February 12, 2010

• The Illusion of Shame

  
  A very different St. Valentine’s Day offering than the usual fare, for all of the amazing women who frequent my little corner of the Internet…

  We can be so very hard on ourselves. We set up standards, or feel like there are standards set before us that we must reach and when we fail, we feel like failures. We feel like disappointments, like we’ve let someone down. We make mistakes, bad judgments; in the spur of the moment we abandon our integrity for one moment of “what the hell” and in the morning we have this ugly shadow of knowledge we refuse to let into the light of day, lest we crush someone’s view of us. We tuck it away deep inside and hope it goes away. We keep tucking things there until the light of our life starts to dim and gray, until night falls and all is darkness and we lie on our beds and ask the gathering dark, “How did I get here?”

  How indeed?

  One thing I have noticed here on Xanga is that ever since I changed my profile pic to one that shows me in my collar, I have attracted a lot of attention. Fortunately, once I make clear to newcomers that I’m not a priest *yet,* many still return to my blog later without being too disappointed. A great deal of that attention has, unworthy as I am, come from amazing, beautiful young women. Surely, though, they do not come to gather around this sad little tree with a piece of “forbidden fruit” dangling from the last branch (I certainly hope not!), so I often wonder what it is that brings them? Not being a reader of minds and knowing only a few hearts, I try to notice the common thread that weaves them all about me and do you know what I find?

  A deep, deep wound long open, weeping, embedded within it a shard of shame from the inflicting experience. That shard causes the wound to fester and refuses to let it heal. I sometimes wonder if they come here seeking some kind of healing, seeking a person that will see them not merely for *what* they are (Lord knows enough harm has been done by others looking upon them only as a *what*) but for *who* they are, whomever they are, in particular and always as beautiful and beloved. Even if not, I always want to try and offer that anyways. So here goes.

  My very, very dear sisters, I want to share with you a truth that the world doesn’t realize, and that some may not ever want you to know. Shame, this paralyzing blanket that you may throw over your hurting heart whenever others are around, which is cast aside the moment you are alone to your own thoughts… this cold that sets your heart solid as stone when in the spotlight of another’s attention, only to melt in the salt of your own tears when that attention passes… or whatever role it plays in your life… shame is an illusion, at least, shame as I understand it.

  Shame has its roots deep in our humanity, in our very broken, fallen nature. We read in Genesis how beautiful and wonderful everything was in Eden, how God was God and Adam and Eve were human. To set everything in its proper place, God commanded them not to eat from a certain tree. Why? Because He is God, and He needed to make sure they knew that. Was the fruit of this tree magical? Probably not; it may very well have been a plain old apple tree. But the fact that God commanded them not to eat of it made it very special, for God and mankind in its infancy were in perfect, complete communion, totally absorbed in the love of the other. What bliss! But sin (disobedience toward God) breaks that communion. Is not God the very source of life itself? Did He not just raise Adam from dead dust and awaken Eve from the very heart of her husband? So when God says, “Eat this and die,” He was not saying that the fruit was poisonous, but saying, “Look, you live because of me! Don’t break that communion or the natural consequence will be death.” This is why, for example, you don’t walk into an ICU and pull the plug. If a doctor tells you, “Now don’t pull that plug, or this person dies!” and you pull the plug, is it the doctor that kills the patient? No, it is the natural result of your disobedience.

  We all know that Adam and Eve disobeyed God. Immediately He wonders where they are; their union is already severed that He cannot find them. When He does, He finds them HIDING. Hiding? From God? Yes, they were naked and ashamed. Naked. Laid bare before the All-Knowing. God is not an idiot, He knows what they have done, yet when He gives them an opportunity to own up to their mistake, Adam instead blames Eve, and Eve blames the snake, and the snake, well, the buck stopped there. But Adam and Eve (and thus the rest of humanity) had to suffer the consequences of severing their communion with God. Notice, too, they never asked for forgiveness! They pointed the finger, but never said, “Oh God, I am so sorry, please forgive me!” So what once was our nature of perfect communion with God became a fallen nature of separation. But not abandonment!

