the heart as it is | courage • grief • beauty

The last time I shared a reflections post was 2 months ago, so this is a post two months in the making !

Things I have been learning about Yahweh:

• In my Orthodox Study Bible, I came across this verse in the Wisdom of Sirach, “My son, honor your soul with gentleness and give it honor according to its worth”. The commentary at the bottom of the page continues on saying that this was likely what Jesus was thinking of when He was sharing the warning of gaining the world but losing one’s soul. I really appreciate this reminder – at the same time, I know how hard it is to be gentle with my soul. I have been discovering that a lot of being gentle is usually just really not doing anything or thinking of anything – truly letting it rest (mainly cause my ‘doing’ has a lot to do with finding personal faults). I pray that God would continue to show me ways to be gentle towards myself as He is gentle towards my soul in ways that I need to be awakened to.
• One of my most recent reads through the Orthodox Study Bible (OSB) has been the book of Ruth, and I was very much looking forward to what differences I may found between the Masoretic text that I grew up reading and the Septuagint, which the Orthodox Study Bible is based off of. I notice also that some of my Bible reading lately has mainly been to find these differences, and I don’t shame for myself for it, and I don’t think God does either, as there is a lot of unlearning to do and my soul continues to seek expansion and truth, which unfortunately my religious upbringing did not provide for occasionally valid reasons… In any case ! In the book of Ruth, one notable difference I found was in chapter two verses 15-16, where, in the OSB, it says, “And she rose up to glean, and Boaz commanded his young men, saying, “Let her glean even among the shaves, and do not bring shame upon her. When you carry sheaves, carry them for her also; and when you throw them on the piles, throw them for her also; and let her gather from what she has piled up, and do not rebuke her.” Conversely, in the (NET version of the) Masoretic text, it says “When she got up to gather grain, Boaz told his male servants, ‘Let her gather grain even among the bundles! Don’t chase her off. Make sure you pull out ears of grain for her and drop them so she can gather them up. Don’t tell her not to!’
  
  In the Masoretic text, there definitely is the implication of leaving some grain aside for her to gather, but the methodology is different. In one version, the providing is passive (the Masoretic text), while in the other version, the providing is intentional and with purpose. If Boaz is to represent Christ being the redeemer of humanity – of ALL humanity – I doubt a passive translation serves him well. Unfortunately, my Blue Letter Bible app has been incredibly glitchy so I cannot look up the Greek or Hebrew translations to take a deeper dive into the definitions myself now, but it definitely makes me very curious as to why these translations have been done so differently.
• A verse that has stood out to me in the Wisdom of Sirach says this: “My son, do not let your business involve too many things. If you multiply them, you will not remain unpunished, and if you puruse them, you will not overtake them; and you will not escape by running away”. Coming back to the states after my trip from Taiwan, I recall that being back here felt overwhelming – what with work and all. Even though I don’t serve as much at church like I used to for example (which took up an immense chunk of my time at one time in my life), I still feel really low energy and have not really figured out why, but I pray God would show me how to slow down and not let my business involve too many things, especially as school starts up soon.

Things I have been learning about others:

• Lately, I keep thinking about this interaction I had about 2 years ago when I was getting my most recent tattoo – a black-outlined iris on my arm in Nashville. I did not chat much with the tattoo artist, but he said something intriguing to me after I told him that I was studying to be a counselor. In response (in some manner), he told me, “Yea, I don’t do emotions”. Obviously, I nervously chuckled and smiled it off at that time because this dude is literally poking a needle into my skin. But I had been thinking, if he were someone that was sharing this with me during some therapy session, what would I say? Some first things that come to mind are “Yes, that is mostly true, but I bet you do anger.” …mainly because that is one of the only societally accepted emotions for men to express. He had also mentioned (not to me, but in his social media) suspecting he had some kind of mental disability, something like ADHD, which, if were true, may potentially contribute to him not processing his emotions healthily in any way depending on his circumstances. All our logic comes from our emotions to begin with; we are emotional creatures before we are ‘rational ones’, and it is genuinely sad to see how society convinces us to suppress our true selves, including genuine emotions.
• This is something I have known in my head for a while, but have really been feeling in my core lately: it is difficult to make new friends as an adult. As adults, work (and potentially family and children) takes up a such a huge amount of our schedule – as they should. I am definitely grateful for the friends that I do have, even though some of them do not live nearby anymore, so I am definitely not saying that I do not want these friends as they are important to me as well. I think I am realizing that this is something I need to start grieving in one way or another.

Things I have been learning about the world:

• A random thing I have learned is that chlorine water actually is much more dirtier than we think, especially chlorine in public areas where up to hundreds of people may be using it at once. So this is something for me to keep in mind. It also makes me wonder if the jacuzzi during our anniversary trip I went in was the cause of my recent rash, as the rash developed about five days after – but who knows?

