Emotional and Spiritual Wellness

In our darkness
there is no darkness.
With you, o Lord,
the deepest night
is clear as the day. 

-Taize Chant

Friends, 

As I was doing pastoral work this past week and in conversation with friends, I noticed something that gave me pause. Articulate, intelligent folks confronted by their own deep and unsettling emotions often apologising and justifying, hedging really, on the emotions that as a culture, we have deemed “negative”. I bring this up as an observation, not as any kind of indictment. I too, have struggled in feeling out of step with the expectation that we ought to be “fine” most of the time. However, I think as someone who is stepping into the role of clergy, I have some responsibility here to talk about my take on what emotional and spiritual wellness might look like. How might we as a community of faith, as neighbours, as parents and grandparents imagine a world where the dis-ease of brokenheartedness, stifled anger, and soured secrets no longer wreak unmitigated havoc on our connections with ourselves, with one another and with God? It isn’t easy to be a human being. Sure, in recent weeks, some folks have been wrestling with how their racial privilege plays out and how they might seek to dismantle and remake systems that oppress. This is a layer of reality that is vitally important and mustn’t be ignored. However, when it comes to the realm of the soul, there is no privilege. People die, we lose when we thought we should win, we grow up in harmful and toxic homes, we marry the wrong person, we lose our jobs and can’t figure out if we should pay the rent or buy food. Being human is hard. I reckon we are hamstrung further when we are unable to tell what Iyanla Vanzant calls the “rot-gut” truth about how we feel and how things are. Of course, this profound truth is not for everyone in our lives. We must discern where it is safe to go this deep and be this bold. The coworker innocently trying to eat a sandwich is probably not the one. Heck, for some of us, even our family isn’t the place for radical honesty. But what if we all vowed, that at least with ourselves in the mirror, we would meet our own eyes (with love) and speak the truth about how we are doing. No hedging. No equivocating. Might we be taking the first step in radical self-acceptance? And if we were, what miracles might unfold in our lives? Someone I admire greatly said this week, “you know, everyone is always praying for miracles…but what if your miracle is waiting on you? What if God is waiting on you to be prepared for your miracle? Y’know, like the teacher arrives when the student is ready.” To me, it had the ring of truth. 

I preached a sermon last week where I mused about God speaking and how we may not be able to hear. By my eye, part of what may inhibit our hearing is our perception. We are collectively afraid of the dark. Like so many of our ideologies, our idea of sacredness is binary. Light=good. Dark=bad. We banish grief, anger, disappointment, confusion, anguish as if they do not have sacred gifts to share. In my experience, they do. Their gifts are not guaranteed, though. We must pay attention to the dark and let her tell her blessed truth. 

Blessings,
Amy