
On a one-way flight from then to now,
Implacable and irreversible.

Is redemption possible
For either of us?