In Search of Mother God...

Oh God, what are you up to in me when it comes to anger and disappointment?

I thought we were working together through my Dad / anger issues (ref my last post), but now it seems like it's bigger than that and I hadn't spotted it.

I chose a woman as my "discipler" two years ago when I got baptised, as there seemed to be a natural connection between us and she seemed to care about me and be interested in my unfolding fa
ith. The relationship felt fruitful inspiring and warm. But the relationship took a turn for the worse.

I was angry with her for telling me that I couldn't expect to be very good yet at hearing from God. I may not have been a baptised Christian for very long at all, but I've been on the long and winding road of my search for God since I was eight, and a committed member of the 12 Step movement of addition recovery since I was 29, where the basic principle is the cultivation of a conscious contact with God every day.

I was also angry with her for telling me that my church "couldn't use me" even though I was "clearly powerful", because I was "dangerous" - this down to my childhood explorations of Wicca and paganism, and then, Heaven forfend, my practice of the apparently Dark Arts of transpersonal psychotherapy which, unless I were practicing in an explicitly Christian framework, was going to make me vulnerable to contact with and use by Dark Forces.

And I was outraged that she believed she knew what God's will for me was, with regard to a new romantic relationship I was in.

I really did do my best to be honest with her about the distress and doubt I was experiencing, and I stepped away and told her that was what I was doing. That felt like the best and most honest thing I could do. After an extended period "away", I felt my warmth towards her return, and asked her if we could tentatively begin again with study and discussion, because I felt I so needed it.

And she seemed really pleased and willing.

But then became entirely unavailable. Work was hellish for her I know, and she was run down. And then her Mum was very ill and had to move in.

At one point I had been waiting for her to let me know when she might have some time to meet, and I had been getting more and more resentful about her lack of contact. It occurred to me that there might be a misunderstanding between us, maybe she was waiting for me, and so I prompted. She was clear that it was her who had dropped the ball. After another few abortive attempts, I let her know I wanted to "release her" from her commitment to me.

Not long after this, I noticed some difficult feelings about my female therapy supervisor. She had entirely forgotten one of our appointments, failed to respond to several attempts to schedule something a few weeks later, and then was late for another. Again, I was angry. I eventually gave myself permission to find a new supervisor.

Finally, as I wrote in my last post, I reached out to another woman from my church as part of trying to get back to a deeper relationship with God. Again, she seemed so pleased and willing. Our first meeting was productive and warm. And then she also "disappeared" with no reply to two different attempts at contact, because of having far too much on her plate, also, interestingly, including a sick mother.

Once upon a time, somewhere along my search for emotional health, I came across one of the many self help gurus out there whose "thing" was to ask yourself "What keeps happening?", on the basis that it's the repeating patterns of pain that have the most to tell us.

So what keeps happening seems to be mother figures being unavailable.

From a psychotherapeutic perspective this tells me that this is likely to be because this is what I experienced with my actual Mum. Which is a theory that's supported by a lot of other data I've gathered over the years.

But what to do?

The only things I know how to do are to practice compassion for myself that this would have had to be really painful when I was little and wanting something Mum just couldn't provide, to feel the anger I feel towards the women letting me down in the present and then slide my Mum into the picture, and allow myself to finally feel the overdue anger towards her that I think I forbade, and in all of this to talk to God about it and let Her know that I'm honestly willing to have a different relationship with women, and with Her - to practice faith that Mother God IS there for me, eternally available, with more than enough capacity, whatever I may need.

Fireworks, my Father, and Rage...

This last year has been painful.

I ended a four year relationship, had to move out of my home, and find a new one, at the same time as facing losing my main source of work and money and trying to start my own business. In the midst of it all I went through a cluster of really painful experiences in my church which left me feeling excluded, judged, punished and angry.

Since then I've retreated and re-approached, retreated and re-approached. I've tried to go it alone. I've thought about finding a new church. I've tried just letting it be and waiting for something to shift.

Late one night two weeks ago I reached out on WhatsApp to one of the people I still felt strong trust for in my church and asked for help. I shared the image I had of myself as uprooted and laying on the surface of the soil, trying sporadically to push my own roots back down into the soil but to no avail. I felt so much further away from Him than I had 18 months ago, I really missed feeling like part of a community, and I missed worshipping in that community so much it hurt.

