Well, its about 30 minutes to midnight on the eve of a very strange year.
I was just chatting with my house-mate about how the world of last new years felt like a whole different life. We were different people.
I suppose we aught to be.
This spring I worked on a few projects:
1. a boat
2. a guitar
3. calling friends on the phone more
4. therapy
It's in the last of these that I really started to dig into some issues I've been dealing with for some time. Honestly, I don't know if here and now is the time or place to try to explain the patterns I was working on, but I'll tell you about my last therapy session.
After a lot of time being practically unable to accept a version of myself that didn't match with the ultra-version I had constructed in my mind, I finally was able to contrive a solution that gave me permission to step into alternate possibilities. Thus, rather than my problem being fixed, or being told that I'd never function in relationships, the breakthrough came when I stopped judging myself so harshly and gave myself freedom to be myself, whatever that means.
As I write this, I'm reminded of a song. Hang on, I'm going to try and find it, put it on the speakers.
There it is. Come as You Are by Tenille Townes.
I loved hearing this song on the radio. I remember that I parked at work and left it on in the car to play out blasting loudly. I loved how it evoked Billy Graham and the "Just as I am" refrain. It reminded me of his legacy through his son and how perhaps there were always some limits on what that means. I loved how the song joyfully pushed that shit down and used a very similar refrain against the exclusion that evangelicals so often give power to.
And yet it's hard to always take on this spirit of freedom. This year a lot of us have had to go easy on ourselves, and cut ourselves some slack. We don't need to be perfect, and in fact we are beautiful flawed creatures. Imagine God's grace and then imagine more than that. I don't even know if I believe it, but if I believe something, I want it to be that. I want it to be severe love.
And yet today has been tough. I like to create little narratives for myself around moments like a new year where my story feels like its turning the page to a new chapter. The last one is tied up nicely, the new one laid out unencumbered. But I did feel encumbered, and I didn't feel fresh. I didn't feel like I had adequately turned over a new leaf and I didn't feel like it would be a new world tomorrow. I felt like I had made terrible mistakes, I felt like a mess, I felt depressed, I felt shame.
Then I spent some time chatting with my roommate (conversation, the great healer)
and having drank some wine (the great feeler)
and having listened to some music (the great emoter)
and having looked at some old photographs (the great evoker)
I think I may just survive January and thrive in February and in grace, rage and a daring hope perhaps even curry some courage in 2021.
Surely we need it now.
It's almost midnight, and with that I leave one moment from 2020.
I had departed from Quadra island with three accompanying friends, in three accompanying kayaks when we saw the mist blast from the sea.
The moment a humpback breaches is a moment one could live and die inside. Yet I was left to keep on living, looking for moments and realizing that they are gifts.
In gratitude we take one step after another.
In grace we stand. We stand upright to look one another in the eye, to say the words we feel we don't deserve, but desperately need to hear.
