letters from barabbas

As she lowered herself to a log, she could see how the pattern of the water changed as it made its way past a rock that jutted from the river. The river did not stop at its base, wailing, blocking all the water coming after it. No, it continued to flow, parted, foamed, but then became whole again after it had passed the rock, leaving its impact on the rock, just as the impact of every hour she had lived was still with her, shaping her like the people who had fed her dreams. All at once she felt as if she were the river, swirling in an ever-changing design around the rock, separating and coming together again without letting herself get snagged into scummy pools. Over the years, she had learned more from the river than from any one person, and what she'd been taught had always come with passion--intense pain or joy. It was the nature of the river to be both turbulent and gentle; to be abundant at times and lean at others; to be greedy and to yield pleasure. And it would always be the nature of the river to remember the dead who lay buried beneath its surface.
What the river was showing her now was that she could flow beyond the brokenness, redeem herself, and fuse once more. If that rock was her love for Hanna, she could let it stop her, block her--or she could acknowledge the rock and have respect for it, alter her course to move around it. She had to smile because, for a moment there, it looked as if the water were trying to crawl upstream, back across the surface of the rock in dozens of small hands, reaching against the stream, defying the current. And that was good. Over the years the rock would be transformed, just like the countless stones at the bottom of the riverbed, stones you couldn't see; they affected the flow but didn't impede its progress, its momentum, its destination. She could see how she had it in her to start out loving and become vindictive--and how she needed to take a look at her love and make sure it was whole before she could offer it to anyone.

--Stones from the River, by Ursula Hegi

It seems I'm in a constant state of self-improvement. To God's unending annoyance, no doubt. I've been thinking a lot about pain, and my problems that have resulted from that pain. I've also been watching some of my friends make decisions in response to their pain that I would not like to make for myself. I have felt the weight of vertigo begging me to fall into my pain with them. My college friendships have served to show me many things, and one of the most valuable lessons I have learned is about the many subtle ways in which I am selfish. I learned at Camp SAM that it really isn't that hard to love someone after all: even a total stranger, even if you're totally dysfunctional, even if you're the most selfish person in the world. You just make a conscious effort to get over yourself and look at the needs of that total stranger. No greater love than to lay down one's life for a friend. I succeeded, for the most part, in doing so for a week, with strangers that I never have to see again.
Back in the real world, however, I found myself less successful. The truth is, it is hard to make that decision. It's the hardest thing we'll ever have to do. But it's the only thing worth doing. Outrageously.

We were discussing anorexia in Reading the Body when someone called it, passingly, a "selfish problem." I was surprised by her wording, although she was getting at something else, and I got distracted by a tangent: all problems are selfish. I have these painful things that have happened in my life, that have messed up the way I see things, at times causing me to turn inward, retreat into well-defined defense mechanisms, exploit other people for my own desires. Everyone does. Ectopia cordis. We have these problems, caused by pain. As long as we think about ourselves, hold tightly to the pain, we are prisoners of the problems that the pain has caused.

To gain your life you have to lose it.

Not that we're supposed to reject our pain, act like it didn't happen, tell ourselves someone else must have felt something worse. Nor can we say that our pain is greater than another's, that what happened to us differentiates us, excuses us from the generous forgiveness Christ demonstrated. Hegi makes that point clear. "Ah, but we can't do that--compare our pain," says the Jew hiding from Nazis in the main character's house. "It minimizes what happens to us, distorts it. We need to say, yes, this is what happened to me, and this is what I'll do with it."

So, what am I going to do with it? Am I going to hold on to the painful experiences I've had to go through, and allow them to shape the way my life turns out? Or am I going to let the waters of life run around them, embrace them, softening them and transforming them into something positive, enriching, human? If you ever ask someone to pray with you for deliverance from some sort of sin pattern, that person will probably lead you, right from the start, through a prayer of forgiveness. Before you can be free from a real problem (we call this a "stronghold" in Christianese), you have to let go of the grudges you hold towards the people and circumstances who have caused you to develop the problem. I've done this, several times. But the ultimate choice remains mine every morning: will I fold gracefully around the stones in the river of my history? Or will I fight against them until I'm snagged in scummy pools, stagnant and stinky and alone?

# posted by David : 1:04 AM