That was the thing that hurt the most and that I couldn't find anywhere else. The worship.

But I am still so angry and so confused about what happened, and even though a growing part of me wanted to come back more fully, and was more and more pained by the absence of a spiritual community, I was nowhere near being ready to forgive and reenter into a trusting relationship with people I felt had betrayed me.

I met up with my church friend and talked about what happens when it feels like our trusted church leaders have failed us. About the pain that can rear its head at these times because we were let down much earlier in life by a parent who shamed, judged and excluded us. We talked about the almost inevitable confusion that comes from unconsciously wanting our church leaders to be what a parent couldn't be. We talked about the confusion that comes from unconsciously assuming that our Heavenly Father feels and thinks about us the way our earthly father did, and perhaps the way our church leaders seem to.

And you know, so often it seems to me that the face-value teaching of my chosen faith is at odds with my psychotherapeutic perspective...

As an adult still recovering from childhood trauma of living with a controlling, frighteningly raging, sometimes violent, unpredicatable and melancholic father, I have had to learn to both down-regulate my nervous system out of hypervigilance AND re-sensitise myself to warning signs that someone or something isn't safe and give myself permission to stay away. And to feel ANGRY. When you grow up with someone who was dangerous and raging, you learn two things. Firstly, that you don't have a right to anger. If you get angry, you're going to get out-angried, and it's going to hurt. Secondly, because being on the receiving end of that kind of anger is horrific, you conclude that being angry is bad. For both these reasons, anger becomes a personal no go zone. The order of the day is keeping the peace, treading on egg-shells, and being as pleasing and inoffensive as possible.


From that perspective, the stereotypical Christian persona is a perfect fit. Gentle. Meek. Humble. Eternally forgiving. Eternally presenting the other cheek. Saved from anger. Full of peaceful thoughts and focusing only on the best in others with unfailing faith and hope.

But according to many of the best thinkers across a whole range of psychotherapeutic traditions, there are dire consequences - personally, socially, globally - of "spiritual bypassing" - outlawing our own anger and trying to replace it, at least too quickly, with peaceful thoughts and decisions to forgive.

Depression.
Anxiety.
Substance misuse and addiction.
Self harm.
Over eating.
Body pain and other psycho-somatic conditions like eczema.
Loss of creativity and motivation.
Sexual dysfunction.
Sudden outbursts of rage and even violence of our own.

From an elemental perspective we have banished our fire, and as well as being the stuff of our anger, this fire is the stuff of our life force, our passion, our creativity, our inspiration. You put out the fire of anger, you put out the fire of life.

And from a Jungian, radical, and more global perspective: you keep the anger in your shadow, you'll start to see it at every turn - your boss, the yob at the station, your housemate, (every single one of your therapy clients!), the rioters in the city centre.

The bombers and shooters and hostage takers.

And that until each and every one of us can take back our own shadow and say "Yes, that aggression is in me too. I am capable of great anger. Of violent rage. I AM angry, right now in this minute, with you. I am allowed to be angry." we will continue to live in a world where "they" are full of appalling rage. Not us. Them.

It's miraculous to me that I reached out with such a personal need for help with my anger just days before Paris, and right in the middle of my church's sermon series about God the Father. That my first Sunday meeting for a long time would include a sermon about how our understanding of our Heavenly Father gets distorted by our past experiences with our earthly fathers, and that it would happen on the same day as my church was letting off an evening storm of "prophetic FIREworks" across the neighbourhood from its roof.

What I hear God saying to me, I think, is that I'm in a process. That my anger is necessary. Ancient. Overdue. Important. Even (really?) beautiful. That I'm allowed to keep people at arm's length if I don't trust them. That I don't have to hug them, and act friendly to prevent awkwardness or avoid rejection. That I'm already too good for the wrong reasons at forgiveness, gentleness, rapprochement and this is a time for something different. That the quality of my capacity to forgive, be gentle, and seek reconcilliation will be something entirely Other and fruitful only when it is in Him and is unfolded for me through a process that requires me to go in the seemingly and mysteriously opposite direction.

So I wrote on the rocket stick of one of the fireworks my prayer, for myself and for all of us everywhere, for the transformation, not the forbidding, of rage. I can feel some trust in Him that He will unfold this with me.

