San Juan de la Cruz, meet Gaudete Sunday

Last week, I was on Facebook chat with a friend when this happened:

Clerical friend: The Czech church impressed me immensely. The archbishop is a hugely impressive man - spent time in prison under Communism but still full of joy.

Me, thoughtfully: But you know, sometimes I think that only people who have been through really hard things can experience joy. Everyone can experience happiness, but joy is too deep, too much a creature of light AND shadow, to be part of the life that has had no darkness in it.

Clerical friend: I think there is some truth in that. He was just full of joy. He reminded me in that respect of your great clerical crush... :-P

Me: Because joy has to underpin everything we go through. Denis Hurley, THAT clerical crush? Or Oscar Romero? Or our current pope who I am totally in love with? :-P

Clerical friend: Tutu.

Me: OMG. YES.

Clerical friend: I forget you have so many. :-D

There it was. Not the bit about clerical crushes, we all know that. No, the part where I finally articulated something I've felt for a long time about joy out loud outside of a very small circle (say, 2) that I don't believe that people who haven't suffered deeply are capable of joy.

And so today's meeting of the feast day of San Juan de la Cruz, the mystic saint of the dark night of the soul, and Gaudete Sunday, that Advent Sunday of joyful expectation in the midst of a penitent season, felt like the perfect marriage to me.

It doesn't seem a likely pairing, does it? The dark night, the night of 'darkness and concealment', and the Sunday in Advent that gives us a glimpse of that day which is 'like the dawning of the morning on the mountain's golden heights'.

But that's just it, isn't it? There would be no dawning without the darkness from which it emerges, no joy without sorrow. We may be able to see that, but we may still feel the tension of apparent opposites. Reading San Juan's La Noche Oscura (preferably in the Spanish, but if not, there are plenty of wonderful English translations) helps us bridge it:


ni yo miraba cosa, 

sin otra luz ni guía 

sino la que en el corazón ardía. 

Aquésta me guïaba 

más cierta que la luz del mediodía.

And I saw nothing,
With no other light to guide me,
but the one that in my heart burned.
It guided me,
More surely than midday light.

When it is dark, when nothing lights us from without, we suddenly realise we are lit from within by a flame that that may blaze brightly or be banked, but is ever present. Then, it is the light burning deep within us, the one placed in us - our light - that must guide us, burning away the dross, the masks, the non-essential, leading us to do what we would would never imagine ourselves capable of in the comfort of daylight.

That inner light, not lit by us, but burning within us since our birth? Our joy. It is often the dark night of the soul that brings us to it.

San Juan de la Cruz, meet Gaudete Sunday.

Why is this? Because joy, unlike happiness (or at least the current understanding of happiness as pleasure), resides at depth. Think about how we express our sense of it: 'I am brimming with joy,' 'I am full of joy,' as if joy were something welling up from deep within us, from a spring we were not aware of until it overflowed into our consciousness and onto those around us. And so the foundation of joy must be sought in the depths, not the turbulent shallows, not the noisy sunlit topside, but in places of stillness, of light and shadow, in the place where we feel most deeply, the place that often only shows when life rips our outer persona from us through catastrophe, sorrow, the dark night of the soul.

Perhaps Gibran expresses it best:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

As we approach Christmas, we get a hint of that understanding of joy as something deeper in one of my favourite carols, The Seven Joys of Mary. We glide through it until we hit the dissonance of the penultimate verse:

The next great joy that Mary had, 

It was the joy of six.

To see her own son Jesus Christ 

Upon the crucifix.

Wait, WHAT? Excuse me, songwriting dude, but are you on the medieval equivalent of CRACK? 

Perhaps. But perhaps too, he had an understanding of joy that we have lost. Perhaps he understood that Our Lady remembered that she had been told that a sword would pierce her soul also, and that she had been pondering it in her heart ever since her son was in swaddling clothes. Perhaps he knew, too, that as she looked up at Him on the cross, the depth of her pain was equalled by the depth of her joy in having been His mother, having had that closest of relationships with Him, as Gibran reminds us:

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

If that last example was too theological, let's look at a secular one from a fortnight ago - Michael Clarke's eulogy for one of his closest friends, Phil Hughes:

He'd definitely be calling me a 'sook' now, that's for sure.

[snip]

I walked to the middle of the SCG on Thursday night and I felt those same blades of grass beneath my feet, where he and I and so many of his mates here today have built partnerships, taken chances and played out the dreams we had in our heads as boys.

