Breaking Open

Gen 42:16-21

We are swimming with the snakes, at the bottom of the well. So silent and peaceful in the darkness where we fell. But we are not snakes, and what's more, we never will be. If we stay swimming here forever we will never be free... (Patty Griffin, "Forgiveness")

We all do it. Flip into that hurt, small self that says, "You did this me. I'm going to get you back!" And then we know, that growth requires suspending, noticing, naming, allowing that smaller minded self into the spectrum of who we are called by God to become, and we try -- sometimes more successfully than others -- to integrate, to let that self be present but not run the show. To say inside, I hear you, I love you, and yet there is more... so stand with me as we try something different.

In that stance, in the space between who we have been and who we are becoming, we open into the now moment of forgiveness, the beginning of healing... of ourselves, of others, of everything. We don't abandon that smaller-minded self -- we can't, we are all so human, sometimes it hurts -- but we can add to our wholeness, expand our spectrum, step into the window of light that opens to allow us to see more than what has come before, and in that expansion we become part of the eternal bridge between past, present and future, and we welcome healing, we welcome moving more freely into the fullness of ourselves, our gifts, our divine connection.

And we give thanks. Not for doing it perfectly every time, not for freeing ourselves from our past wounds (are they EVER fully gone?) but for noticing and choosing to move and grow. To hold love closer than pain, to hold wisdom closer than fear, and to see more clearly that in each moment, we have a choice to be closer to the divine.

"It's hard to give, it's hard to get, but everybody needs a little forgiveness."
(Patty Griffin)