Shadows

What happens when someone points out my shadow?

In the photographic world, both light and shadow are needed for a picture to have depth, texture and bold richness.  Too much light and a picture is either overexposed or just flat.  Too much shadow and the picture is dark and unrecognizable.  The two - shadow and light - tumble over and around each other to create a dynamic interplay.

But what about inside of me?  Are the truths of photography true of my soul as well?  There is both light and shadow inside me, and like the picture world, one is not evil and the other one good.  Though we love, in our dualistic society, to personify light and darkness as enemies, they can be allied hues that show a greater picture, if we are willing to be curious.

The light part of me is the part I fully know.  It is my strengths; it is the places I feel confident.  The shadow side of me, however, is my unexplored part.  Though I can see it in others, it is opaque and hidden from me.  It contains all the elements I disown about myself.  Elements that are true, both positive and negative, but I refuse to acknowledge.

Even without our looking for them, our shadow selves make an appearance when we react very strongly - positive and negative - to people (or ideas?) in our lives.  Those people or things that strongly repel or attract us give us clues to the hidden parts of our lives.

So what happens when someone points out my shadow?  What happens, hypothetically, in a fight heated conversation, when I find myself reacting in repulsion to that person or something that is said? Everything in me wants to only show my light-self and my instinct is to cram that shadow-self back in the box it had the audacity to venture out from.

However, as hurtful as it is to look at my shadow, perhaps that is exactly when I am granted a moment of salvation.  It is not a moment of "fix-it-and-make-the-shadow-turn-into-light", but rather a moment to invite back in the part of me I have rejected.  It is to allow the shadow to be known and so have the possibility to make beauty with my light, instead of just reeking havoc on my soul.

Gregory Mayers talks of being ruled by our shadows as a deep self-trance:

"The deep self-trance constricts our vision to preferred patterns of perception, a security matrix that blunts or masks the uncomfortable edge of our anxiety over the unknown.  In other words, we see what we want to see, what we have been taught to see, what we are told to see, what we expect to see.  We construct our world, extracting from the scene before us that which we prefer and leaving aside whatever is at odds with our preferences."  (Listen to the Desert: Secrets of Spiritual Maturity from the Desert Fathers and Mothers)

While it is easier to construct my own world and avoid the uncomfortable edges, that is not life. 

Not REAL life.

So what do I do when someone points out my shadow?  Well...first I throw an internal temper tantrum. (Just being honest!!)  I get defensive, cross the arms of my heart, and say things like "how dare they??"   Then, when I am done, the Spirit takes me by the hand and says "Fear not.  Let's explore this together."  And I learn once more that life is not meant to be flat or dark, but it is to have the depth that only light AND shadow can bring.

Pearls and the Mind of Christ

They say a pearl is formed by an irritating piece of sand or harmful parasite within the oyster.  The marine mollusc cannot endure the scratching of the intruder and thus begins a long (possibly a decade) process of covering it with pearl-like material.  What began as an invader becomes shaped with layers of value.

Years ago, a piece of irritating sand, entered my mind in the form of a quote from a friend:

"We are raising children who have a christian morality, but who don't have the mind of Christ."

Those words have stuck in my soft, grey matter and have scratched and clawed at my thoughts like nails down a chalkboard.  It is so much easier to teach a morality and behavior modification than it is to help the mind of Christ be cultivated and birthed in our children.  

The truth is, I have, at times been content with my kids having a christian morality because their behavior has made me look like a good parent.  When they are polite in public, show kindness towards someone, or can hold an engaging conversation with another human being, they seem to buy into the morality we so often want to call "kingdom life", and yet their hearts may be so far from that kingdom.  However, because they look good on the outside, I stop....and I think I've done my job as a parent.

So how do I encourage the formation of the mind of Christ in my children, now that they are almost 17 and 14?  (I think we've tried over the years, but sometimes not until we felt the irritation of that sandy intruder in our parenting paradigm.) I don't just want them to be "good kids" with a certain morality, but I deeply desire for them to follow Jesus and to have his thoughts deeply implanted within them.  I don't just want them to "do what looks right", but to ask Him what He thinks about whatever situation they find themselves in.  