The same stands where the crowds rose to their feet to cheer him on and that same fence he sent the ball to time and time again.

And it’s now forever the place where he fell.

I stood there at the wicket, I knelt down to touch the grass. I swear he was there with me, picking me up off my feet to check if I was OK. Telling me we just needed to dig in and get through to tea.

Telling me off for that loose shot I played. Chatting about what movie we might watch that night, and then passing on a useless fact about cows.

Only those closest to you, those who take the greatest joy in your presence and whose hearts will break into a million pieces when you go, know exactly when you'll be calling them a sook and that you pass on useless facts about cows. 

In the midst of his deepest sorrow, Michael Clarke remembered and spoke of his deepest joy.

Joy is that light in us anchored in authenticity, intimacy, connection - with ourselves, with G-d, with others.

In the end, joy is rooted in that deepest & truest of all things: love. 

Whilst joy is constant, its form is not: it can be the quiet contentment of a sleeping babe in arms; the fierce exultation in a friend's accomplishment; the gratefulness for the chance to sit with a friend in their darkness; the sense of rightness about our current path; being unexpectedly brought alive by beauty whilst gripped by the most ferocious depression.

Joy is not external trappings, though it can be expressed by them: candles, vestments, incense (which always takes me back to childhood summers at Anarkali bazaar),  jumping up and down, squees, song, fizzy happiness. The touchstone is this: are those external trappings a way to hide, a way to maintain external order over internal chaos, to keep a death grip on the sunny topside, desperately avoiding the descent to the depths you can feel coming by the increasingly strong tug on your ankles? Or are they in consonance, in harmony, in order, with who you are and what you are feeling and how you want to express it?

As you wear those beautiful trappings and gravely celebrate or loudly dance and proclaim your happiness about G-d and saviour, do you ignore those who reach out to you in pain because it provokes panic and anxiety, fear that their pain will drag you under?  Do you desperately hope that they will take the hint from your silence and never come to you again? Or, if you find yourself able, do you go up to them and say, 'I'm sorry I didn't say anything, I didn't know what to say,' - the reaction that will make me want to cup your face in my hands, look you in the eye, and say, 'I know. You can't even be with your own pain, how could I expect you to sit with me in mine?'

If you're avoiding sitting with pain, honest connection, even though you paint a beautiful picture, hug everyone around you, dance and sing, smile and laugh, tell everyone how happy the good news makes you, that's not joy.

If, no matter what you wear, how you celebrate, you come towards me when I express my pain, reaching for connection, if you have the courage to stand up and talk about the dark night of the soul you experienced as a curate in a sermon on Gaudete Sunday, that is joy.

Joy insists that we go where we would often rather not - to our deepest places, where our oldest, most essential pain, sorrow, and darkness reside. But amongst these sit our truest essence, our brightest light, our surest guide - because all these things: light and shadow, joy and sorrow, woundedness and healing are true. And all of them are born of love: lost, rejected, given, and received. Joy will always insist on our truth and, like the chrysalis forcing the butterfly to beat its wings against it, on our growth.

Joy doesn't promise us ease - those days that we can only take one breath at a time because the pain is so intense will still come. But it does promise us the light that will guide us step by step, more certain than the light of midday, until...

and from the darkness we have light,
which make the angels sing this night

And if you think the angels will sing one iota less joyously for your step into love and freedom than they did for the birth of the saviour, I suspect you have another think coming. I think San Juan might agree.

May you ever hear them sing as you follow your light through the night to join with your Beloved.

Gaudete.

Persephone, Ogboinba, Cybele, Oya: or, What Samhain can do for you, pt II

(If you missed Pt I, you'll want to start here.)

And fell for the longest time.

Persephone. Ogboinba. Cybele. Oya.

With the exception of Oya, who wasn't drawn, but jumped out of the deck, not a single one of those goddesses was mine. 

Persephone was where it began. I sat back, curious to see how she had been interpreted:

Persephone, the Maiden. Find ways to use your innocence as your strength.She is for innocence, and you had yours taken from you much earlier than it should have been, and I think she is here to point out that you need to explore your relationship with that. But there's something else here, something about how you've felt towards that self, maybe? I'm not sure, but I get this feeling that she's here to point to an anger, or even something darker, that you feel to the part of yourself that is vulnerable.