In the meantime, I'm angry.

I'm angry with my church for not having taught more in recent years about anger.

I'm angry with some of the leaders of my church for being at least so clumsy if not downright heartless with me at a time when I needed them the most.

I'm angry with my Dad for terrifying me, repeatedly, and so distorting me into a doormat, as well as handing me an inheritance that I've had to deal with of depression, anxiety, addiction and chronic body pain.

Amen.

God-parent?

One of my favourite therapy theorists to date is Michael Washburn.

In fact, his style is fairly impenetrable most of the time, but there's one central idea of his that nails it for me, namely his idea of 'regression in the service of transcendence'.

AKA, you can't truly go 'up' if you won't go back.

Which reminds me of a piece of scripture I keep coming across which nags at me. In Romans 8 there's a wonderful list of what cannot come between us and the love of our amazing God.  We read

"Not death, life, heavenly messengers, dark spirits..."

The writer goes on

"[not] the present, the future, spiritual powers...".

No mention of the past.

A poetic omission? Or something more pointed?

Is part of the message here that, whilst the present and the future are no bar to the love of God, the past very much can be? (I wrote more about this idea of 'hidden meanings' in the post "Secret Messages...".)

In the last little while, I've been feeling pretty confused about how to 'see' God, and 'who' to talk to. And when I was contemplating the Romans 8 verses it suddenly became clear to me how the past was affecting my relationship with Him, and that I probably need to 'go back'.

When I was baptized last year, and up until about two months ago, Jesus felt beautifully clear and present for me. He was my best friend, my brother, and my King; and, notwithstanding the excitement I felt at the idea I came across that he was not facially beautiful (based on Isaiah 53's description of the man of sorrows), I felt I knew 'who' I was leaning on and loving so passionately, and who was accepting and loving me over and over again despite my many and various daily failings.

But a couple of months ago I arrived for a recovery meeting early and popped into the Catholic church nearby to pray. In amongst the postcards of their stained glass was a little pamphlet called "The Secret of Mary" by St. Louis de Montfort, which I felt really drawn to read. This event 'collided' with a whole constellation of others:

• a friend gifting me a beautiful wood carving of the Virgin Mary, 
• the start of a nagging, somewhat feminist, concern about the absence of a prominent mother-figure in Scripture and non-Catholic meetings and disciplines, 
• college discussions about Jung's Anima and Animus archetypes, the re-realisation that my own feminine side has been under-developed / distorted, and a college recommendation of a book about Mary Magdalene by the Episcopal priest Cynthia Bourgeault,
• a dream in which my pastor's wife was acknowledging me as a strong, independent woman, and subsequently watching a new film about a young woman in the 1800s being encouraged and empowered by her substitute mother.

All of these events happened within the space of a week or so, and for a few days I wondered whether I might commit myself entirely, or at least for a full year, to a practice of connecting exclusively with Marian Divinity.

But before I could talk to my beloved discipler about any of this, two more things happened to rock my little boat and pull my sails around...

Firstly, I started reading Bourgeault's book about "the other Mary", and secondly, a friend and colleague loaned me his copy of The Impersonal Life by Joseph Brenner.

And now I was really in trouble!

Because I discovered I did not want to hear about the possibility of there being a special relationship between Christ and Mary Magdalene. I. DID. NOT.

Nor did I want to go back to suspecting that there are 'bits of the Bible missing' (the so-called gnostic gospels of Mary M and Thomas) and that my understanding of Jesus' teaching was being determined to some extent by politics and bigotry.

Nor did I want to wade into these metaphysically churning and difficult waters of the unitive ground, or subtle imaginal realms.

And I most adamantly did not want to shift towards a sense of Him being none other than my own "I Am".

No no no no no.

Oh what a turmoil I was in.

And then, in marched eight Romans.

I have an image of shaking a small drawstring bag upside down and seeing lots of pieces of a game falling out.

The King who loves me no matter what, with unfailing strength and love became the daddy I used to have before he changed, and the daddy who I never stopped hoping would be his old self again one day so I could be protected.

The brother-confidante Lord became my older brother who I was suddenly separated from and who I searched for in almost every stupid affair I had or wanted to have.

