Turning the Page

I don’t like it, and I’m sure you don’t either. It’s when you’re confronted with something you have done wrong.

You want to run; you want to hide. Perhaps you make excuses, blame others, or downplay the whole problem—anything to avoid taking responsibility.

It’s a horrible place, but it can also be where light can come.

It’s holding up the crime sheet and feeling the dark acceptance of wordless guilt and shame.

I read this recently.

The spiritual director has the double task of holding up the demands of absolute responsibility and the promise of absolute forgiveness.

It is out of such demands and promises that we assist at each other’s birth. Alan Jones (from the preface of Holy Listening by Margaret Guenther)

Words and sentences grab my attention. They make me stop and have me roll them around in my thinking.

• double task

It’s a shaking of hands with a stranger. The darkness of your actions shakes hands with the light of forgiveness, and darkness disperses. Forgiveness (both human and divine) will always overwhelm dark places of guilt and shame.

Something of Edens’s garden beauty and strength is birthed. If you’ve ever witnessed this happen, you know what I mean. You’ve been a midwife to something miraculous.

Acceptance needs absolute forgiveness, or we will continue living in a dark hole of self-loathing. Going over and over our crime sheet and making the past the focus.

Two hands. One is more dominant. For most of us, this would be the right hand.

The right hand is the hand of power, strength, and force. It’s the thumping down on a desk demanding justice, revenge, and recompense. It’s power over, not power with or power for.

But I’m interested in the left hand.

Martin Luther had this thought about God and that God offers a kind of ‘Left – handed’ power.

In my research, I found this writing.

Unlike right-handed power, left-handed power doesn’t force or coerce. It doesn’t threaten or bully.

Left-handed power isn’t afraid to show weakness or vulnerability for the sake of something greater. It is a power that grants freedom.

It is a power in favor of relationship and community, that rejects the idea that “might makes right.”

It is the kind of power shown throughout Jesus’ life and in his death. Luther described the cross as the left-handed power of God. Rev. Kristabeth Atwood

Which hand are you focused on?

The right hand clasping a crime sheet, or the left hand open wide with forgiveness.

So many are focused on the dirt. There is a pull to the dark places.

This is where we need others to remind us of left-handed power. People to hold up the promise of absolute forgiveness.

In the Anglican (Episcopalian) church I attend, there is a very special moment in the liturgy. It’s a sacred moment – quiet, sincere, serious.

We, as a gathered community of failures, say these words:

Merciful God,

The priest then steps to the front and declares these words over the needy.

THE ABSOLUTION

I always watch my vicar as she says, ‘Know that you are forgiven.’

I want to see the seriousness of the declaration.

Every verbal and non-verbal communication she makes must mirror that which Christ has declared over me.

I need reminding. You do too. Embrace the gift of the lefthand.

You are forgiven. Be at peace.

• Martin Luther called it “left-handed” power. Right-handed power consists of the blatant demonstration of power over people. Left-handed power is the quiet demonstration of power in people, the power to stir up an appetite for God no matter what may be happening in someone’s life. SoulTalk is about left-handed power. We’ll see God’s right-handed power when he returns to earth. For now, we can speak into people’s lives with a power that can change them from the inside out. Larry Crabb Soul Talk

1. Accepting absolute responsibility. What is it like to be confronted with what you rather keep hidden?

Barry Pearman

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Trouble comes. It’s nothing new, but we have the assurance of others, so we hold on tight and ride our way through it.

You can see it coming. You’re sailing along. Life seems to be going along ok, but out on the horizon, you can see a storm. You know that it’s coming straight at you. You didn’t cause the storm; it was simply part of the ebb and flow of being on the ocean. 

On your little boat, you wonder if you will make it through. You prepare, get ready, and you hold on tight. 

Trouble comes. You know it comes. You’ve been through trouble before, but this storm seems bigger and all-consuming. This will test everything in you. 

You look at the only crew member you have, and he is asleep in the back of the boat. He is a wise old sailor, an ancient mariner that has callused hands from handling the ropes in many a storm. 

Just his presence seems to bring calm to your soul. Perhaps you can make it through. He stirs a little, opens an eye, looks over the seas, and says, ‘You’ll be alright, just steer into it and hold on tight.’

