Straight talk on shadows
evening meditation, 01.28.17, day 5/30
Today, of course, my heart aches. Tonight, as I prayed, I asked Jesus, again, why this is happening. Look: he is always loving. He is always in love with me, with you, with everyone. There is no one you passed by today or talked to today or saw today that isn’t included in that. It’s a love that comes bruised, tender, already welled up, because you are God’s delight. That never changes. In every conversation, it’s a constant.
And it was no different tonight, but I will say: the talk was also straight, steady, urgent. Here’s something you have to know:
This moment we are living in, right now — we created it, all of us. This is our shared shadow. You might hate what is happening, or you might not, but it is a reflection of all of us — things done and things left undone — like it or not.
There is no “other.” There is no “them.” Never has been, never will be. No matter how hard you try to externalize what you claim you don’t like — hatred, condescension, the “elite,” racism, misogyny, liberals, conservatives, Trump, Hillary, Muslims, Jews, laziness, greed, poor people, rich people, educated people, uneducated people, Christians — there is still only “us.” There is nowhere you can go to get away from that reality.
There is the darkness we carry — and fear — in ourselves. But that is still never outside of ourselves, no matter how hard we try to pin it on others, no matter how much we claim to be better than it and try to distance ourselves from it.
You cannot outrun the work you have to do to create true wholeness. Do you understand that? You can run and run and blame and run, but it will always be there when you are exhausted, blistered, out of breath. You cannot outrun the work you have to do to create true wholeness.
Your darkness sits at the foot of your bed, waiting. You wake up to it every morning. It is exceedingly patient. Mostly it does not even have the power you think it does — but you cannot transform it until you see it, and until you face it. You can shut out, diminish, enslave, or eliminate every “other” that you perceive as a threat — whoever you’ve made that into, whoever you’ve been told in one way or another (by your news, your social media, your friends, your family, your church) it’s okay to despise or demean or dismiss — and you will still wake up with your own darkness waiting at the foot of your bed.
Every attempt to wage war on some external idea of shadow or enemy, if we are not committed to doing our own work, will only amplify it in our own human heart. Tell me a time in history when this hasn’t been true. Tell me a day in your life when this hasn’t been true.
If trump had dealt with his darkness, we would not be here. That much is obvious.
But this, too: If those of us opposed to what trump represents had dealt with our shadows head-on — our blindness, our complacency, our contempt for those we’re supposed to be serving, our stridency — we would not be here.
If those who think they’re on board with what trump represents had dealt with their darkness head-on, they wouldn’t have needed a trump to assuage their fears by creating an “other” to blame — so we wouldn’t even have to be here.
Wherever you are right now in all of this, the call is the same: sit up in your bed. Look there, at the foot. What is looking back at you? What have you been afraid to face? What is it you have been running from? Your loneliness? Your sense of powerlessness? You lack of agency? Your fear? Your hopelessness? Your sense of disconnection, or the belief that no one sees you or cares? The injuries of the past? Your perceived failures? Your sense of smallness that you mask with conflict avoidance? A sense of being owed? The nagging voice that says you’re never enough that you smother with criticism of others? Your need for approval? What? What is it?
This is our work. Get up. Go to it. Strip away every last excuse, every last distraction, every last addiction to avoidance. This. is. our. work. We cannot overcome this onslaught, this madness, until we stop running.