The feminist demand of "Where is the mother-figure?" became the truly terrified infant cry of "Where is MY mother who seems so unable to hold me?"

The much-feared and apparently much-favoured Mary Magdalene who felt horribly in the way between me and the Jesus I thought I was precious to became the little sister who stole away my daddy's affections because according to him she was 'more genuine than me'.

The panic at complicated and "grown up" metaphysics became my ancient anguish at having to grow up so quickly, instead of staying in the innocent simplicity of 'spiritual milk'.

And similarly and finally, the encouragement to shift, from leaning on my powerful and loving King, to the simple contemplation of God being none other than my own "I Am", became the necessity of growing up very very suddenly one night in order to be the responsible one who had to protect my Mummy and save my Daddy's life.

Wowzer.

During college lectures on Jungian archetypes, the repeated mantra was that, until the psychodynamic ground is somewhat cleared of the debris of early years, our access to truly 'archetypal energies' will be blocked by pollution from past experiences. Romans 8. The past can block us from seeing God clearly for who S/He/ is (I am). And so, Washburn. In order to truly 'transcend' and be in clearer relationship with my unfathomable God, I need to thank Her for my therapist, and ask Him (whoever I Am) to go back with me and do some more healing.

With a slightly fuzzy-headed Amen...

Secret messages in the Bible

Sometimes, I think I come across pieces of Scripture that I can make sense of in several ways at once. There seems to be what I'll call a 'literal' reading. And then sometimes, something shifts in my perspective, and I start to wonder if there's a more 'subtle' message.

Like in Romans 8:38, which I wrote about in "God-parent?". In (extensively) listing the things that can't come between us and the love of God, the writer includes the present and the future, but makes no mention of the past. So is it entirely intentional that we then come to wonder about how the past might well come between us and the love of God? I know that when I'm waxing lyrical myself, I might leave out all sorts of things, with no intention that any list I share is meant to be inclusive. But is the Holy S similarly sloppy when it comes to the Living Word?

Or earlier on in the same chapter (v29-30) we read "From the distant past, His eternal love reached into the future."

Now, ostensibly what is being written about here, as far as I understand 'common' teaching, is the Divinely mysterious and eternal intention of God to take fully human form as Jesus; an intention formed before any exiles or commandments, or prophets, or floods, or serpents, or banishments.

But the moment I personally found this piece of Scripture, I happened to be tenderly recouping my energy after a really grief-stricken hour in my personal therapy, experiencing waves of emotional and physical memories of being left too alone as a tiny baby.

And the first thing that struck me, when I read about His love reaching from the distant past into the future, was that that's what He had just done in me in the therapy room (and which is what I'm sure I've also been told by my teachers that He does). Namely, that He doesn't just "patch us up" here and now as adults. He doesn't just give us an emotional prosthetic to help us walk straighter whilst remaining fundamentally still crippled. His power is so awesome that sometimes He actually moves right into our past, as we're feeling the effect of it here in the present, and He works His magic. And, back here in the future, we're - I'm - feeling the peace of His eternal love; and the damage done to that little baby, which was still creating suffering in the here and now, has been wiped clean away, or at least is now in the process of being healed with no scar.

(I wish I knew more about quantum physics now, because I am SURE that I'm fumbling to say something that quantum physicists take entirely for granted about how God has engineered this wild universe.)

Now, I really don't like the idea, which I think falls into one of the negative readings of the word 'gnostic', that God has hidden magical and mysterious formulae in His Word which only a certain circle of initiates can understand. That's not the God I feel myself loved by. He doesn't want to hide or trick - He wants to find.

But at the same time, Jesus regularly said things along the lines of "All who have ears to hear, let them listen", and frankly even 'clever old me with my fancy degree and big brain' finds a lot of Scripture far from straightforward or plainly and literally communicated.

I wonder if that's how He's created the Living Word - the words have been written to do the mystical equivalent of rearranging themselves on the page in a way that supports not just layers but whole separate universes of meaning when the reader enters into a deeper contemplative relationship with them by the power of the Holy Spirit.

It feels like this meandering is all leading me to the conclusion that there are as many understandings as there are readers of the Living Word. But if it is, I'm not arguing that it's because His Word is so vague that it's like a horoscope that seems to ring true for everyone reading it. Or that any subtle interpretations are unintended personal psychological constructs or projections.