With that, he yawns, rubs his stubbled face, and goes back to sleep.

And you thought he would stand and command the wind and the waves to be still. 

Not this time. 

You aim into the storm and hold on tight. 

I sit with people and listen to their storms. 

The most often heard phrases are ‘What did I do to deserve this’ or ‘I didn’t deserve this’? 

Both point to a kind of surprise that they have a storm, a full-blown hurricane whirling and stripping at their life. 

They look to fate, logic, and God for reasons. A crime and, therefore, a punishment. A reaping of what you’ve sown. Choices and consequences. 

Sometimes there is a connection. You can hardly blame God for a speeding ticket when you drove too fast and were caught. 

But at other times, it seems you can’t make sense of anything at all. You’re just stuck in the middle of the mess, and night time is rolling in, fast. 

Oh, and Jesus seems to be fast asleep in the corner of the boat. 

Sorry, here’s the hard truth. This was inevitable. It’s normal to have times of trouble, but it’s not what we were made for, and that’s why it causes so much pain.

Good listening helps the storm-tossed to get through.

At the bottom of the swirl, where everything settles, comes the conclusion of the angst of the moment. Well, that’s the way I read the last verse of the pain story of a man named Job. 

Out of probably the first book ever written for the Bible comes the woe of a man caught in a whirling hurricane where he has lost his family, his wealth, and his health. If you think your trouble story is bad, read the story of Job and be thankful. Read the storm here.

Job is literally sitting in the town’s rubbish heap, throwing ashes over himself, and picking at his sores (read self-harm). 

The last three words sum it up. 

I am not at ease, nor am I quiet;

It’s a simple acknowledgment that trouble comes. 

There is a normality to trouble. Post the time of Garden of Eden tranquillity of ease, quiet, and rest, we now live in a world where trouble comes. 

In my nostrils I still have the faint fragrance of a garden where ease, quiet, and rest were the norm. I get little morsels of it every day; I soak in them, but I know trouble comes. It will come as sure as storms at sea. 

One of the strangely comforting things to say to someone when they are going through trouble is that what they are experiencing is normal. This is not to downplay the struggle or to minimise their pain, but more so to say, ‘This is trouble and we can get through it.’ 

It’s normal that you are feeling depressed, anxious, overwhelmed, in grief.

It’s normal for your body to be reacting in that way.

It’s also normal for your friends and family to not know what to do.

It’s normal to curse, blame others, project out your pain, run, hide, and feel guilt and shame.

It’s normal to want vengeance.

It’s normal, but in the long term not good to stay in that hole.

I often add that I would be concerned if they weren’t feeling these emotions and desires for all that they have been through. It would be abnormal. 

It brings a strange reassurance to the storm-tossed that what they are going through isn’t strange to you. That you are in their boat with them. That you know what trouble is all about and you can be a steadying hand on their shoulder as they face the wild. 

Jesus, the one who knew trouble like no one else, speaks to the storms in our souls.

That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.”

Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. 

There were also other boats with him. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped.

Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” 

He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down, and it was completely calm.

He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” 

They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”

Going through internal storms (not running from them) builds our faith muscles. This is where borrowing some faith from someone else is such a beautiful Garden of Eden gift.

• Christianity is one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread. D.T. Niles 

1. You’ve been in times of trouble. What helped you through your storm?

Photo by Alex Block on Unsplash

Barry Pearman

Read this further here

At times, it can seem like God isn’t with us, but God is there with, ‘and it just so happened’ moments to bring about a larger story going on. 

I often listen to people’s stories and wonder where God is in them. Often the stories tell of mess. There is brokenness, hurt, and pain. 

I listen for two things. One is for what is happening in the here and now. Their Red Dot. 

The Red Dot is a concept I learned from Larry Crabb.

You go into a shopping mall, and you want to find where a particular shop is, and at the entrance, there is a map of the building. You notice a large arrow pointing to a location on the map, and there is a large red dot. The arrow says ‘You are here’. 

It’s that central ‘You are here’ groundedness that I’m listening for. Where are they in their soul right here, right now?

The second thing I am listening for is what is going on around them. What is God up to in this mess? They are often so captured by the mess that they can’t see outside of themselves. An outside perspective is needed.

