The Sanctuary of Grown Up, Mature Faith // essay
On outgrowing empowerment trips and the Thank Godness of that.
Give me a quandary, whether from my life or another’s, and I’m on the ground staring at the pieces, hungry to find the patterns, to rearrange, to better the program. But something has changed over the years with how much I’m willing to mine and what I do with the information. Where I used to be zealous, pyrite-in-power, extracting everything on a misguided mission of alchemy, I’m now relaxed, less vigilant.
Beneath my fervor was a notion that underlies many youthful and new-age concepts of empowerment: if we analyze a situation enough, if we hack away at our wounds, limiting beliefs et. al. until we are clear and shining, then we can most likely guarantee a particular outcome. This is an important inquiry through which there is much to gain, but like the very limitations it seeks to transcend, it is a limitation itself. Often, our well-intentioned efforts, analyses, and over-the-top manifestation exercises are seeded on what is actually a profoundly inflated sense of hyper-responsibility/misunderstood-power, which really is just spiritual ego: we believe we have more influence over things than we really do.
I remember being in my twenties and being so lit up about the power of our subconscious, our words, and our focus-as-currency. How good it was to discover my spiritual creative ability! Back then, I was sure that anything negative that happened was a reflection of one’s inner reality. But then, in my early thirties, my son’s birth brought me to my knees, and my marriage did not work out no matter what I tried, and while all of it did reflect something inside, what it did NOT reflect was some major missing piece in me that somehow made these outcomes inevitable. What I mean is, yes, my son’s birth story reflected the challenges of my relationship with his father, yet still, many women have successful homebirths despite being in problematic relationships… so why not me?
I was not less powerful, less Woman because of my emergency C-section. For a long time, I felt very less-than because of it. I racked my brain to find every psychic energetic hole I could within myself to discover (and fix) how this reality could have come to be. (Note: I had a healthy, happy baby, and I do not take that for granted. Still, our birth story was deeply traumatizing.)
I took total responsibility for how my son’s birth unfolded, and fundamentally because I misunderstood something essential: Traumatic, shitty things happen to good people, and not because there is anything wrong with them. Not because they did anything to deserve it. Not because they had some major flaw and they called in a rough experience to heal some wound or wake something up. Sometimes, yes, but ultimately, also, far often: no.
Traumatic, shitty things happen to good people because they are people: creatures of this Earthly existence who are vulnerable to the mysterious powers that be, and who live in a world full of wild, harsh possibilities. As the saying goes, God (the Divine, etc.) may be all of me, but I am not all of God. What a profound hubris it is to believe we have such a big hand in the whole thing when we most certainly, most obviously, DO NOT.
We will be ravaged. We will be eaten alive. AND NOT BECAUSE WE HAVE FAILED. Not because we have done anything wrong. We will all, invariably, get slammed at some point by the great ocean of Life and thank GOD because faith untested is lucky and shiny and beautiful, but it’s usually not Faith with a capital F. Grown up, matured, humbled Faith. Faith that trusts Life even when Life turns it to rabbit stew. Faith that trusts Life even when it takes everything from it that it loves. (Maybe not immediately, but eventually.)
I know the rabbit stew Faith, not the Phoenix Faith. Or maybe I know a Phoenix-y Faith. To be sure, there are realms of Faith that only the tested can speak to; the rest of us are going off our privileged hints. We should remember that because it will help us stay humble and keep things in perspective.
Grown up, mature, quiet Faith does not need to figure everything out and does not take hyper-responsibility for things. It does not believe it holds ALL the keys to the Kingdom and can hack into all the synergistic networks to completely bend reality to its will. That mere thought exhausts Faith, who chortles at the youthful idea. Instead, this sort of Faith, this mature, wise elder tenured Faith, stands in itself, accepting when things are not going the idealized way, knowing when and how to move on. Knowing what to focus on, what to give attention to. What to amend and what to let go of. Knowing not to take everything so personally.
This sort of Faith stands strong in itself, speaking its truth, trusting the impact it has, letting its authenticity ripple out and affect reality without needing a specific outcome.
Faith knows that standing in oneself as oneself, well-boundaried and lovingly, is one of the most powerful (and loving) things a person can do. Practically, it can play out like this, as it did for me: once upon a time, when I believed I was über powerful, I would tailor my words and energy into their most lovable version as a power-trip to solicit a certain desired outcome in my most intimate relationships. But now? Bah humbug! Now I say what I need to say in the way I most truly mean it, and “good outcome” be damned: now the only “good outcome” is letting life show me what happens next in my relations and my life when I speak up as I am. Generally, I let Life do the rest.
Faith doesn’t walk around with those big golden keys clanking against its thighs anymore, and it is wholly liberated by their absence. Faith dropped the keys one day in the garden while it was crying by the hydrangeas and left them there for the birds to take to their nests to adorn with the shimmer. Faith fell asleep that day beside the hydrangeas, woke up with blue petals on her face and remembered that this Earth and soil, this sun and rain, her own bleeding heart is all she needs for Life to unfold as it must, as it will. Her weeping over all she had to do to make her life the best it could be became Faith, became birdsong. She stopped believing in magical thinking and mantras that day. She discovered her own breath as the mantra, rainwater her God.
Faith has such a beautiful, dynamic relationship with power. The stronger our Faith gets and the more pervasively it spreads throughout us, the more we relax into our divine helplessness. We are powerful AND we are utterly helpless! I can do my absolute best, give my full heart and mind to something, and yet, AND YET, it may absolutely not go the way I hope. We can say that Life has its own timeline, because it does; and we can say that Life may take us to X just as part of the route to getting to B. But still. It’s all frequently less than ideal in terms of timing and logistics, no matter how much we stick ourselves under the microscope and make energetic and behavioral adjustments.
No matter how much inner work I did to prepare for a smooth homebirth, it still ended in an emergency C-section. The pain and then, years later, the Faith, unhooked my hubris and softened a grip I didn’t know needed relaxing. We are utterly helpless as to how things will really go, or what’s really unfolding in the larger scope of things, and this beautiful, humble helplessness that knows it’s just dirt and stars—this salt of the earth heart is the fabric of a Faith that knows not why or how but simply that, and that is enough.
How beautiful that grown up Faith is powerful by way of its humility, its treasured helplessness which can be likened to a sexy submissive relationship with Life. Not for everyone, but I’m adding it in as a texture because it’s one glimmer I viscerally feel. Pulling back to general: Faith is powerful by way of its humility, and it is liberated and further empowered by its lack of a need to explain things away or attempt to have control. It is powerful in its surrender to the powers that Be. It is strong because it knows what it is and what it is not.
May we howl our prayers, speak wisely, focus intelligently, and stand strong with dignity, with powerful boundaries, in the center of the circle of our lives. May we do what we can because we can, because contributing to what happens in this Life is a privilege and one of the main thrusts of Life, of getting to be alive. May we discover and be fed by Faith by way of our holy smallness, and the sweet release of not everything being because of us. And may we remember that our best is all we ever can do.