I mean that that's how outrageous His power and mercy is.

Not only does He bend time and space to heal our past as it was happening, but He wrote words, and gave us His Spirit for reading them, such that each one of us might understand them in a very particular way for us, whilst they still remain the same physical words for the person sitting reading them on the next seat, and for whom their meaning may be absolutely and intentionally different.

Now that is awesome!

#misunderstoodchristians, or #supernaturalsupplements...

There is all sorts of good that's done every day by all sorts of people who don't "believe in God".

But 'Followers of the Way" don't claim to have the monopoly on a commitment to "good will to all (wo)men".

What I suspect a lot of secular society misses, and what I wish it saw as the thing that makes life with Christ different, is the incredible deal God wants us all to take Him up on. And I don't think it's the life-after-death deal you're probably thinking about.

At least, until I found my home with my church, I had NO idea this was what it was all really about.

So here's my take on the deal that's on offer...

1) By entering into RELATIONSHIP (not a religion) with Him (Her), on a daily basis, we will be constantly renewed with a supernatural power (a.k.a. the Holy Spirit) to do "good works" both tiny and enormous. Here, the emphasis is not that we will do "good works". The emphasis is on the fact that S/He will provide the petrol for the journey, not us.

2) That being filled with the Holy S, each follower will be guided, subtly but in detail, on where, and how, and when to apply themselves to relieving all manners of suffering in ways that will yield the most true resolution of suffering, because there is just simply no human way, even for the most brilliant of us, that we can take all factors into account.*

(* an aside that I can't resist - this 'ultimate resolution of all manner of suffering' - physical, emotional, economic and ecological, micro and macro - is also known as the arrival of God's Kingdom on our beautiful Earth.)

3) That this daily (in fact, moment by moment) relationship with God will fill each follower with a healing love and sense of peace that 'passeth all understanding'. And it is the absence of this longed for sense of peace and love in so many hearts which arguably underlies every form of human suffering. From the suffering caused by all forms of greed for or reliance on money or power, to the suffering caused by our failure to protect our Earth, to physical and emotional illness, to violent crime and child abuse and drug addiction.

It is possible to build a better world in every conceivable area of personal, social, national and international life, but not without God. And I don't mean so much that we need to all get back to following a set of pre-determined religious rules and regulations.

Rather, I mean that we each need to, little by little, try entering into a personal, intimate relationship and conversation with the loving God who granted us the free will to try to do it all without His love. To search "inside" ourselves for the fire that burns (maybe it's the cause of preventing child abuse that we are most impassioned by; maybe it's the lack of community in our own personal neighborhood that troubles us the most) and then to try humbly, falteringly, obediently and delightedly to take the action, or inaction, that we are guided to by Her tender voice, just for today, just in the next hour, and let Her work out the rest.

And here's a clue - the fire in our soul is most likely to be a familiar one. That's how amazing S/He is. I don't believe for a moment that He / She wills or designs our suffering, but WOW! is She able to empower us to use it to reach out to others who need us, with His help.

Truly loving and wise fathers don't demand absolute obedience and unfailing love. They let us go. Because they love us and don't want slaves but children. They just hope that if we keep our eyes, ears, minds and hearts open and honest, we will find our winding way into loving them right back, of our own free will, and to realizing how much they have to show us about how to live well.

If we just talk to them.

THIS is why I'm a Follower of Christ.

THIS is the deal I'm signing up for.

I want to be at peace, and to feel my true worth as His child.

Yes, I can't help but love this world and the people in it, and yes I want it to be all that it could be. And yes I burn to do something.

BUT I absolutely need Her power and Her plans for living, because my brain is simply too small to figure out how best to do my bit in the time I have, and my power reserves are simply too fininte, without a very particular form of supernatural daily supplement.

Come, Holy Spirit - do your stuff!

Saved?

Things at home with himself have been trying my patience, and holding my temper is becoming, for the first time, something I have to work at.

Which is progress, from the perspective of the narrative arc (is that the right expression?) of my therapy over the last five years. Quick early years background: critical and on a few occasions seriously violent (and also wonderful) Dad; fairly fragile and anxious to please (and courageous) Mum.