If there is a ‘You are here’ knowing, then I want to express a ‘You are within’ connection to them.

You are held; you are known; you are loved.

One of the concepts that surprised me many years ago is that I am part of the meta-narrative of God. The Big story of what God is up. Part of the eternal flow that has and will continue to go on forever.

The Bible expresses stories of people just like ourselves caught up in this gulf stream of God’s goodness. This three person dancing trinity sweeps me along and seems to at times sneakily in the background orchestrate things to bring about perfect symphonic harmony.

Paul alludes to it in Romans 8:28

 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him. Romans 8:28

We can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. Romans 8:28 (Message)

There is a little phrase that I think points to this background movement of God.

Have you noticed this subtle little phrase acting itself out in your life?

I read these words ‘And it just so happened’ in the Bible and I have a sneaky suspicion that God is up to something.

Something good.

It’s like the boyfriend that ‘just so happens’ to turn up at the girlfriend’s place around an hour before dinner.

There is a kind of background motivation going on that we need to sit with and let it be revealed.

There are many examples of this in the Bible, but I want to focus on two of them. These two are so entwined in how they point to the larger story of God.

A mother and her daughter-in-law, both widows, return home from a foreign land. They are poor. The mother-in-law, Naomi, is bitter and angry at God. Ruth, her foreigner daughter-in-law, is trusting and hopeful.

They are in deep need of something to happen. Something good. They have no one to care for them and to look after their needs, but God is at work, in the background.

They need food, and it is harvest time. One of the laws that God set down for the people of Israel was that the landowners were to leave the edges of their fields as places for the poor to go and harvest from. God cared for the poor. Still does.

“When you reap the harvest of your land, don’t reap the corners of your field or gather the gleanings. Leave them for the poor and the foreigners. I am God, your God.” Leviticus 23:22

So Ruth goes to harvest from that which was left behind.

Now Naomi had a rich relative named Boaz, from Elimelech’s family.

One day, Ruth, the Moabite, said to Naomi, “I am going to the fields. Maybe someone will be kind enough to let me gather the grain he leaves behind.”

Naomi said, “Go, my daughter.”

So Ruth went to the fields and gathered the grain that the workers cutting the grain had left behind. It just so happened that the field belonged to Boaz, from Elimelech’s family. Ruth 2:1-3

The rest of the story goes on to a love story of Boaz and Ruth marrying and having a baby.

Oh, and the name of the town where this story was unfolding? It was Bethlehem. Yes, that Bethlehem of the Christmas story.

She was a pregnant teenager. She had been told by an angel that she was going to be pregnant with God. That she would have a baby, but it wasn’t going to her fiances. Her fiance, Joseph was also told that it wasn’t going to be his, but he was to look after Mary and to carry on to marry her.

A lot of mysterious stuff going on. Probably everyone thought it was terrible having a baby outside of marriage, but God was on the move.

Luke doesn’t record the words ‘And it just so happened’, but I think it would fit into the Christmas story.

At that time [And it just so happened], Augustus Caesar sent an order that all people in the countries under Roman rule must list their names in a register.

This was the first registration; it was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to their own towns to be registered.

So Joseph left Nazareth, a town in Galilee, and went to the town of Bethlehem in Judea, known as the town of David.

Joseph went there because he was from the family of David.

Joseph registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was now pregnant.

While they were in Bethlehem, the time came for Mary to have the baby, and she gave birth to her first son.

Because there were no rooms left in the inn, she wrapped the baby with pieces of cloth and laid him in a feeding trough. Luke 2:1-7

It just so happened that a census was being taken.

It just so happened that Joseph was from Bethlehem and, according to the rules of the census, he had to return to his hometown.

It just so happened that Mary gave birth to Jesus there in Bethlehem, the same place Naomi returned home to with Ruth, who had just so happened to glean in a field owned by Boaz.

It just so happened that there is a direct genealogical connection between Boaz and Joseph. Read the family tree in Matthew 1: 5-16.

It’s interesting. It brings an assurance to know that there is a bigger picture to be seen and there is a larger story going on.

But it’s not something to get obsessed with. I don’t believe God would want you to look at every little thing to see if there is a secret meaning, code, or theory.

