Our lesser selves

Sin is “an addiction to being less than ourselves”

                     James Alison

 

What do we do with all the pain we both endure and cause?....

 

We must find a way to tell the violences of our own lives, and in doing so cause less harm.  ‘Here is the world’ Frederick Buechner tells us. ‘Beautiful and terrible things will happen.  Don’t be afraid.’  And for this harsh truth we have confession, we have table talk, we have the secrets we tell aloud and the secrets we keep.  We have the sacrament of encounter, sometimes with our own private selves, sometimes we another, always – we hope – in the sight and hearing of God.

                     Padraig O’ Tuama

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we carry our pain

we carry pain in our minds

we carry pain in our souls

we carry pain in our bodies

 

and too often we share it

 

pain is contagious

whether we have endured it at the hands of another

or whether it is self inflicted

 

it is something that will ooze out of the very pores of out body

it will sneak out in our words

it will find its way into our actions

 

we live our pain

the pain of oppression

of poverty

of illness

 

the pain of sin

the pain that comes when we are less than ourselves

 

we live this pain which we cannot seem to avoid

this addiction to being “less”

this denial of our sacred genetics

 

at least I do

my heart resonates with the despair of Paul

who told aloud his secrets

 

“I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out.

 I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on

 doing…  What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject

 to death? ‘ (Romans 7)

 

this pain must be expressed

we have no choice

 

it will find its way to the surface

it must find its way to the surface

or we rot, from the inside out

 

rot, rot, fester, fester

 

and make no mistake

pain (and sin) not expressed, will express themselves

 

and we will pass it on

and we will infect all those around us

 

so we must tell the violences of our own lives

we must tell them to ourselves (self honesty is critical)

we must tell them to others (if we can find a safe person)

but above all we must take them to God

 

all pain must find its way to the feet of the Sacred One

for God is the only One who can fully receive out pain

who can take it from us

so that we no longer have to carry it

 

it is not that the pain will go away

it comes freshly, every morning

but so does grace and love

which is new every morning