So easy. It would have been so easy to pull back from that, tell her she was wrong whilst acknowledging that 'Yes, I do need to tap into my innocence and vulnerability to be stronger as per Brene Brown, blah blah. Thank you for this, but I might be just a bit angry about it all, but really, I'm just fine.' *Good Mother Demeter airy handwave*

But to do that would have been to continue the lie, to deny the tidal wave of feeling emerging, to make the choice to continue my parents' work and remain disconnected from others. The time had come to make a different choice and speak the truth. But as it always is when I lose myself in writing, I'm never sure what that truth is till I read it back:

Fuck. YES... I am SO angry. Yes, you're right. I've hated Persephone since I was a child, because she pranced around picking flowers doing girly shit FEELING SAFE and HA! LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO HER, SEE, YOU STUPID NAIVE BITCH???? And then she tried to trick her way out OF WHAT SHE DESERVED BECAUSE SHE WAS TOO STUPID TO KEEP AN EYE OUT. As far as I was concerned, she was weak. I wanted NO part of her in Jean Shinoda Bolen's book, NONE. SHE was weak. *I* was not. Fucking Kore.

And that's how I've felt about my vulnerability: not just ANGRY at it, but repelled by it. At some level, part of me thinks that vulnerable child got exactly what she deserved because she wasn't looking. Like Persephone.

I typed out the full comment, not fully aware of what I was saying till I sat back and read it. Again. And again. 

Horrified. Shaken. But finally knowing the truth: 

I'd always blamed Persephone for her rape, because of her innocence, her freedom from care (which I equated with irresponsibility) and her lack of vigilance. And in the same way, I blamed the child I'd been, her vulnerability and lack of vigilance, for her parents' emotional abuse and her uncle's sexual abuse.

MY. MY PARENTS. MY UNCLE.

And yet, I'd rip the throat out of anyone who dared suggest that a child was in any way at fault for any abuse that befell them; that a woman was at fault for being raped. But somehow, it was ok to blame the child I was for not being stronger, more vigilant, for not acting.

I'm just starting to cope with that. As I continued in my comment, 'Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I knew it was bad, but.'

And in the moment I realised what I'd done, I finally understood the truth about innocence, which I'd conflated with naivete and wilful ignorance:

[W]hat strikes me about innocence is that it is a NATURAL state. Like Cybele's wildness. And in my rage at my NATURAL innocence, twisting it into a reason for being abused, I cut myself off from my NATURE as a whole. That's why I don't know who I am outside this identity of helper; what my gifts are; what my intuition says for ME; why I'm not in touch with my wild side, as it were - why it's only the responsible, CONTROLLED side that shows.There's so much in my nature I'm not even aware of, such primal, passionate, wild side - Cybele, who Persephone really needs to grow into, not her more controlled mother (hence no Demeter in this reading, because she is very much part of my persona, and this reading is about who I REALLY am underneath it all, the parts I don't know).

In my vulnerability, my innocence, is my wildness - and my way. As Clarissa Pinkola-Estes put it, 'The wild has a vast integrity to it.' And that is what I have cut myself off from - and why I find it so hard to move.

It is why I have never found this - which I desire more than anything - because to have that intimacy - emotionally, spiritually and sexually - one needs to be able to truly surrender, to truly let go - to become vulnerable and trust. To be wild, natural. And I can't. I'm not easily held, even - perhaps most especially - in the deepest pain and despair. 

But perhaps yesterday made a start. Time will tell. 

Persephone and Cybele, anchoring the reading because they were the overarching theme: innocence, nature, wild, integrity. 

As my friend pointed out, we ALL start from the Kore. For me to deny the Kore, yet accept Persephone, Queen of Hades and conveyor of the dead, is to deny my process, my wholeness, and in the end, myself.

That should have been enough, might have been, but Ogboinba appeared in the reading. I had a hunch she would, and she has always been the one I'd rather not see. The short version of her story is that though her powers grew and she became the most sought-after healer and prophetess, she could not have children, and travelled seven kingdoms to seek a way to become able to bear a child and become a mother.

The warning against discontent is too close to the bone, as is the desire for children - both of these make her an apparently easy read when she shows up for me. 

But as I fell into that literal reading, I felt an intense resistance. This wasn't right, and I knew it wasn't just avoidance. I sat with it for a while, asking Ogboinba what she wanted to say here. When the answer came, it shifted the ground under my feet, which will never be the same again:

I could see that [about the child], but I thought, 'Yeah, we know that about me. But this isn't quite about that.'