No, I simply believe that God can use the most seemingly hopeless of situations to bring about the larger story going on.

There is a pilgrimage, not a plan of precision perfection. There is a path, not a tightrope where you worry about falling off. There is a dance not a demand to follow in rigorous legality.

God doesn’t take away our free will to choose. Ruth still had to choose to go to a field and gather grain. Joseph and Mary still had to choose to take the long pregnant journey to Bethlehem.

You still have to do the work, get out and L.O.F.O. (Look Out For Opportunities). But perhaps in your grain fields there might be instances of ‘and it just so happened.’

• Often times we’re looking for nice clear linear logical explanations about why we feel this compulsion and need to give efforts to something. There might not be any explanations other than something within you that says if I don’t head in this direction something within me will die. Rob Bell https://robbell.podbean.com/e/a-hymn-for-the-curve/ 

1. How does it feel to be part of something much larger going on?

Barry Pearman

Photo by Héctor J. Rivas on Unsplash

There are times when I have doubts. I question God, and I wonder. But over the years, I have built up a memorial of stones that reassure my soul.

I have questions.

I have doubts.

Places in my thinking where I question what I have taken to be true.

Evidence is presented thoroughly and convincingly in the courtroom of my thinking, and so in a logical place, it must be true, but other factors make me waver. ‘Surely, this can’t be true.’

• If God is good, then why so much pain

I can wrestle these questions out with good well-founded theology, but it’s a kiss on the lips that I need—a heart connection of compassion to my human need for surety.

A doubt can be a thin slither of a question that slides into our garden of security.

The first offer of doubt was when the serpent whispered a question to Eve’s beauty and Adam’s strength.

“Did God really say?” Genesis 3:1

A question asked promotes a question to be considered and not always to be resolved. We like answered questions.

But a question brings us to consider options, and that is where we can have a seed of doubt germinating, growing, and digging deep into our thinking.

A doubt is a double stance—a shifting between two positions, a wavering, and an uncertainty.

Having doubts is not a flaw of our humanity; it’s not a black mark against your soul; it’s more a healthy sign that you are thinking.

Puppets don’t have doubts. Machines don’t have doubts.

It’s only we humans that have doubts.

Perhaps your doubts are the fertile soil for Spirit to bring new certainty.

It was an intimate party. Not everyone was invited, but only a select few.

Don’t you feel special when you have been selected to attend a private party—you’re one of the insiders, one of the cool gang.

And this was the farewell party of Jesus.

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. Matthew 28: 16, 17

Here they were. The eleven disciples (Judas was no longer with them) having their final connection with the fully human and fully divine Jesus, and they were worshipping him. It must have been full of glory and wonder, but some doubted.

You would think after all the events and experiences that they had had, there would be no doubt in their minds at all, yet for some, there still was.

Im glad Matthew wrote that little note down. It tells me that those that doubt are still welcome to worship. We don’t have to have everything together, and we can still have questions and ponderings.

I don’t think the fully divine Jesus would have had doubts.

But the fully human Jesus could have had doubts. Maybe in the garden of Gethsemane when he was betrayed and knew crucifixion was ahead of him. Perhaps a question briefly flitted across his anxious mind.

Leaving there, he went, as he so often did, to Mount Olives. The disciples followed him. When they arrived at the place, he said, “Pray that you don’t give in to temptation.”

He pulled away from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and prayed, “Father, remove this cup from me. But please, not what I want. What do you want?” At once an angel from heaven was at his side, strengthening him. He prayed on all the harder. Sweat, wrung from him like drops of blood, poured off his face.

He got up from prayer, went back to the disciples and found them asleep, drugged by grief. He said, “What business do you have sleeping? Get up. Pray so you won’t give in to temptation.” Luke 22:39-46

The questions.

Is this really what you want me to do?

Is this path of suffering truly my path?

The tempter allures us with doubts.

Pray so you won’t give in to temptation.

Pray so that the slither of a doubt doesn’t become a wedge that drives deep into his thinking.

I’m reading The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk.

Here are some quotes for you to ponder on.

No matter how much insight and understanding we develop, the rational brain is basically impotent to talk the emotional brain out of its own reality.

