acceptance

day breaks in Altdorf

Yes, late again. Chris was sick this week, and also I abandoned the family temporarily to spend the night in Altdorf so I could go to the 6:15 am Rorate service on Tuesday morning, which felt terribly indulgent but was such a magical interruption to daily life. And the résumé writing took longer than anticipated. But with some very helpful help from a friend, I got it done, and I sent it off this morning, along with the four other documents they requested. One more small step in that process, check. The phrase that keeps coming up is, "well they won't reject you for *this*!" So we all assume that eventually they will reject me for something, but let's see how long we can hold on to this bull ride, ha.

In spiritually exercising news, this writing project may not exactly be going to plan but the actual prayer/meditation time has been...fruitful. Being lovingly present to my own thoughts and feelings and formative experiences seems to be doing me some good. Go figure. 

The intention for the week was "I ask for access to my longing for God," and the prompts felt very...specific. Monday: write down your name and speak it out loud. How does that make you feel? [Uncomfortable.] Tuesday: and what about the name "Jesus"? [Ambivalent.] The Bible passage for the week was John 1:35-39, 

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. 

Friday: "You get to have your own experience with Jesus. How is that for you?" So I tried to imagine myself in this odd scene and go with Jesus to where he is staying. Where would Jesus stay? In a Motel 6, I decided, or some kind of a commune that in my imagination suspiciously resembled North Dorm (iykyk). When we walk in nobody seems to care particularly about hailing Jesus as Lord and Savior, they sort of just move over so he can have a seat on the couch. Someone asks me if I'll help cut up the vegetables for dinner. 

I think my longing for God, if indeed I got some access to it, is like that. It's longing for a sense of security, of being in good company, of feeling useful, of feeling understood. Of feeling appreciated - but appreciated for something that I really am or want to be, not something someone else thinks I am or needs me to be...

I finished Unlikely Companions this week, and it's coloring my experience here, in a way that I probably can't communicate well yet, but here's an attempt. Becker's discussion of Jung's discussion of Ignatius's spiritual exercises ends with Jung's interpretation of Christian salvation:

If I can say that I am alive simply to join the flow of transforming life from its origin to its goal, then the universe is there for me in a new and far deeper, freer and more fruitful way. The Contemplation is a vision of wholeness - of the self, we could say, in its cosmic dimensions. All things are related to the source from which I came, all flow in the same energy that empowers me and moves me to grow in my conscious and responsible individuality. It is no longer 'my' creation I see, full of my projections, but the creation of which I am a part, as I live with all other things in relation to the whole, to the source and to the goal.
...
As long as I see my own projections, myself, in my world, I can only love myself, and even that is not a true, life-giving love. I can only seek my own security and meaning through my ego-personality and power, which leaves me caught in the vicious circle of my own unconscious patterns that block my ability to see myself. I have to see the other as other - my projections must be gone - in order to love. And if I do succeed in emptying myself and my universe of my unconsciousness in this way, I will be conscious and free enough and disposed to love.

Here we have three dudes conversing across the centuries about a patriarchal religion, and doing an elegant job of it! But what I'm thinking is...beyond the privileged dynamics of projections and power there are also the flip sides - internalized expectations and disempowerment - which also get in the way of our free disposition to love. Do the contemplations that help us detach from the former also address the latter? I don't know. Deep thoughts, to be continued. Now it's time to: make pizza. Which is its own form of salvation.