And then I realised - in this case, the child Ogboinba is looking for is ME. Me as a child who grew up in a happy family; me the undamaged child, the child who was allowed to BE a child. In essence, she is me, travelling over the world again and again, searching for that halcyon childhood I wanted so desperately, the only way I ever believed that I would find out who I was. Searching for the safety, the love, the time to become who I was, to have that group, those people who loved me unconditionally, in whom I could rest.

In my hands were all these gifts born in the crucible of my family - the ability to see, the ability to heal, the ability to know, the incredible strength, problem-solving, the empathy, the ability to use anger as a tool - my arms were overflowing with gifts.

But *I* wanted home. I was FURIOUS at having these gifts; furious that I would HAVE TO USE THEM, be a COMMODITY to the DIVINE, like I was a COMMODITY to my parents. I KNEW, when I asked you last night, that Ogboinba was going to show up; I knew it.

And when I read what you wrote about Ogboinba, this RAGE filled me; this UTTER FURY worthy of Oya. I thought, 'HOW DARE YOU. HOW DARE YOU DEMAND OF ME WHEN YOU GAVE ME *NOTHING*. NO PLACE TO REST, NO PLACE TO BE LOVED, NO SANCTUARY. HOW. FUCKING. DARE. YOU. I REFUSE. YOU *OWE* ME. WHY? WHY SHOULD I PUT MYSELF OUT FOR YOU?

"I WOULD HAVE GIVEN BACK EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE GIFTS TO BE LOVED. TO FIND MY BESHERT AND BE MARRIED AND RAISE CHILDREN AND HAVE A QUIET LIFE. EVERY SINGLE ONE. BUT YOU GIVE ME NOTHING AND HAVE THE NERVE TO DEMAND SO FUCKING MUCH. I HATE YOU. I DON'T WANT THIS AND I WILL NOT USE IT OF MY OWN ACCORD. YOU WANT ME TO USE IT, YOU'LL HAVE TO FUCKING PULL IT OUT OF ME."

THAT, for me, is the essence of Ogboinba here. I want what I can never, ever get back; what I can never ever be. I hold all this given me, all that I've made out of it, but I want to be able to be that laughing little girl; that girl who walked into adulthood certain of love. That girl who grew up playing with fashion, clubbing, experimenting, loving college and forming lifelong friendships even through the angst. And I haven't seen that I've gotten so much, but not in the way I wanted.

Finally, finally, years after I should have done, I did what I tell everyone else they should do. I told G-d the truth, no holds barred - everything that was in my heart, everything raw and wild, not pre-processed and analysed in a neat little 'Yes, I know I'm upset about this, and this is why, so it's ok' package. It wasn't okay. It still ISN'T ok. It may NEVER be ok.

But you know what? That's ok.

Because as all that was ripped out - my solar plexus STILL feels sore - and released, something else took its place.

Connection. I finally FELT G-d. And I finally felt ME.

I did one more long overdue thing: I wept. I wept for the little girl I was, the one I wanted to be, the woman I'd wanted to become, the woman I am. 

At long last, I was home.

Integrity and darkness

Today, I got a brilliant email question from a clerical friend, which arose from a note I sent him. As I wrote, I thought, 'Blog post!'

So here goes:

By the way, why does integrity involve seeing the dark side too?

*Tilts head, wondering where to begin*

If we think of integrity as wholeness, then by definition, it has to encompass everything. It doesn't mean integrity has to EXPRESS everything at all times, but one needs to know everything intimately and *integrate* it.

I'm going to use myself as an example because it's what I know best - I'm not saying I'm the only one like this or that I'm better, it's just that I live in my own skin and can best explain it that way.

Yesterday, when I asked you [that question], I asked you in full awareness of the fact that sometimes, my triggers with men and kids are hair triggers and might well be wrong. I can't remember if I made it explicit, but I hope I did - and I consider that tendency part of my darkness. Now, I don't ever NEED to express that hair trigger by jumping up and accusing someone - in fact, my being aware of it and allowing it to be what it is makes it less likely that I will.

On a deeper level, I know what my darkest fantasies are - and they're not covered by BDSM, LOL. My darkest fantasies involve what I would do to every member of the Taliban if I got my hands on them, or as I said to Nick once, "Do you KNOW what I would do to protect a child?" I also know that there are occasions, like last November, where a dark night of the soul is SO dark, I have considered suicide - and that coming back from that, recommitting to being here can be very difficult.

But it's only through KNOWING those fantasies and that dark emotional landscape intimately, knowing that THAT darkness is me as much as my light; acknowledging it and loving it enough to integrate it, rather than exile it, that I can actually create a solid foundation built on truth and love and what I AM - not a shaky foundation, a lie based on what I think I should be or others think I should be or some limited concept of a relationship with God.