If you feel safe and loved, your brain becomes specialized in exploration, play, and cooperation; if you are frightened and unwanted, it specializes in managing feelings of fear and abandonment.

Psychologists usually try to help people use insight and understanding to manage their behavior. However, neuroscience research shows that very few psychological problems are the result of defects in understanding; most originate in pressures from deeper regions in the brain that drive our perception and attention. When the alarm bell of the emotional brain keeps signaling that you are in danger, no amount of insight will silence it.

When our emotional and rational brains are in conflict (as when we’re enraged with someone we love, frightened by someone we depend on, or lust after someone who is off limits), a tug-of-war ensues. This war is largely played out in the theater of visceral experience—your gut, your heart, your lungs—and will lead to both physical discomfort and psychological misery.

That final quote speaks to me about the fertile soil of doubt. Our emotional and rational brain being in conflict and wavering, uncertainty, and indecision. I am in doubt.

I need someone a millimeter ahead of me to calm and reassure my emotional brain.

Someone who can say, ‘I am with you, I understand and accept your doubts, and I’m not going to try and talk your emotional brain out of its reality, but I am going to hold you in the midnight of your fears.’

I have doubts, and my emotional brain still longs for certainty, but I have a friend who reminds me of truth.

Times when my emotional brain feels truth flow as fact. I look for grace showing up when logic is breaking down.

As I write this, it is 5 am. It’s dark outside, but soon light will banish the dark away.

I am on the threshold of a new day. The threshold is the object you step over when entering a house. You have crossed over; you have entered the building.

I am about to cross the threshold of a new day. I am about to step over and into something new.

Thresholds are the space between, when we move from one time to another, as in the threshold of dawn today or of dusk to dark; one area to another, as in times of inner or outer journeying or pilgrimage; and one awareness to another, as in times when our old structures start to fall away and we begin to build something new. Christine Valters Paintner The Souls Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred

As I look to my day, I can prayerfully reassure my emotional brain that it will be ok. I’ve done this many times before.

The tempter presents slithers of doubt about the surety of what’s beyond the threshold. Not just today but six months down the track.

I pick up a few smooth stones to fight my goliath of doubt.

Stones that speak to me of previous skirmishes I doubted, but God came through.

Memorial stones had been removed from the river Jordan and placed down as a reminder to the doubters. Joshua 4

I face down the doubts with my personalized reminders. I have small notebooks full of them. I read them and recite them. I banish doubt to the backseat as I cross over thresholds. My emotional brain calms with the reassurance I provide it.

I wonder if sometime in the future, my children, when sorting out ‘Dad’s stuff,’ they will come across my notebooks and ask, like the children of Israel, ‘What do these stones mean?’. Perhaps they will see my humanness and how God met me in my garden.

Do you have doubts? Thats normal.

Do you have a collection of stones? Thats abnormal.

Build a memorial today.

• St. Thomas Aquinas taught that the corruption of the best is the worst. So the Bible is capable of great good, but we all understand it at our own stage of emotional and spiritual development. If you are still a black-and-white, rigid thinker who needs certitude and control at every step-well, the Trinity will feel out of reach. Grace shows up where logic breaks down, so you won’t go very far. No matter what passage is given to you, you will interpret it in a stingy, vengeful, controlling way–because that’s the way you do life. Richard Rohr

1. How much reassurance did you gain from knowing the disciples of Jesus still had doubts?

Barry Pearman

Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash

Read this further here

A shadow passed over them. An eclipse shadow of the soul, but I didn’t want them to be alone, so I sat and listened to the darkness. 

The light slowly changed.

What was the middle of the day seemed more like dusk, but I looked at my watch, and sure enough, it was midday.

The time when it was supposed to be full sunlight. Something beyond my control had moved between myself and my source of light.

I was living in the shadow of an eclipse.

Every analogy and metaphor breaks down somewhere, but the shadow of an eclipse has often helped me understand the interconnected relationship with my body and soul.

We want clean-cut precise connections. We like concentric circles drawn with accuracy and perfection.

This affects this, and that affects that.

If I do this, then that will happen.

We want to chess play our lives to manage out a particular outcome, but there is always the unpredictability of an eclipse that could shadow our effect.

