Shame

“Shame was an emotion he had abandoned years earlier. Addicts know no shame. You disgrace yourself so many times you become immune to it.”

                                            John Grisham, The Testament

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Most of us know shame

I live with it each day

My very active mind replaying the tapes

Of things done and said

That in my befuddled mind

Betray

Not only those I have hurt

But betray my father and mother

That “Kliewer heritage”

And betray my own sense of self

I know two things about shame

Shame is destructive to the self

As Brené Brown puts it, “Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.”

(I Thought It Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame)

With shame we become stuck

We do not say “I made a mistake”

We say “I am a mistake”

And the failures we carry with us inhibit us

Until like aged armadillos we can barely move

But to have no shame, to be able to act with no sense

Of regret for acts that are terrible in their scope

And devastating in their impact

And to smile, smugly

Ah, this is perhaps worse

For it destroys both the one with no shame

And all of those that person would use, manipulate, and abuse

Like our current political leaders

Who have disgraced themselves so often

With their lies, their heartless actions

That they no longer see that

When you destroy the lives of millions upon millions of vulnerable people

in order to enrich the lives of the people privilege

you are acting in an evil way

Shame

No shame

Which is right?

Neither

Instead we need a heart awakened

As Richard Rohr reminds me, in my saner moment

“God hides, and is found, precisely in the depths of everything,

even and maybe especially in the deep fathoming of our fallings and failures.”

We are called to move deep, into the ‘real’

Into that place where Sacred dwells

And where we can unit with love

Once we have experienced, and tapped into this union, this unity

Then love springs up, like a “spring of living water” (John 4)

And shame is washed away

But replaced by such a deep longing for justice, truth, and equity

That  we do not disgrace love

We make sure kids have health care (CHIP)

We make sure clinics are funded to take care of the poor (FQHCs)

We create a more equitable society (and at times “help” the very rich with generosity (it’s for their own good, really)

We welcome the stranger

We clothe the naked, house the homeless

We treat each person, no matter what color or creed

As a Sacred Child

In short we call each other back to our essential humanity