These people are blemishes at your love feasts, eating with you without the slightest qualm—shepherds who feed only themselves. They are clouds without rain, blown along by the wind; autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead. They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom the blackest darkness has been reserved forever.Jude 12-13

There’s a reason why they call shame toxic. Like an oil spill into the ocean, shame wraps itself around everything good and lovely in our lives, stunting our growth, and blocking out the light of the sun. The worst thing it does is give us poisonous messages about who we are, what we are capable of, and why we are here.

This morning I awakened remembering the sweet taste of a honeybun in my mouth. I was a little girl sitting on the sofa in my father’s house. Eating the sweet bread coated in cinnamon and heavy amounts of a thick sugar paste, was a part of what had become my Saturday morning routine that summer.  The memory of my fork digging into the warm goodness is pleasant.  I ate it straight off the fancy metal plate that read Give thanks to the Lord that I had warmed it up on in the toaster oven. I ate anticipating a bike ride to the store just up the road from his house. I loved spending time with my aunt who ran the store most of the time. We would go on and on talking about everything. When whatever fried breakfast meat she had cooked was done, I still remember it tasting better than anything else I’d ever had before. I’m so thankful for the time I got to spend with her. She encouraged me to be curious in a world where too often I was too afraid to speak or ask questions.

Scenes from horror movies felt like home when I was a teenager. In a world where I fought alongside the fictional characters the daily demon of darkness that threatened to steal our souls, these movies provided a strange comfort. What can a child do in abnormal circumstances other than normalize the abnormal?  Stephen King gave me more hope than anyone else at the time. He created a world where evil used a pandemic to almost completely wipe out everyone. But hidden in the cornfields was Mother Abigail, who visited a rag-tag band of survivors in their dreams, and called them to carry out their mission from God where they would take their stand against evil. The wonderful thing about fiction is that no matter how bad things get, in the good stories they usually work out. That’s why I love what Winston Churchill said, “If you are going through hell, keep going.”  So I kept going throughout my childhood and my teenage years surviving on stories and movies that enabled me to face my demons and escape temorarily. Hoping that at some point the monsters would be slain and hell would end.

I just thought when I found my way to the church that hell had ended, but it had only just begun. Some of the things I believed about the church were just my way of trading a horror movie for a fairy tale. I believed the monsters were defeated and that we would live happily ever after. But then as winter neared, the dying leaves of autumn fell off the trees and winter finally came.  I  believed hope was lost until he showed up. He slipped into our lives unnoticed promising springtime rains and new growth.

When I was just a toddler, my mother said on vacations I ran away screaming from the ocean. I was so terrified I would not even stick my toe in. But when I got a little older, it was my favorite place in the whole world to be. I often dreamed about the ocean, and it became my safe place. Turned over on my side, with only a blanket to cover my shame, I imagined myself on the ocean being gently rocked back and forth. In the same room beside the door, there was a newspaper clipping of the Footprints poem hanging on the wall. Every time I entered or left the room where nightmares came true, there was a reminder that God was carrying my soul.

I wanted so much to believe that he was good even though I knew that Jesus told us not to trust what was in man. Because I know how easy it is to get swept away in an ocean of pain, even as I write this, I do not condemn. But there is no denying that the wild waves around him foamed up with toxic shame.

My soul has wandered in the darkness for too long seeking desperately for the light. I think I’m finally seeing it, but not in the place at all I expected to.  St. Catherine of Genoa said, “My deepest me is God.”  St. Catherine was an Italian saint and mystic who after realizing how much God loved her dedicated the rest of her life to serving others who were suffering. It’s interesting to note that St. Catherine did not believe in purgatory in the same way many others did. The sufferings of purgatory, she believed, are the manifestations of God’s love. She talked about life here on earth where “rust which is sin, covers souls, and … is burnt away by fire, the more it is consumed, the more the soul responds to God. … As the rust lessens and the soul is opened to the divine rays, happiness grows” (“Treatise on Purgatory,” St. Catherine of Genoa). Catherine reasoned that, except for heaven, there is no greater happiness than found in purgatory. While not dismissing the spiritual suffering, she saw purgatory as a place or condition we enter into knowing it will lead to God; it is a stepping stone to heaven.  Catherine of Genoa, Wikipedia

I love the words of Canadian poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen. There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.For a long time, I tried to cover up my cracks. Toxic shame whispered in my ear that I was broken and would never amount to anything. It said that if others saw how badly I was broken, they could never love me. But thank God, I saw the light shining through the cracks. 

I’ve been reading an astounding book by MaryCatherine McDonald, Ph.D. titled Unbroken: The Trauma Response Is Never Wrong: And Other Things You Need to Know to Take Back Your Life, and it has helped me to understand that those of us who have suffered and survived trauma are not broken even though sometimes we feel like we are. Especially when we get activated by so many things. But we don’t need to shame ourselves for these responses, because every response is about survival because that’s what our bodies are designed to do; keep us alive. I read recently in another helpful book by Mark Wolyn It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle that when we resist looking at our woundings that we often protract the very pain we are trying to avoid. 

I read it took Leonard Cohen a decade to write Anthem. He was in a process just like St. Catherine of Genoa and the rest of us of trying to reconcile all that has happened in our lives. Sometimes it’s just too much to look at. But sometimes the light and love of God comes shining through. And what a relief when it finally does. I’ve come to the conclusion if this is purgatory, then I can’t wait for what is to come.

Anthem

The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what has passed away
Or what is yet to be

Ah, the wars they will be fought again
The holy dove, she will be caught again
Bought and sold, and bought again
The dove is never free

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

We asked for signs
The signs were sent
The birth betrayed
The marriage spent
Yeah, and the widowhood
Of every government
Signs for all to see

I can’t run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up
A thundercloud
They’re going to hear from me

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

You can add up the parts
But you won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march
There is no drum
Every heart, every heart
To love will come
But like a refugee

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

That’s how the light gets in
That’s how the light gets in

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Leonard Cohen

Anthem lyrics © Stranger Music Inc.