as the 1st world turns,
I find in myself just a little more plastic
moving mysteriously through my skin, absorbing
spongy fast food clogging arteries and lymph vessels
my integrity and intuition compromised.
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Tag Archives: healing
wanted
everything is full of ghosts.
they are dead on replay, they rise
out of a song lyric
a water bottle
friendly shoulders
some chairs at night.
one specter awakens and calls up all the others,
their bones rattle as they write
words with their fingers and tongues
times when you wouldn’t be forgotten outside in the cold
quiet art galleries
being asked to dinner
really white sheets and A team
you’d have people to sit with at the show
though these are all good things
they sting as all broken promises do. So I commune with these spirits,
tired of avoiding these commonplace terrors,
wait for those to come forth that calm the others
the peaceful, quieter, subtle loves
the stories that did not end in heart-wrenching shame
they come close and silence the ghosts which say
life will never be any better than failure.
gallery
weighted, wandering, I gaze at
each fleck of gold, caught in
the streaky colours that fill the walls,
carefully composed into chaos.
worries smile and crawl
out of my skin
curling up safe in a tiny triangle of green,
laying down in a perfectly shaped eye
grinning back at me.
They live there now, healed and happy
whenever i find this painting
I will also find them.
drawing butterflies
as western NY warms slowly, melting
arms grow stronger
as weakness dries and shrivels up.
Luke Harms’ “On Shame.”
from Luke Harms’ blog, Living in the Tension
On Shame.
There is a conversation happening. It’s an important one, birthed out of frustration over the modesty wars, purity culture, and a whole host of issues that are, I think, concrete manifestations of our misunderstanding of notions like love and grace. Also, I think it’s part of a broader conversation about shame and guilt versus hope and redemption, about oppression versus freedom.
There’s just one simple idea I want to add to the conversation. I want to shout this from the aisle of every church, put it in all caps on every internet message board and start a kickstarter campaign to buy some Super Bowl add time.
“There is no place for shame in the Kingdom of God.”
This Kingdom is built on a foundation of implacable love, every stone a story of redemption, of hope, of restoration. Our Cornerstone is Immanuel, God with us, and scandalous grace is the mortar that binds us all together in our shared heritage of son-and-daughter-ship.
Shame though, at its base, is about fear – fear of condemnation, of rejection, of not measuring up – but perfect Love – radical, self-sacrificing, other-embracing, redemptive Love – casts out all fear. Shaming then is nothing short of denying the primacy of this Love, and the power of grace. It says that God’s goodness, love, grace and kindness are not enough to draw us to repentance. It says that control, not love, is the nature of our relationship with God.
While Shame says “You can go no further because of what you’ve done,”
Grace says “I have already come all the way to you and further because of who you are to me.”
While Shame forces you into the darkness, to hide your face from the pain of condemnation,
Love lifts up your face and shines the light of redemption upon it.
Shame destroys. Grace restores. Love renews.
When Love breaks in, the shame that shackles us to the worst versions of ourselves is cast aside, and we are set free. Bonds are broken. In the solidarity of a family of sinners saved by grace, we find the hope that shame stole from us and the redemption that it denied us.
This truth seems to me to be no small thing, no simple platitude that utter lightly. It is not just a trifle to be put on a bracelet or a slogan to be splashed across a church bulletin. It’s a very real acknowledgement of the power of Love to break every chain, to heal every broken heart, to bind up every wound, to give rest to the weary, to save the world from itself.
When we preach shame, condemnation, guilt and oppression, our words ring cold and hollow, empty of the life-giving, words of that Truth. When we shame and condemn, we deny the power of the Gospel. We can never shame someone into the Kingdom of God, nor scare them into loving community, but Grace makes all things new, and Love makes whole that which was broken.
In the end, Shame says “We can’t even start until you fix these things…”
Love says, “It is already finished.”
100
i am tired of crying out silence
and being rebuked for not answering
what was never asked.
i do not know how to heal yet, just
give me a little more time to see what this brings.
Noem.
In a dream, I could kiss your scarred face
and heal everything.
(colour raged around us.)