And H.A.L.T. should have occurred to me (the relapse-danger conditions of Hungry Angry Lonely Tired) but I'm pretty complacent these days about my recovery from sex and love addiction. So it didn't, and when I saw a certain bloke at church on Sunday, at the end of a week of yet more "improvement requests" / "constructive feedback" from himself, I felt a surge of excitement. It was the anticipation of what it would feel like to see myself through someone else's enamored eyes, because the version of me my partner seems to be responding to and talking about most of the time right now is far from good enough and requires constant correction.

And yes, naturally, he's my mirror.

Meaning how he sees me and relates to me (or seems to) is in some magical way connected to how I see and relate to myself. And that is, at times: "critically", and "unrelentingly". Which is not to say that he's not actually doing it. I can assure you he is. But the fact that I notice every single possible instance of it is also to do with a pre-sensitisation which predates him by several decades. And the fact that I'm several years down the line with someone who has been habitually fault finding since about our fifth date says a lot more about me than him. Some would argue that if my self-criticism is fierce and unconscious enough, then even the most saintly of companions would mysteriously find themselves compelled to point out the many errors of my ways. However, I've just done too much "work" for that to be the case. I have simply picked someone fairly critical (and also adorable) with whom to cohabit. Because it's familiar. And because my psyche wants a go-around so she can achieve a different outcome this time.

The question is - am I Animus* enough?

I'm tittering at that, and hearing The Four Tops. When I really "get" the Jungian Anima / Animus thing, I'll say more.

But AM I man enough? And for what? To tell him to stop it? To leave?? To hear whatever the next complaint will be, secure in the just-as-I-am love of my far gentler God, shake my head, and feel it wash over me until I've got time to decide whether he's asking for a change I'm happy to make? Sometimes I think I've "got" that last one, and I float along full of gratitude for the strength of the Holy S, and then it happens again when I'm not expecting it, and I'm full of cortisol / I'm fast-rewound straight back to being however young / I realise I'm actually still full of entirely UNresolved resentment, and I want to stab him, or myself, or run for the nearest convent. Really.

So as I was saying, I find myself at church, and there's this other guy, who for whatever reason I look at and can imagine him seeing the best in me, instead of the flaws, and I just really want to sit with him, lean against him, feel his approval and admiration melt away the knots in my neck and back from unknowingly armouring myself against imagined attack. I suppose you could say that what I want is for him to save me.

And then instead, He saves me. And with such amazing grace.

It was a beautiful meeting, and as far as I can tell I really did surrender myself to Him, and pray for Him to show me His will for me. As I listened, I typed short notes into my phone, and cast my eye down the list of things I think He's been saying to me. What's really been in my heart most pressingly is a desire to know God for who SHE is, not just who HE is. In some ways, my answer to The Four Tops is that I'm TOO manly as it is, and the absence of a usable English gender-neutral pronoun doesn't help me "integrate the positive feminine qualities still locked up in my shadow", so to speak...

I'm confused.

Am I overly masculine, with all my relentless self-critical accomplishment and perfectionism? Or am I living from all the weakness and fragililty of the negative aspect of the feminine?

But that's beside the point.

Because at the end of the meeting, my will is set on a bee-line for the wrong saviour. And I half know it. And I am half minded of the idea I've been reading about of concupiscence. And I am half minded of the preach still fresh in my ears of denying myself and taking up my cross out of love and gratitude for my beloved Christ. And still there is the bee-line.

And then there is interception.

With the precision of an NFL quarterback, a woman I barely know but greatly admire literally bounds across the room and places herself in the physical space (about ten feet) between me and the man. And here's the flourish in the save. It's not a goaly save that's just enough fingers to the ball to tip it up over the cross bar. It's a save along the lines of full into the body, bounced a few times, and then kicked 50 feet down the pitch. Because what, of all things in heaven and earth, does this woman start talking about with me? Women in scripture.

I repeat.

Women
In
Scripture

And just as the conversation starts to wind down, and I glance around and spot "him" still hovering, we are joined by her husband, and before I know it we are full tilt into Gnostic gospels and synods and the mystery of the living Word still being just that, despite all of men's (literally) tinkering and censorship. And by the end of that conversation, we are practically alone, and I am just that little bit more saved than I was when I arrived.

Praise God, and thank you Lord for your amazing mercy.