Think With Me
A priest I know liked to preface his prayers in the pulpit with the words, "Pray with me." Endearing. As I prepare for my next hour with the spiritual director on Monday, considering companionship.
Sing with me, sing for a year
Sing for the laughter, and sing for the tear
Sing with me, if it’s just for today
Maybe tomorrow, the good Lord will take you away
We need each other in many ways.
Every day I rely on people I will never meet who have some part in the food I eat, the clothes I wear, the smooth running of systems I take for granted like transportation, heating or cooling of the house, a functioning internet…
But here I am considering more specifically the people in my life who help me think more clearly.
Yes, this includes the people who sing with me, quite literally. I appreciate my fellow choir members and my choir director all the more as I will be missing the next few choir practices, Sunday services, and Ash Wednesday. Tonight I would normally be with them at choir practice, so they are very much on my mind and in my heart right now.
Also, though, a lot of other people who help me think. There are really interesting people I have ‘met’ here on Substack who have written the most thought-provoking things, and written lovely, fascinating comments on my posts.
I’ve noticed though that when people wildly disagree with others, it’s only in some kinds of social media they make a big meal of it with them. For example, in the wilds of Twitter, which I forsook for good and all after last February’s political foray. That was when groups of marauding people supporting another political candidate delighted in attacking me repeatedly. It was ugly and I will happily never repeat that experience for a variety of reasons which are for another post altogether.
Politics, unfortunately, can bring out the worst in people.
I’m still on Twitter, but no longer in the wilds. In calm quiet corners where people share beautiful pictures, thoughts about the importance of reading, and inform others about what we continue to learn about Covid in year 7 of a pandemic that was called prematurely nearly four years ago now.
Anyway. That is, once again, a whole nother topic.
Here and in other places I live on social media, if I wildly disagree with what people write, or if they disagree with me, generally it seems we leave each other alone in favour of hanging out with our ‘birds of a feather’.
And that’s perfectly ok. It’s wonderful to visit with people from all over the world who have remarkably compatible views about things. It’s comforting and reassuring.
When I say think with me, though, I am thinking about another kind of companionship. One that is more challenging, in a good way.
As Iron Sharpens Iron
From Proverbs 27, beginning in verse 5 (NIV):
Better is open rebuke
than hidden love.
6 Wounds from a friend can be trusted,
but an enemy multiplies kisses.
7 One who is full loathes honey from the comb,
but to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet…
9 Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart,
and the pleasantness of a friend
springs from their heartfelt advice…
17 As iron sharpens iron,
so one person sharpens another.
What I am hearing here is that one of the important ways we need each other is to challenge our stories and beliefs that are off kilter.
We need open rebuke. Wounds from a friend. What is bitter. Heartfelt advice. Being sharpened by another.
My friends are amazing. As such, at times, when I have badly required it, they have helped me understand I was out of line, missing something important in my thinking, and have helped me in more ways than I can know deepen my insight and understanding.
My most important challenger, though, is my husband. Over these first 17 years of our relationship, he has confronted me many times with the inadequacy of my thinking in ways most of my friends would hesitate to try, given how independent and darn right pigheaded I can be. I rarely seek advice on personal decisions, though I happily consult professionally and do consensus building in safe contexts away from the areas I protect fiercely. My life is my own, and I usually am not interested in hearing other opinions of how I live it.
My husband though, in love and compassion, as well as from his own needs of his Internal Family System, has often pointed out where I may not be making the best decisions.
I don’t always like it, but I need it deeply. I need people to disagree with me and offer other perspectives because sometimes, maybe often, my perspective really needs the input so I don’t make poor decisions.
I hope that I do the same for him.
Iron sharpens iron.
Why Spiritual Direction?
So you might well ask, “You have a husband who challenges you. You have all these friends who offer multiple perspectives. You’ve done therapy. Why would you need a spiritual director?”
These are all different things, meeting different needs. My husband can provide lots of input on the most personal aspects of my day to day. My friends do their thing and it is wonderful. Therapists have helped me come to terms with my family of origin issues, understanding what happened in my first marriage including my role in the breakdown of the relationship, and so on.
My spiritual director, though, offers counsel from a spiritual perspective. She immediately spotted what probably others who know me have seen, but she said it out loud in a way that I could hear it. She asked me what kind of God I believed in whom I didn’t trust to heal me, after listening to me talk about having given up on living a life free from depression.
At first it shocked me. But it was a good shock. It woke me up from my sleepwalk. The assumptions of a big chunk of my life so far were exposed in a flash for what they were, and I began to open myself to the possibility that I could actually become well.
It’s not as if I had done nothing up to that point to seek healing or to put into place practices that promote my mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
It was that I had failed to recognise that I was too self-reliant precisely because I felt I could not put my trust in God. There were many rationalisations in place that buttressed the lack of trust and made it seem somehow compatible with a life of faith.
Humans are endlessly skilled at self-deception, rationalising, and missing the obvious right under our noses.
And this rationalising, missing the obvious, and self-deception are a big part of why we need each other. There are so many different facets to our lives, mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually, that we need many different kinds of people to help us see all of ourselves properly, so we can get out of our way, and better connect with the True Self.
Should I go back into therapy? Probably. I am certainly open to the possibility, seeing how many basic things I have been missing from a spiritual perspective. Time will tell.
Think With Me
I usually end my posts with an invitation for the reader to comment. And some of you kindly do, for which I am more grateful than you know. I hope that reading this post has helped you understand how earnestly I do want you to share what you disagree with about my posts, if you wish to. I want to learn more about other perspectives so I can arrive at a deeper understanding. I don’t want to stay stuck in my own way of thinking. So please let me know your thoughts!
Be With Me
For those of you, both dear and kind friends I know very well in person who follow me here, and those who have only met me through my posts, who prefer simply to companion me by reading and perhaps liking my posts: thank you for being with me. It means a lot to me that you are here.
My cousin took this picture of me when I visited her in the UK in July. I am so very grateful for her, for all the very honest and deep conversations we have had over the years, especially the past decade or so when we really started to open up and talk about some of the things that are hardest to discuss. She helps me think, and she has been with me for so many years, though she lives far away.
