Listening for that restless spirit

Reading, in Jesus the Teacher Within, about befriending Jesus as an aspect of befriending yourself, I decided to hunt down an image of that part of me that objects, gets hurt, cries for recognition, and runs off by herself.

And sure enough, here she is, perfect right down to the curly red hair (unlike my own, which is straight and brown). I took this shot at my daughter's high school graduation -- something in me sensed a kindred spirit, I suspect -- of someone's little sister, taking off in a spirit of rebellion and boredom (and no doubt loving the feel of the soft green grass under foot, something that won't happen now that they've covered the playing field with astro-turf).

What I've come to realize, over the past week or so, is that when this child in me objects noisily to something, it is not necessarily true that she is an egoic shadow voice needing to be stifled. It may actually be true that she is God's newly audible voice crying to be heard.

Sometimes, like a mother with a noisy child in church, I just want to strangle her. But then, there are other people outside of myself I occasionally feel like strangling, too. And with them, as with her, it is often true that the voice which I so don't want to hear from is actually the alien divine -- that aspect of the divine which I have not yet managed to recognize or internalize for myself -- needing to be acknowledged, heard or accepted.

It's not unlike my friend back east, who reports he has just taken another load of wood to be stacked. "Gotta be ready for 2010!" he says... and then, almost in the same sentence, he criticizes his wife for buying a second pair of some shoes she likes, for when the first pair wears out. "What if she loses a leg or something? Who knows what she'll need for shoes when these wear out?"

It's so hard to see our own "stuff" in others' objectionable behaviors. But it's almost always there, needing to be heard and loved. The louder and more irritating the voice becomes, the more surely the melody behind that insistent squealing is a dance tune just for you. Sometimes, even if it hurts your ears, you need to make time to listen.