January 13th Challenge: Check your walls

Sunday, that day of rest...
Sort of.  For most of us, it's spent catching up to prepare for the work week:  grocery shopping, getting laundry done.    Hopefully your Sabbath included some time for reflection and reverence, however that works for you.  I had planned to be a little more reverent in slumber, but my sweetie thought we should get up and high-tail it to the early service.  It was a brisk 24 degrees, which in Corvallis feels like a deep-freezer, so I layered on long underwear, pants, vest, fleece and coat.  Glad we did.  The sermon was about walls and the concept of protection vs division.  The rev touched on Berlin, cell biology, Robert Frost (of course).  We sang my favorite hymn, Prayer For This House.  It concludes with this verse:

With laughter drown the raucous shout,
and, though these sheltering walls are thin,
may they be strong to keep hate out
and hold love in.

The allusion to cell walls is one I use often with my clients when discussing boundaries-- the idea of having a semi-permeable membrane that lets in nourishment while keeping out harm.

It's the difference between having a screen door and a brick wall.  One lets in the good stuff, the other blocks everything effectively-- including fresh air and light.

Take five minutes to look at where you may have overbuilt your defenses.  Are past hurts and fears disrupting your now?  If so, is there a way you can reassure your Self of protection, without being your own crippling helicopter parent, or shutting down opportunities for growth and nourishment?

And conversely, if your lack of fencing has led Psyche to be overwhelmed, how can you build shelter for Self?  Is it time you need, time for reflection and restoration? Are there relationships where you are sorely overfunctioning with little return?  Have you hushed your own voice so often that when it comes out, the pent-up energy distorts it?

Somewhere in between selfless and selfish a place we don't even seem to have a word to describe.  See where you are in the continuum, and adjust those fences.

Quote of the day, from Robert Frost's "Mending Walls".  This poem is often neglected to completely misdirect the meaning of its most famous line:  "Good fences make good neighbors".  
"Before I built a wall I'd ask to know 
What I was walling in or walling out,
 And to whom I was like to give offense".

For Shame

Had a pleasant though mostly incoherent chat tonight with a homeless guy in front of the post office.  I was apparently looking pretty ragged myself, because when I said I thought I had a dollar, he said "That's ok, sister, just talk to me a little."  But I did have a dollar, one of those shiny new gold ones.   I'd found it when cleaning my office just before coming to the PO, and stuck it in my pocket.  I pressed it into his hand, and he said "That's ok, you can keep it if you need it," but I didn't.  Neither of us was exactly sure it was a real dollar or who was on it.  He remembered the Sacajawea ones; said "I get her, I know things about her.  I'm full blood (tribe withheld) myself."  He kept searching my face.  He seemed uncomfortably sober.  "I'm a sun dancer.  I don't go to the dances.  My tribe, it's hard for some of us, so I don't go now.  But I am a Sun Dancer."  "So you're a dancer who doesn't dance?"  He gave me a look, and said "You know how it is."  "It's never too late to go back, is it?", I asked, and got the same look, amplified, along with "Don't even start, sister, don't start."

"OK, I'll shut up now," I told him, and turned to leave.  He stopped me with a "Listen, sister."  He was quiet a minute.  He looked so vulnerable. He waited until I was looking him full on.   "Sister, I love you."  "I love you too, brother", I told him, and went on my way.

My heart felt heavy and lightened by our brief conversation.  Heavy because of the shame which blanketed him, and me some too for first thinking maybe I should turn the corner and just stick the envelope in the outside box.  Lightened because of our shared vulnerability in risking a real conversation, even if one of us was hungover from drugs, alcohol or just being a dancer who's kicked out of the dance and the other of us hungover from a long rainy winter of losses.  I didn't mind that he told me he loved me, and it felt fine to tell him back, even though if we'd known each other "better" we might not like each other all that much.  When he said that , I felt the part that was true for him as a suffering human, both broken and whole, talking to the part that was true in me and not all that much different.  The devil's in the details, right?  And the details of the moment were blessedly absent; just two people in a big old rattling world, connecting for a moment and then on our way.  I think we felt seen.  I think it felt good, for both of us.

Researcher and author Brene' Brown has a new TED talk on shame and vulnerability, those human unifying conditions.  If you've not seen her original TED talk, listen to it first at this link:
 http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html
She's got some powerful things to say about how we can get out of our own way when connecting in the world.  Her new talk focuses on the shame aspect, and how it literally dis-courages us from being innovative, creative and making needed changes. 

Watch it here (if it's working), or at the link.  There's important wisdom here, and work for us.

brene_brown_listening_to_shame.html












1)  Vulnerability is not weakness  (emotional risk, exposure and uncertainty-- our most accurate measure of couarge.  To be seen, to be honest.  Vulnerabilty is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change)


2)