It's only through that absolute truth/honesty that I can have a real relationship with God or anyone else.

I can't hide that darkness or eradicate it or imprison it: it will always leak out. I see it in myself and - to use our common landscape - I see it leaking everywhere in church and Church - because so many see a relationship with God as one where they have to be a 'Procrustean bed' good, rather than whole. Running from our darkness, repressing it, makes us rigid, unable to see clearly, unable to live. It makes us...one-dimensional; a shadow of what God dreamt and meant for us to be.

Good, if it doesn't emerge from the whole, is a self-serving lie: it is a quest for approval; it is a need to feel good about oneself; it is a way of denying one's darkness. Me, me, me. Only when it arises from the whole can it be goodness for goodness' sake, with no agenda or need attached.

If I embrace the dark, it becomes available to me with all its gifts: empathy and the ability to sit with anyone as they struggle through any darkness; compassion; it gives me depth, even as I can be wild, chaotic and fiery*; it gives me nuance and texture; it affords me myriad ways to deal with anything life brings my way; it allows me to trust God through the most difficult of times; it allows me to love wholly, deeply and in all sorts of ways (e.g., unresolved grief makes us numb/hardens us) through all sorts of things. It gives my relationships, my life, authenticity, depth, colour. It also means that I'm in control of HOW the darkness is expressed: as a thread in a more complex response, to strengthen/nuance it or in cases where necessary, on its own.

If I integrate everything, move towards wholeness, it makes me utterly trustworthy; a sanctuary; a clear, strong vessel for God to fill. There is nothing hidden, no lies to make me weak. I can hold any space and anything God chooses to pour through me.

Do I manage it? Maybe sometimes, if I'm lucky. But God created an alive, diverse universe moving towards dynamic equilibrium. It's about relationship and process. And knowing that we're all in process and all of life is holy ground...

...well, that's integrity too. Why?

Because it's what's real.

*Three adjectives Ari used for me last night. Integrity is also giving credit where credit is due. :-)

Heartless bitch

What writer's block: I can't even get the thank you notes out for my party. (They're coming guys, I swear. Meanwhile, b/c cards and pressies got separated, could people please confirm what they gave me?) I'm struggling through a serious post at the moment, and am struggling against inertia on writing shorter, lighter posts whilst the more serious ones sort themselves out.

I feel like living proof of the first part of Newton's first law of motion: an object at rest shall remain at rest. Boy, do I need an unbalanced force...

...and I got it in the form of an email that I might have missed, if I didn't check my spam email so carefully.

A few weeks ago, just after my real (not official) birthday, I applied to become a member at this site. I honestly didn't think I'd make it, since I had to offer up my blog as well as a short essay as proof of the quality mentioned.

I knew that if I hadn't made it by the next round of site updates, I hadn't made it. So I kept checking.

Tuesday morning, I pumped my fist as I saw an email from the website in my spam box. When I opened it, I proudly read:

* SAVE THIS MESSAGE FOR FUTURE REFERENCE*

Congratulations! You have just become an official member of Heartless Bitches International: The sauciest, ass-kickingest, fiercest Web site this side of the continental divide! We make NO apologies for who we are, and we take NO prisoners.

Some or all of your comments (from your application) have been added to the pages of Real Life Heartless Bitches

Check and see if you were singled out for "Exemplary Heartless Bitchitude"!

YESSSSSSSSSSSSS! If you want to read most of the application, it's here.

Bless one of my friends, when I told her, she said I was anything but a heartless bitch.

If the phrase is used in a particular way, perhaps. I don't take advantage of others; I'm not a prick tease; I don't say things to take pleasure in someone else's pain - people aren't commodities to me. If that had been what the site was about, I wouldn't have touched it with a barge pole.

But if you read some of the member statements, you'll see something else:

"I'm not going to change for anyone but myself. I refuse to live by anyone else's standards but MINE and MINE alone."

"Define yourself. If you let someone else do it for you, imagine your disappointment when you find out they're wrong."

"Trust your gut. Know what's important to you and don't let anybody fuck with it. And never, never, never give up your power."

"I guess what really makes me a Heartless Bitch, is my uncompromising feelings towards blind faith (which I guess includes blind patriotism), hatred (especially racism), objectifying men, women, animals; laziness especially when it comes to thinking, and superficiality-(not to be confused with politeness)."