That piece of sand that sneaked its way in so many years ago is irritating me again.  My parenting goals, desires and eyesight need to shift and change.  What has been - what has gone before - needs to be covered up with new layers of priceless, liquid pearl-esque practices.  New layers are needed to be sure that the mind of Christ, not just good behavior, is being encouraged to grow in my kids.

May I have the mind of Christ too, as I try to help my children find Him for themselves!!

Unique Conformity

I am really struggling with "my calling", my vocation...what I am supposed to do in life.  I keep asking God for what He wants from me and for me, and the prayer seems to hit a wall like the thick, steel fortresses of bank vaults, and then just fall flat. 

I think part of my problem is that I really want to be unique.  I think it may even be part of the messaging I was given as a kid, and it is for sure the very societal climate I live in right now.  Everyone, it seems, wants their 20 minutes of fame - of uniqueness - so we will douse the internet and other social media with pictures, songs, videos, words...just to see if anything will go viral (and make us stand out from the other 7.139 billion humans also residing on this planet.)

But what if uniqueness is not God's goal for us?  (Though I am pretty sure I've heard that as a well developed theology from many pulpits.)  What if God called me to be a farmer.  There are plenty of other farmers in this country and around the world.  Most of them are not growing unique crops, but rather the bulk of the same food sources for the rest of those planetary residents.  

To plant, to tend, to grow, to harvest the same thing season after season seems utterly boring to me...but my mouth doesn't think so.  The mundane season after season job is not really glamorous....but when the smell of delicious food fills my kitchen, it has a hint of glamour to it.

What if God called me to motherhood?  Like the farmer, there are millions of maternal types across this terrestrial ball.  They too are called to plant, tend, grow, and harvest in the lives of their children and community.  They too have a mostly mundane and tedious job....but not when I come in contact with a young man who, in kindness, holds the door open for me.  Moms around the world do a lot of the same jobs together.  We cook, clean, listen, encourage, heal, discipline, push, and hug, to name a few.  There is nothing unique about those things...until I meet a teenage girl who can carry on a delightful conversation with another adult.

God has called me to motherhood.  And it is boring and long and really not glamorous.  I would really like to go get a job where I get noticed, make an instant difference, and receive bonuses.  Instead, I get to tell my kids a million times to make their beds, and attempt, in this electronic age, to keep what is being seen on screens (tv, computers, phones) monitored.  I get to have those I work with roll their eyes at me and grab for everything they want while forgetting what I've done for them.

There is no uniqueness, per se, in what I do.  It is simply the daily tasks of mothering.  Then again, maybe God's calling on my life is not to be unique.  Maybe His calling is to be faithful, to love, to endure suffering, to take a servant's posture, to think more of others than we think of ourselves....hmmmm....to be conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus.

Maybe conformity is my calling.  And I'll leave the uniqueness to Him. 

Throw the Nets

The disciples went out - doing what they knew to do, namely fish.  Is it possible that in-between the time of seeing Jesus raised from the the dead before the Spirit came upon them, sent them spinning and confused so they gravitated to what they knew?  But what they knew came up empty...until a Stranger asks a question and gives a command.  

"Did you catch anything?  Throw the net off the right side and see what happens."

You can't tell me those fishermen didn't have a moment of skepticism.  They had fished all night, evidently when the fishing was supposed to "work".  They caught nothing and were probably ready to just call it quits.  And here is a guy standing on the shore telling them what to do?  The audacity!  But they do it anyway.  They may have rolled their eyes at one another when they threw those nets back in, but they listened to that Sand Walker.

Of course, a bounty of fish are caught, but an even bigger miracle happens next.  The men's eyes are opened.  They obeyed the request and now they can see the requester is Jesus.

Faith is like that sometimes.  There is this sense of a command to something - a calling to action - but we may sometimes hem and haw about whether it is from God.  We want to KNOW for certain it is from Him.  But this story reminds us that certainty is over-rated and sometimes action unlocks our understanding.  Doing what is asked of us (even if we may have our doubts) opens our eyes to see that it really is the Master who has called us.

Sometimes action comes before seeing.  So we act and crazily throw our nets into the waters we are told to, at a time inconvenient for us, and we see what happens.  The lovely thing is that at the end of the story, Jesus already has the fire going and the food we are so hungry for, and we get to hang out with Him.