A new friend is a delectable, fresh draft through my soul. But the wind whips through the cobwebs, and they wave, reminding me of their presence. My new friend reminds me so, so much of a soul sister I used to have. This is a compliment to her but not to me.
One of the grandest tragedies of my life is the loss of the only person who ever saw me lying at the feet of my persecutors, gashed and bleeding, naked and detestable, and still dared to love me. She taught me to be something that someone else might love someday. She taught me about Beatles and hobbits and purple walruses and haiku and chocolate pudding pie at 4 in the morning. She was truly amazing.
Then one day ten years ago, I told her I thought she would go to Hell if she died.
I'm sorry! Really, I'm so sorry! I was so, so very, very wrong. If only she could hear me.
I've learned to be okay with being wrong. If wrong is what it means to make amends to Katie, even though she'll never know, then wrong is what I'll be. I can blame the teachers of the lame-ass theology that I embraced and that led me to be so cruel. But really, I was just arrogant and ignorant and immature and, well, wrong.
And this is what is trembling in my soul today, as I eat blueberries and yogurt with cream for breakfast, spend my day reading about humankind's desperate scramble for another crumb of knowledge about the divine, take a gift to some beautiful people who are trying to heal the world, play with my cat, chat with my husband, listen to the trees and the children outside my window as I settle in for the night.
I want so much to love without conditions this time around.
Good night.
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2 comments:
I can truly identify with what you say here.
When I was in high school, I made a friend who was really cool. He was also into Taoism. He was very smart, and thought outside the little Warsaw box, and he was very kind and accepting. But he wasn't a Christian. So I "witnessed" to him, and wrote him letters full of Bible verses. Looking back, I feel like I was so arrogant, and I feel like I botched a friendship that could have really been great.
I've really beat myself up about this, and not just this particular situation, but the whole thing--my arrogance and judgmentalism and etc. But reading through your post makes me think that I need to give myself the grace and love that I wish I could have shown to others throughout my life. I, too, was really just doing the best I could at the time. I was trying to do the right thing, as I understood it to be at the time. I was lost in my own ways.
Perhaps one of the reasons we have such a hard time not-judging others is because we so harshly judge ourselves? At least, I'm realizing lately just how true this is of me.
Thank you for sharing this blog. If you choose to keep posting, I will certainly keep reading.
I think you're on to something. In order to offer grace and love, I think we first have to embrace grace and love. The one who has been forgiven little (in her own understanding) indeed loves little, and the one who (knows that she has been) forgiven much loves much. So much in our relating to each other as human beings lands on the shoulders of humility. So very much.
Grace and love are two things that, regarding this, I've never been able to offer to myself. Katie is a Christian. Unfortunately, there was a time when I bought the lie that all liturgical Christian traditions are not "biblical" and that adherents to those traditions are "unsaved." (Hallelujah, it's a lie!) Katie is Roman Catholic. After I "witnessed" to her, she felt so ashamed of her faith, which was so integral to her self, that she had a nervous breakdown and quit college. The last contact we had was a letter in which she asked me kindly to bow out of her life. I was supposed to be her best friend. I credit myself with ruining her.
Ever since then, I grapple constantly what it means to be inclusive in the giving of love and the sharing of life (something that I desperately want) when my faith by definition is exclusive in some ways. At least I know now that my only duty is to love, and that the souls of others can be trusted in the hands of the one who made them. I am no one's judge. Tamie, when you wrote about giving up being right for Lent . . . wow. If you had any idea how much that resonated with me. Wow.
And fairly often, I think of Katie, and I weep for what I did and what I lost, and I pray that she is being healed and loved.
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