Lets get our definitions and understandings correct.

For a technical definition here is what Wikipedia has to say.

An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured by passing into the shadow of another body or having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three celestial objects is known as a syzygy. Apart from syzygy, the term eclipse is also used when a spacecraft reaches a position where it can observe two celestial bodies so aligned. An eclipse is the result of either an occultation (completely hidden) or a transit (partially hidden). Eclipse Wikipedia

It sounds very techincal, but simply put, it is when an object, typically the moon, comes between the Sun and the Earth, and so a shadow is cast over the Earth.

A total lunar eclipse is when we can see the outline of the moon against the backdrop of the Sun, and we are sitting in the shadow.

A simple image may help. Source – simple.Wikipedia

It’s a wierd feeling when you are in the shadow of an eclipse.

Things have changed. It’s shadowy and slightly dark. it’s so eerie that animals act differently. Birds stop singing and puzzlment grips the lands.

I want you to hold in your thinking that picture and the feelings of living in an eclipse.

An eclipse generally doesnt last long. Everything is moving. The Earth rotates, the Moon as a satelite spins around us and shadows flee.

But what if the eclipse lasted longer than expected. What if it took up a kind of permanent residence over us. A shadow falling on us seemngly forever.

Then answer these questions.

• What is it like living with a physical illness?

Larry Crabb considers that we face three kinds of problems when people come to us for deep conversation.

These three problems are related to the brain and the soul.

1. Brain/ Soul problems

Let’s unpack these further

1. Brain/ Soul problems
   

These three categories are very useful in helping others and ourselves. I would also add to this model the general effect of the body on the brain.

Today I will go and do probably a physically heavy day.

Tonight my body will be tired and possibly sore in certain places.

My brain, the supercomputer between my ears, will be processing this pain, and I may feel quite down. But I have to understand that this comes from a place of physical exhaustion.

Wisdom tells me to relax, go to bed, and maybe take some painkillers if the pain is too much.

Good conversations enter into the shadow.

I listened to someone recently, and the shadow cast from bodily pain. This pain was affecting their thinking. Certain behaviors resulted. Can I forgive them?

Then there was someone with a soul injury from many years past that was now expressing itself in the body. The healing for the body may come from a recovery of the soul. (read The body keeps the score)

It’s shadowy work. Stumbling and knocking into things.

I enter into the shadow as much as I sit in the shadow that passed over the body/soul of Jesus.

It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, for the sun stopped shining.

I sit in the shadow and pray for resurrection.

For whatever is blocking the light to dissipate and the fullness of light to flood over us both.

What’s your shadowland like?

• Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination. G.K. Chesterton

1. What is your shadow like?

Barry Pearman

Photo by Jordon Conner on Unsplash

Read this further here

We retain them. All the hurts and pains of life, but what if we could forgive and let them go? Perhaps then we could dance freely and lightly.

It’s so easy to do. Holding on to the hurt others have done. The brain seems to retain it, keeping it and holding it tight as a clenched fist. Perhaps it’s some self-defense mechanism.

‘Been there, done that, now I will self-protect.’ 

The problem is that whatever we hold onto can gather a life of its own.

One trauma coalesces with other traumas and makes connections that weren’t there. Current hurts connect with past hurts, and our brain is off to the races.

False conclusions can be made, and then those beliefs join with other beliefs, and we create a powerful belief system where our soul takes up residence.

Living freely and lightly seems impossible under the weight of this pain upon our tired shoulders.

We have retained what needed to have been let go of, and the longer we keep it and hold it, the deeper it digs into the neurons of our brain and the streams of our soul.

What have you retained in the container of your heart, mind, and soul?

It could be good things. Hopefully, it is.

Promises of God. Moments of delight, times when hope was fulfilled. All of which you have stored away and retained.

But the brain has a negativity bias. We have this brain that has a habit of being like Teflon for the good and Velcro for the bad. So we cling to the negative, and it shapes our thinking in ways that naturally look for the negative.

There was a time when for the followers of Jesus, it must have felt like a giant roll of velcro had spun around their lives.

All the hopes had been crushed. The dreams had turned to nightmares. The miracle man, the one with all the power, who had walked on water and worked words into them that had exploded their lives with hope, was now dead.

