I'm reading a book written by a very inspired woman. Her name is Rachel Remen, M.D. I have taken forever to read this book. This in itself surprises me. I cannot remember the last time it has taken me weeks to finish a book. Interestingly, I have read this book at an appropriate pace - I know this because I read a bit here and it's exactly what I need to hear. I read a bit there and it's exactly what I need in that moment. I feel as though God is handing me small moments of clarity.
Dr. Remen says, "The pattern of our most fundamental beliefs is reflected in the smallest of our behaviors. If this is so, breaking up the pattern at any one point may eventually free us from it. The way in which we go into the grocery store may tell us everything about the way in which we live our life.{sidenote: She's referencing Carl Jung here who would ask his patients where they had been just before they had come to him - whether they had just been running errands, like the grocery store. he would then ask them questions, seek clarification, and then he would lay out a person's whole way of living.} The way we tend the life force in a plant may be the way we tend our own life force. We are exquisitely coherent."
I have one plant. I share it with my sister; It's a plant we took home from our brother's funeral. It's the longest living plant I have ever owned. It is likely alive because there are two people tending to it. I reflect on what this means about my life force and the way I tend it. I check the plant - I put one finger in the soil up to the first knuckle. If the soil is dry it is given water. If it is damp at all, I move on with my day. There are stretches of days that I don't even acknowledge the plant sitting innocently in our front room. Do I barely register the needs of my own life force? Do I figuratively stick only one finger in so deep and if I seem alive I move on with my day?
I like going to the grocery store. I prefer to go in the morning before crowds of people get there and crowd the aisles and my space. I usually know exactly what I'm going in for. I know in my mind the layout of the store and subconsciously walk the quickest, easiest route to my destination. I go place A, place B, place C, collecting (usually) only what I went in for. Occasionally if I don't know where something is, I find the nearest semi-available grocery-store-worker and ask for help. I walk directly to the check out counter. I interact quietly with the personnel there. I pay for my groceries, I thank the person by name if they wear a name tag, and then I walk to my car (which I may or may not remember where I parked it.) Do I view my life largely in the same way? I have a vision of what I want. Usually I have a mostly-clear mental map of the most efficient way to get there. If necessary, I seek help from someone who knows better than I do. College. Mission. Medical school. Boom. Boom. Boom.
Interesting isn't it? What do you think about your own habits here?
What does this mean for us?
The author speaks later about this story with her father where he presents her with a pair of earrings she feels to ugly to possibly wear. In anger and embarrassment she throws them at him and asks what game he's playing at - she's clearly too ugly for them. And calmly he replies that he knows one day they will "suit her perfectly." She says, "Behind my father's gift lay the kind of double vision which is the mark of every healer. He could have told me not to cry, that someday I would be a lovely woman. But that would have belittled my pain and invalidated my experience, the truth of the moment. What he did was far more powerful. He acknowledged my pain and its appropriateness while backing my process. His belief that change would emerge, naturally, in the course of things made all the difference. Wholeness was just a matter of time."
I absolutely love this. "He acknowledged my pain and its appropriateness while backing my process. His belief that change would emerge, naturally, in the course of things made all the difference. Wholeness was just a matter of time." Remind you of Anyone? God has a plan in place for our wholeness but only he sees with clarity the winding road to get us there and he honors our process, because he knows intimately the changes that will emerge in us naturally. There are days the fact of my singlehood strikes me angrily across the face and I am stunned by the pain of it. This piece of writing by Dr. Remen was revelation, a reminder.
Wholeness is just a matter of time for each of us. In an earlier post, I talk about my feelings on how we are a work in progress. We will one day be all that we are meant to be but just not yet.
"Wholeness was just a matter of time."
So maybe you don't care for your plants the way you should or you overanalyze the habits you follow while in the grocery store. One day you will be all that you are meant to be. Until then, let's continue to be "exquisitely coherent" and drunk with our own possibilities.
*Find the book I've been reading here.
Dr. Remen says, "The pattern of our most fundamental beliefs is reflected in the smallest of our behaviors. If this is so, breaking up the pattern at any one point may eventually free us from it. The way in which we go into the grocery store may tell us everything about the way in which we live our life.{sidenote: She's referencing Carl Jung here who would ask his patients where they had been just before they had come to him - whether they had just been running errands, like the grocery store. he would then ask them questions, seek clarification, and then he would lay out a person's whole way of living.} The way we tend the life force in a plant may be the way we tend our own life force. We are exquisitely coherent."
I have one plant. I share it with my sister; It's a plant we took home from our brother's funeral. It's the longest living plant I have ever owned. It is likely alive because there are two people tending to it. I reflect on what this means about my life force and the way I tend it. I check the plant - I put one finger in the soil up to the first knuckle. If the soil is dry it is given water. If it is damp at all, I move on with my day. There are stretches of days that I don't even acknowledge the plant sitting innocently in our front room. Do I barely register the needs of my own life force? Do I figuratively stick only one finger in so deep and if I seem alive I move on with my day?
I like going to the grocery store. I prefer to go in the morning before crowds of people get there and crowd the aisles and my space. I usually know exactly what I'm going in for. I know in my mind the layout of the store and subconsciously walk the quickest, easiest route to my destination. I go place A, place B, place C, collecting (usually) only what I went in for. Occasionally if I don't know where something is, I find the nearest semi-available grocery-store-worker and ask for help. I walk directly to the check out counter. I interact quietly with the personnel there. I pay for my groceries, I thank the person by name if they wear a name tag, and then I walk to my car (which I may or may not remember where I parked it.) Do I view my life largely in the same way? I have a vision of what I want. Usually I have a mostly-clear mental map of the most efficient way to get there. If necessary, I seek help from someone who knows better than I do. College. Mission. Medical school. Boom. Boom. Boom.
Interesting isn't it? What do you think about your own habits here?
What does this mean for us?
The author speaks later about this story with her father where he presents her with a pair of earrings she feels to ugly to possibly wear. In anger and embarrassment she throws them at him and asks what game he's playing at - she's clearly too ugly for them. And calmly he replies that he knows one day they will "suit her perfectly." She says, "Behind my father's gift lay the kind of double vision which is the mark of every healer. He could have told me not to cry, that someday I would be a lovely woman. But that would have belittled my pain and invalidated my experience, the truth of the moment. What he did was far more powerful. He acknowledged my pain and its appropriateness while backing my process. His belief that change would emerge, naturally, in the course of things made all the difference. Wholeness was just a matter of time."
I absolutely love this. "He acknowledged my pain and its appropriateness while backing my process. His belief that change would emerge, naturally, in the course of things made all the difference. Wholeness was just a matter of time." Remind you of Anyone? God has a plan in place for our wholeness but only he sees with clarity the winding road to get us there and he honors our process, because he knows intimately the changes that will emerge in us naturally. There are days the fact of my singlehood strikes me angrily across the face and I am stunned by the pain of it. This piece of writing by Dr. Remen was revelation, a reminder.
Wholeness is just a matter of time for each of us. In an earlier post, I talk about my feelings on how we are a work in progress. We will one day be all that we are meant to be but just not yet.
"Wholeness was just a matter of time."
So maybe you don't care for your plants the way you should or you overanalyze the habits you follow while in the grocery store. One day you will be all that you are meant to be. Until then, let's continue to be "exquisitely coherent" and drunk with our own possibilities.
*Find the book I've been reading here.
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