  I am SURE that we can all relate to Adam and/or Eve. We have all done something we are ashamed of. For example, say you tell your parents that you are going to stay at a friend’s house. While at this friend’s house you are invited to a party that you KNOW your parents would never want you to go to, but you go anyways, counting on their not knowing. You go and you do many things you also know they wouldn’t approve of and may even be shocked to know. You wake up the next morning and then it hits: shame, fear, and the need to keep secrets. You go home, bearing all of these secret things in your heart and your mom or dad asks, “How was your sleep over?” “Oh it was great.” They buy it!

  Yet, something has changed between you and your parents. You know that you have disobeyed them or disappointed them, but they don’t. You suddenly realize the lie but fearing how the truth may have challenged or changed your relationship with your parents, fearing the possible consequences of your actions, you kept things from them in order to maintain the relationship you currently enjoyed. Except now you don’t enjoy it; you have to perpetuate a lie for a very long time. You are a personification of Psalm 51:5- “For I know my offense; my sin is always before me.” When you talk to your parents, look at them, whenever they brag about you to family and friends, you think of how different things would be if they knew the truth.

  It seems to me, then, that shame is the guilt and fear we carry when we do something that might change the relationships we enjoy with those who we love, or those whose esteem we value. We don’t want them to know what we’ve done, or there might be a difficult discussion, some tears and some consequences. But going back to the party example, which is the more difficult discussion: “Mom, Dad, I went to a party last night and did some very stupid things…” or “Mom, Dad, I’m pregnant?” Once started down the road of shame and secrecy, the break in communion between ourselves and those we love widens and is more and more difficult to reach across. So we keep our secrets and hack our own trail through the brush instead of walking away or continuing down the difficult, but sure, path.

  So where is the illusion? We get so caught up with putting up a front before our shame, keeping the truth of our past actions from certain people that we forget we are already exposed for who we are and what we have done.

  When we made the stupid choice, we were not alone- God was right. there. We act, we regret, we hide, but we are caught from the moment we make a mistake, for God is there with us, witnessing the whole thing. Some people get very freaked out by this, some resentful and some pretend not to care. But think about it for a moment- God is witness to *everything* we do. No matter how private, how secret, He is there, He knows. But what so many people forget is that He is not merely All-Knowing, but All-Understanding, All-Loving and All-Merciful. He UNDERSTANDS why you did what you did, but His understanding does not (nor does our own) *justify* what we have done. So there He stands, knowing what we did, why we did it, and He waits for us to come to Him for… what? Condemnation? Punishment? No, forgiveness. He doesn’t want to spend a moment apart from us, but He won’t force forgiveness on us. This is why He HATES sin, because it keeps us distant from Him. Say you and the love of your life were walking along in the wilderness and suddenly there was an earthquake. An enormous rift forms between the two of you, separating you by hundreds of feet. Would you not hate that rift because of how it keeps you from the one you love?

  And yes, I have met those who realize that God knows what they have done, and rather than rejoice in the light of truth and seek His forgiveness, they turn away from Him… in shame! They stop going to church, they avoid Mass and the Eucharist and the very Sacrament of Reconciliation that would fill in the rift and reunite Lover and Beloved. They feel burdened, as though God’s judgment was suddenly laid upon them and they are no longer worth; sister, who is? But *we* lay this burden on ourselves while God aches to remove it! We cannot hide from God in shame, for He already knows everything we have done, we witnessed it firsthand and understands everything that drove us to error. How can you hide what is known not only by you, but also by the one you are trying to hide it from? You may as well try and hide your head from yourself!

  Instead, I beg you to realize that you needn’t hide, because you can’t. Instead surrender to the love that God offers you. Do you realize how beloved you are in His sight, no matter what you have done? Do you realize how beautiful you truly are, and what treasure He has heaped upon the world just to try and remind you? Do you think He revealed Woman last of all creation because she was least, or ugly? Do you think Adam was left nearly speechless upon seeing Eve because she was so “ho-hum?” No! Do you think God chose a woman to play such a pivotal role in the salvation of all mankind because you are worthless or unworthy in any way?