Things I have been learning about myself:

• I recently finished this course called “Outsmarting Implicit Bias” with Harvard Business Online. It was quite an enlightening course, and I learned that bias is not inherently bad – it is actually programmed into us as humans; it is mainly what we do with it that is potentially worthy of some kind of judgment call.
• Also, I have been binge-watching so many romance media in period drama settings: a bunch of Jane Austen adaptations, Bridgerton, and Queen Charlotte. I especially loved Queen Charlotte and am really thinking about writing a whole post for that show. In any case, I have been realizing that I really love watching/reading things about love and romance, and there really is no shame in that (this explains why I also really like the cheesy Hallmark films, as well as Taiwanese dramas)
• More John O’Donohue quotes from Anam Cara:
  
  “The body is also very truthful. You know from your own life that your body rarely lies. Your mind can deceive you and put all kinds of barriers between you and your nature; but your body does not lie. Your body tells you, if you attend to it, how your life is and whether you are living from your soul or from the labyrinths of your negativity. The body also has a wonderful intelligence. All of our movements, indeed everything we do, demands the most refined and detailed cooperation of each of our senses. The body is the most complex, refined, and harmonious totality.” -> I thought of Bessel van der Kolk’s book while reading this passage about how “the body keeps the score”. Communication does not only occur within our minds and through our mouths but throughout our body, our whole entity. Although I grew up in traditions and circles that did not honor the body in this way, I am happy that I have finally found sources to reconnect with my body.
  
  “We should avoid the false dualism that separates the soul from the body. The soul is not simply within the body, hidden somewhere within its recesses. The truth is rather the converse. Your body is in the soul, and, the soul suffuses you completely.” -> I completely agree. Plus Jesus did not separate soul from body, nor say nor show that either is not sacred. Both are intertwined and almost need the other to fully experience life as each is.
  
  “It is far more creative to work with the idea of mindfulness rather than with the idea of will. Too often people try to change their lives by using the will as a kind of hammer to beat their life into proper shape. The intellect identifies the goal of the program, and the will accordingly forces the life into that shape. This way of approaching the sacredness of one’s own presence is externalist and violent. It brings you falsely outside yourself, and you can spend years lost in the wilderness of your own mechanical, spiritual programs. You can perish in a famine of your own making.” -> This reminds me of an ex-monk whose work I follow. Trying to change things out of will or resist things out of will frequently end up backfiring, as sometimes doing so is more out of trying to repress something deeper that the body is trying to communicate. O’Donohue says it so well that doing so “falsely brings you outside of yourself”. It is definitely difficult, but I also believe that finding ways to be present and compassionate with the parts of us and our bodies is how we truly discover what they really need (and how to meet those needs in healthy ways).
  
  “Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey. There are no general principles for this art of being. Yet the signature of this unique journey is inscribed deeply in each soul. If you attend to yourself and seek to come into your presence, you will find exactly the right rhythm for your own life. The senses are generous pathways that can bring you home.” -> I can’t help but think how I was taught to ignore the soul in certain religious circles growing up. Our soul is where the Holy Spirit also works and speaks to us, it is how we are each uniquely fashioned. I’m reminded again how good solitude is for the soul, and how I have not had much of it lately.
  
  “For too long, we have believed that the divine is outside us. This belief has strained our longing disastrously. This makes us lonely, since it is human longing that makes us holy. The most beautiful thing about us is our longing; this longing is spiritual and has great depth and wisdom. If you focus your longing on a faraway divinity, you put an unfair strain on your longing. Thus it often happens that the longing reaches out toward the distant divine, but because it overstrains itself, it bends back to become cynicism, emptiness, or negativity. This can destroy your sensibility. Yet we do not need to put any strain whatever on our longing. If we believe that the body is in the soul and the soul is divine ground, then the presence of the divine is completely here, close with us.” –> Amen and amen. In and through our being is the Word, so we have never been separate from the divine.
  
  “What way do I behold the world?” -> This just felt like a poignant thing to ask myself, as in some senses, as much as I have been healing, I feel like I have been seeing the world more negatively in certain aspects. There are people I still have difficult having compassion for, and I view a lot more things as disgusting, primarily with regards to my germaphobe-ness. It definitely feels like a stressful world to live in, and I don’t know how to change this mindset.
  
  “Greed is poignant because it is always haunted and emptied by future possibility; it can never engage presence. However, the more sinister aspect of greed is its ability to sedate and extinguish desire. It destroys the natural innocence of desire, dismantles its horizons, and replaces them with a driven and atrophied possessiveness.”-->I cannot help but think of colonialism and capitalism in general while reading these few sentences. There are good things to have and desire, but greed definitely twists these naturally good things.
  
  “To the judgmental eye, everything is closed in definitive frames. When the judgmental eye looks out, it sees things in terms of lines and squares. It is always excluding and separating, and therefore it never sees in a compassionate or celebratory way. To see is to judge. Sadly, the judgmental eye is always equally harsh with itself. It sees only the images of its tormented interiority projected outward from itself. The judgmental eye harvests the reflected surface and calls it ruth. It enjoys neither the forgiveness nor imagination to see deeper into the ground of things where truth is paradox. An externalist, image-driven culture is the corollary of such an ideology of facile judgment.” -> Reading this part felt like holding up a mirror to myself. The part that stings reading this is that the judgmental eye is equally harsh with itself, which makes sense, as that is where the judgment comes from, the inside. I think something helpful in dismantling this comes from what is in the next couple of sentences – that truth is paradox and sometimes not always as certain as it seems.
  
  “It is said that indifference is necessary for power; to hold control one has to be successfully indifferent to the needs and vulnerabilities of those under control. Thus indifference calls for a great commitment to nonvision. To ignore things demands incredible mental energy. Without even knowing it, indifference can place you beyond the frontiers of compassion, healing, and love. When you become indifferent, you give all your power away. Your imagination becomes fixated in the limbo of cynicism and despair.” -> I can’t help but think of the phrase that the opposite of love is indifference. This is such a profound but also sad explanation of why indifference is harmful and hurtful.