And then there's mine, of course:

"Why be a sun god when you can be Hekate or Isis? Strength, creativity, compassion - join the dark side!"

So why call it "Heartless bitches"? How many times has a woman been called a 'bitch' for speaking her mind? For standing up for what she believes in? Called 'heartless' because she won't give way to someone else's requests or needs? She's seen as not nurturing enough, not caring enough, when all she is doing is drawing boundaries.

Fuck that. To quote Christina Aguilera:

So, what, am I not supposed to have an opinion?
Should I keep quiet just because I'm a woman?
Call me a 'bitch' 'cause I speak what's on my mind
Guess it's easier for you to swallow if I sat and smiled
...
This is for my girls all around the world (Around the world)
Who have come across a man that don't respect your worth
Thinkin' all women should be seen not heard
So what do we do girls? shout louder!
Lettin 'em know we're gonna stand our ground (Stand our ground)

So lift your hands high and wave 'em proud
Take a deep breath and say it loud
Never can, never will
Can't hold us down

So, what, am I not supposed to say what I'm saying -
Are you offended with the message I'm bringin'?
Call me whatever 'cause your words don't mean a thing
Guess you ain't even man enough to handle what I sing

I'm fascinated by how uncomfortable my pleasure in being a member of this group made some of my friends - both male and female. It was almost as if I'd betrayed them by not remaining the warm and fuzzy friend that they know and love.

But I'm not sure they understand that I can *be* that warm, fuzzy and caring friend if and *only* if I'm in touch with my dark side: the side that could put a gun to the temple of a Taliban warrior and pull the trigger without flinching; the side that can tear a strip off someone in anger; the part that wishes natural selection would eliminate various members of the human race; the part fascinated by the darker side of human nature. That dark side of me doesn't negate the light but *completes* it, balances it - gives it depth. Embracing the darkness gives the light texture, endowing it with a far more interesting quality - think of an eclipse.

Not acknowledging all aspects of ourselves means that nothing we do is real. It means that we are forever at the mercy of someone else's rules, someone else's approval and that we are constantly lying about who we are. I'm not saying we need to act on it - remember, most eclipses aren't total -but we need to be conversant with those sides of ourselves; otherwise we never act consciously, and those repressed/ignored sides control us rather than the other way round.

Now, I'm not saying EVERY strong opinion/dislike is indicative of problems with shadow. For example, I'm anti-death penalty for various reasons - but I *can listen to* the arguments FOR the death penalty without feeling threatened or unduly upset. I used to be pro death penalty and have thought about, understand the passion on and am happy to HEAR both sides. Yes, I have a strong opinion, but it's integrated. Ditto my very orthodox Catholic friend, John Ferris (who deserves an entry of his own), who disagrees with me very strongly on many things, but actually *listens* and remains unthreatened by my counterarguments. He has even said he learns a great deal from them. So do I - we have the BEST conversations; ones I think evangelicals would refer to as 'anointed'.

On the other hand, if one looks at those who follow rules most rigidly and are most threatened by challenge, we often find gaping holes in their integrity and an unsettling *amorality*. Taking a look at the Newman Society, they follow liturgical rules to the letter and parrot Catholic teaching on everything endlessly. You don't have to look too closely to see the breathtaking callousness/nastiness with which they treat other people, priests and laity alike, until they need to use them to achieve their own ends. Look at the 'love and light and no darkness'/'we don't believe in status' evangelicals, and you'll find plenty of anger, competitiveness and jockeying for position. Religious people may attack secular society for being selfish, but I've never seen narcissism on this scale outside religion. Denying it and driving it underground takes a natural regard for self, which might otherwise integrate itself into a healthy personality, hardens it, and turns it into narcissism.

Frankly, I'd rather be a heartless bitch. Moral rigidity is never a real position...as noted by others, it is an exoskeleton created to contain internal chaos. But exoskeletons, hard as they seem, are brittle (and crunch nicely underfoot, says the HB in me). They will never have the strength and flexibility of an endoskeleton.

True strength and support always starts from within.

And all that leaves aside the gifts of the dark side: depth, real power, authenticity, soul, a touch of wildness and mystery, the ability to laugh at yourself and stand up for others. We all need to go there and cheer eachother on as we do.

*Grins ruefully at self* This morning, I realised I could have put this all so much more simply: we're like orange juice cartons. The concentrate - with its richness and flavour - is at the bottom...very often, we can be a little thin, without so much flavour, at the top.

To have full richness and flavour all the way through, we need to remember to shake before opening.