  You. Yes, YOU, reading this right now: you are God’s beloved Daughter, Princess of the Royal Bloodline of the King of Kings. There is a dignity inherent in you for merely existing, and a beauty that cannot be removed or denied, but merely ignored by the idiot or belittled by the cunning serpents of the world. You cannot be bought or sold, a measurable worth cannot be assigned you. Even in the very depths of your shame, even in the mire of every deed you have ever done that makes you feel unworthy of real love and you settle for merely the illusion of it, perhaps the pleasurable attention of this man or that, fleeting but intoxicating enough to numb what hurts within you, perhaps drugs or something else to help you forget the burden you bear. But the sun rises tomorrow, and there in the light the shadow is cast. I beg you, walk in that light! Walk *toward* that light and tell your Father what you have done, why, and tell Him that you are sorry and you love Him. Do you fear how your relationship with God might change? Don’t, for your “sacrifice is a broken spirit” and He will “not spurn a broken, humbled heart.” Your relationship with God can only change for the better, it can only deepen and grow, and His love for you never slackens nor is it withdrawn. Refuse to give into the illusion of shame, for your secret is out the moment you try to keep it. From this forgiveness, from this reconciliation with the very source of Life and Love, you will have the courage and strength to reconcile with those others in your life you don’t want to separate yourselves from. Just look at the world today; is it not when a man and wife keep secrets from each other that marriages fall apart? Is it not by secrets that careers are ended?

  This reality, this necessity of wrestling with our sin and owning up to it and walking in the light is something very central to the Catholic faith. In the Mass itself, we begin by saying, “I confess to almighty God and to you, my brothers and sisters (meaning everyone present there in the Church and also in heaven), that I have sinned through my own fault, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do, and I ask Blessed Mary, Ever Virgin, all the angels and saints, and you my brothers and sisters, to pray for me to the Lord our God.”

  At the very beginning of our worship, we meditate for a short time on our sins, we ask God for His forgiveness and seek to reconcile with our Father before going any further. Perhaps my favorite and most precious moment of reconciliation comes just before receiving Our Lord Jesus Christ, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, coming into full and complete communion with God “as it was in the beginning, is [then] and will be,” when the presiding priest elevates the Eucharistic Body and Blood of Our Lord and says to all gathered, “This is the Lamb of God, this is He who comes to take away the sins of the world. Happy are we who are called to His table.”

  We say: “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you… only say the word, and I shall be healed.”

  My dear sisters (and any brothers out there, really), be healed. I truly wish this for all of you. On this approaching St. Valentine’s Day, fittingly falling upon the day of Love–when your King and the Man who loved you before anyone else, loved you so as to die for you and rise for you and to grant you a full share in His victory, the Man who literally went to Hell and back for you–this time, never forget the deep ocean of love in which you are drowning at every moment, if only you would stop holding your breath! Be healed, and know from God, or at the very, very least, from a man who has nothing to gain by speaking the truth of his heart (or he has staked his entire life upon tremendous folly, for naught), that you

  are

  beloved

  and beautiful,

  eternally.

  God bless you.

  Psalm 51
  For the leader. A psalm of David,
  when Nathan the prophet came to him after his affair with Bathsheba.
  Have mercy on me, God, in your goodness; in your abundant compassion blot out my offense.
  Wash away all my guilt; from my sin cleanse me.
  For I know my offense; my sin is always before me.
  Against you alone have I sinned; I have done such evil in your sight That you are just in your sentence, blameless when you condemn.
  True, I was born guilty, a sinner, even as my mother conceived me.
  Still, you insist on sincerity of heart; in my inmost being teach me wisdom.
  Cleanse me with hyssop, that I may be pure; wash me, make me whiter than snow.
  Let me hear sounds of joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
  Turn away your face from my sins; blot out all my guilt.
  A clean heart create for me, God; renew in me a steadfast spirit.
  Do not drive me from your presence, nor take from me your holy spirit.
  Restore my joy in your salvation; sustain in me a willing spirit.
  I will teach the wicked your ways, that sinners may return to you.
  Rescue me from death, God, my saving God, that my tongue may praise your healing power.
  Lord, open my lips; my mouth will proclaim your praise.
  For you do not desire sacrifice; a burnt offering you would not accept.
  My sacrifice, God, is a broken spirit; God, do not spurn a broken, humbled heart.
  Make Zion prosper in your good pleasure; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
  Then you will be pleased with proper sacrifice, burnt offerings and holocausts; then bullocks will be offered on your altar.

  • 5:54 pm
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