He had been brutally murdered, and all of them had thought spirals that went back to when they had let him down, denied him of presence, of commitment. Velcro was winning over Teflon.

What were they to do with this pain? So what do we do with pain?

For the most part, we retain it with the habitual strength of a piece of velcro.

But a resurrected Jesus steps into the room.

Spear wound in his side and nail holes in his hands, arms, and feet. Scars and scratches adorn his body. But there is also something mystically glorious about his new appearance.

He breathes on us and says …

‘If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them;

They had a lot of events to process.

The brutality of the mocking soldiers. The jeers of the crowd. The cries of pain and agony. It was still fresh in their thinking.

Then there was their response. How they had walked away or had even betrayed Jesus. All of them had their burden of guilt velcroing to their brains.

Jesus comes with the direction to forgive and not to retain.

Forgive others; forgive yourself.

Don’t retain or hold into yourself the hurts you have done and those done to you by others.

Forgive others; forgive yourself.

The word ‘retain’ in Greek is the word krateó and it is an energy word and means to be strong or rule.

It’s used in this way

I am strong, mighty, hence: I rule, am master, prevail

Can you sense the energy locked up in those definitions?

I have a vast retaining wall near where I live. Built years ago, it holds back the soil supporting a busy road. If it wasn’t there, the earth would fall away, and the road would collapse.

But more so, it’s a retainer of energy. The force of the soil and water is held back. Designed by engineers to hold a specific weight capacity, it is strong and holds fast the energy that wants to spill out.

I think I have a retainer in my body.

It’s this place in my heart where I have chosen to retain all the little and the big hurts. Carefully designed and built, I store behind it so much rubbish. The things I could have gotten rid of years ago I have hoarded away just in case I need them for future self-defense.

But it’s a rubbish dump: festering experiences, pus-filled wounds, toxic waste.

I never want to go there, but I often do and pick over the past.

What happened yesterday was just like what happened twenty years ago. So I merge the two with the twenty.

This toxic waste leaks out into my everyday life.

If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it. Richard Rohr

It depresses me, keeps me anxious, has me on high alert for similar experiences, and prevents me from dancing and freedom.

It’s Cinderella’s ugly stepsisters who say you’ll never go to the dance.

Jesus, at the start of his earthly ministry, says these words

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion?

Perhaps I have held onto things that have weighed my dancing feet down.

I was always meant to dance freely and lightly, but perhaps the retainer I have created has held me back.

Jesus points to this as a choice to hold on or let go. To retain or to forgive.

And it’s not easy when the hurt has gone deep.

Some hurt needs deep dislodging work before they become free enough to be released. But you’re never going to dance while you are manacled to a retaining wall.

It takes careful and considered work to dismantle the retaining wall. There is so much rubbish and energy behind it that ripping it down would cause downstream destruction.

The soul’s work is slow, steady and could be considered an act of beauty and restoration in its own right.

Little bit by little bit, we dismantle the self-made retaining wall from the top down.

Forgiving takes time and tenderness. It’s a sacred act of self-hygiene—a purification of what has tarnished the beautiful cup.

Only one who has forgiven all and not retained anything has the tenderness capable of helping us.

Jesus steps into our brokenness and breathes life on us.

• We can only live inside the flow of forgiveness if we have stood under the constant waterfall of needed forgiveness ourselves. Richard Rohr. Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps

1. Think of a retaining wall near where you live. How mush energy is contained behind that wall?

Barry Pearman

Photo by Karyna Panchenko on Unsplash

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Turmoil – a state of unease, disquiet, and storm, but what if you weren’t alone in that drowning boat? We need a confidant to share the storm with. 

Often people say that life is like a rollercoaster ride. Ups and downs, highs and lows. But I think life is more like being in a small boat in a vast ocean.

Some days your little boat is cruising along, wind in the sails, direction known, and seas calm. All is good, and life is a breeze.

But then at other times, a huge storm comes upon you seemingly out of nowhere.

Clouds grow deathly dark and waves, high as mountains, tower over us.

We lose direction, our sails are torn, and we hold on to whatever we can grasp.

The worst part is that we don’t know how long this will last. Some storms seem to become permanent residents.

Before I began writing, I made myself a hot drink. As I watched the water come to the boil, I had an image of what turmoil is like—bubbling, churning water.

I look to the meaning of the word turmoil.

• A state of great disorder or uncertainty

Life is never a stagnant pond, it always has movement and winds blowing across it, but then there are the extremes, and we long for the quieter days and wonder if they will ever return.

Times of turmoil shape us and our little boat. Maturity comes from the storms we face and who we cling to when things get tough.

The biblical character Job comes to us as a fellow human being and moans, an expression of chaos.

I am not at ease, nor am I quiet, And I am not at rest, but turmoil comes. Job 3:26

From Job, we can find other definitions of turmoil

• not at ease

Looking into the Hebrew word used here, we find the word rogez, meaning agitation, excitement, and rage.

It’s not the excitement of hopeful anticipation; it’s more the excitement or stirring up of those water molecules in a boiling kettle. Molecules get excited, bump together, create upheaval, and I and my little boat have to ride those waves.

I’ve had enough of that kind of excitement in my life. I want those times of ease, quiet, and rest, just like Job.

Can I confide in you?

When someone says these words, you know they want to give you something precious. Something that comes from a deep place. A secret they would never share openly. It’s wrapped in the dark paper of guilt and shame. It’s been hidden away. No one knows.  

For some reason, they have felt you have a pair of safe hands. You won’t do anything rash or wild with their gift. You’re not going to make a public announcement of whatever they are going to share.

You will hold the secret they have been carrying and treat it with the deep respect it deserves.

A confidant will enter the storm-tossed little boat and share in knowing the agitation, stirring, and darkness.

They will give you slithers of confidence as you face the next dark wave.

In my rollercoaster ride of turmoil, I want someone strapped in beside me—a confidant, a friend, a soul talker that has traveled through the dark storms.

Confidence grows through facing the storm waves one at a time with a friend. Moments of stillness, rest, ease, and quietness restore each other’s souls and build a friendship before the foul winds build again.

What does a confidant look like?

First, check for signs of wear and tear. Callused hands, salt-bleached hair, wrinkled skin.

They are not box tickers, legalists, mechanics, engineers, chess players, or sergeant majors.

More likely, you will find them in the garden, the dance studio, the kitchen, or behind an easel. They know the sun and soil, the rhythm and rhyme, the herbs and the spices, the pastels and paints.

They can sit comfortably with disorder and allow it to be what it is.

In my little boat tossed in turmoil, my confidant brings me back to the surety of what they know will help.

They bring my focus back to those deep anchor-like habits.

In my turmoil, I return to the habits of prayer, listening and reading scripture, serving others, silence, and confession.

Confession of my confusion. I vomit out my soul to my confidant.

Tears flow. Wild, untamed thoughts lash out.

I don’t want to be F.A.S.S.’ed (Fixed, Advised, Saved, or Set straight). I want to be known and have a companion. I don’t want to be alone.

Only some people can handle that. Only some people are equipped to carry that load, but some are, and they are very precious.

Can I sit with you and journey a few thoughts?

• Genuine presence involves being genuinely myself. I can be present for another person only when I dare to be present for myself. Dr David Benner

1. What’s your little boat on the ocean like as you read this?

Barry Pearman

Photo by Matt Hardy on Unsplash

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Often you need a little acronym to remind you of a path to follow. Here are nine acronyms to help your mental health. 

Over the years, I have collected a set of acronyms that have helped my mental health and those I have conversations with. These are acronyms that aid in recovery. They are like little guide posts to get you thinking.

I am sure there are probably others, but here are my contributions.

1. F.A.S.S. – No Fixing, Advising, Saving, or Setting one straight
   

Read further here – The ABT Framework for Listening Well

Dealing with Difficult Family Members: Dont Justify, Argue, Defend, or Explain

Another one, as a bonus.

Title.

Theme.

Affect.

Questions.

Read further here – How To Prayerfully Listen, Interpret, and Understand Your Dreams

I hope you found this helpful and will be able to put some of them into action for your mental health.

Let me know if you have some acronyms that help you. Use the contact form to send me a message.

Barry Pearman

Photo by Carly Kewley on Unsplash

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