When the Past Holds Good and Bad 🖋 Alongside Letter #2

This one is long, so here's the tl;dr: I'm processing how to live with the tension when something you loved has a dark side, and I talk about how exploring your spiritual autobiography might help. You can learn more about how to do that practice yourself with this guide from my friends at the Pax Center.

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Hello and happy Sunday!

Thanks everyone who wrote back with encouragement after my last email. I loved hearing about the low-stakes creativity that’s been helping you through the pandemic — cooking, knitting, buying cherries for smoothies because you can, playing piano for the pleasure of it, mastering Chemex coffee, creating expansion decks for favorite card games, and taking horses for a walk in the foothills of the Ontario Rockies. There was something really nourishing about sitting at the end of a very full work week to read and reply to your emails… I suppose that is its own act of low-stakes creativity. And I have to say, I really needed it.

This is a long, extra vulnerable letter, so if that’s not your jam, I apologize. Still figuring out what this project wants to be. Relaunching this letter in a bi-weekly format, for me, is an act of creative and spiritual discipline. Creative, because I’m writing down words for the sake of sharing with a small circle. Spiritual, because it’s about learning to show up and speak from where I am now. 

Where I am now… has been a lot. Bear with me with a short preamble / disclaimer —

A couple weeks ago, some articles came out about toxic leadership at a Christian ministry where I worked for a little more than a decade. I’m not sharing the details here for a few reasons:
 

1) The story is still unfolding and I want to be respectful of that process

2) I'm all for holding Christian leaders accountable for abuse and reforming institutions. Lots of folks do good, important work in that field, but that’s not the focus of my writing (or what you signed up to read!)

3) Though time and distance have given me some perspective, the details are really tough to talk about right now.

So this is where I am. To write through anything else this week feels dishonest. If this feels like a lot for you, you have my blessing to delete this email and come back next time.

But if you’ve ever had to come to terms with the dark side of something you loved or found surprising hurt surfacing in the time and distance, this letter is especially for you. I’ve had one question in particular sticking in my mind these two weeks, and an examen exercise I’ve come back to that helps me get perspective. If a few of you find this helpful, it’ll be worth it.

The question: What do you do when something was incredibly good and beautiful in some ways, but dysfunctional or toxic in others? How do you hold that in tension?

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This job was one of the most formative experiences of my life. I started as a volunteer in my senior year of high school, joined the staff when I was in college, and worked there until the week before my wedding in 2014.

There was so much good. I worked with so many incredible, talented, wise, hilarious, kind, and creative people over the years. We celebrated milestone birthdays, danced at weddings, hosted baby showers. We supported each other through big moves, loss, and illness. I’ve had colleagues drop everything to help with car issues, and many of them volunteered their time and creativity to help make my wedding day beautiful. Some of these friendships feel like extended family. This is all true, and that isn’t canceled out by the dark side.

But still… there was the dark side. One person in particular who holds a lot of power, and who was known for bad moods and bullying. I was low enough in the hierarchy that I didn’t experience the worst firsthand, but I didn’t realize that I’d learned to make myself invisible, to do what I could to fly under the radar. I saw the toll it took on my coworkers over time, sensed the simmering fear and anxiety. And yes, I had a couple of incidents of my own, moments that I can now clearly see were not okay.

Thus, the tension. I don’t want this special, formative time in my life to be forever clouded by the ugliness, especially as the reckoning becomes more public. An infection has been brewing for far too long, and it won’t just go away. The wound must be named before it can be healed.

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I tried to write about this yesterday, but I couldn’t focus. I was just too tired and sad from the previous two weeks. But today is Pentecost Sunday in the Christian calendar, a day to celebrate the coming of the Spirit, the Counselor. The sun is going down at the end of our first truly warm day this year, and a brief burst of wind has turned into a gentle breeze.

In Scripture the Holy Spirit is described as a wind, a fire, the very presence of God in the absence of God-in-flesh. And this is a God known for resurrection, for healing, for mending broken things and highlighting beauty. I don’t mean this in a sappy, flippant, “Everything Happens for a Reason” way. But I do mean a tension, a both/and. You could have a past situation — a workplace, a family of origin, a friendship, a church — that was beautiful and lifegiving until it wasn’t. You could be in a place that is painful now, in obvious or sneaky ways, and will need time and distance to heal.

Which brings me to a practice. If you're still reading, I invite you to give this a try in the next couple weeks—

Write your spiritual autobiography.

I’ve done this for myself, and I’ve done it with folks in spiritual direction. Someone once asked me if it was like giving a testimony, but that doesn't feel quite right to me. (In my mind, a "testimony" is kind of like "this happened and this happened and then JESUS YAY.) This practice is taking a high level look at your life, the formative moments that have led to where you are now and will keep leading you into the future.

To start, set aside a decent amount of time to settle in, take a few deep breaths, and gently reflect on your life. Notice the formative moments, and ask “Where was God in this? How was I?” Don't rush it or judge it. Be super gentle with yourself. Simply observe, with compassion and love, and listen to any emotions that arise.

There are so many ways to approach it. You could look at each decade of your life and make a timeline. You could write your story, if writing helps. In her book Inner Compass, Margaret Silf suggests thinking of your life as a river flowing toward the ocean and considering the moments it felt free, constructed, sluggish, open, trickling. If you’re more of a visual person, perhaps drawing a map of the river will work for you. Or maybe you just need to pray through it and not write anything down at all. (You can find more ideas in this guide from my friends at the Pax Center.)

Maybe this exercise won’t makes sense of everything. But in my experience, taking this sort of long view helps me see what has shaped me. With perspective, we can see that sometimes good and bad can happen at the same time. It gives us freedom to name the wrongs and connect them to who we’ve become. It gives honor to the pain we’ve experienced, freeing us up to carefully tend it so something new can grow.

***

This is already a bit long, but here’s where I am. Yes, this is, in a very particular way, an awful situation. Yes, it needs reformation. Yes, this is a person who needs repentance and healing. Yes, I need to keep seeking my own healing.

AND

Yes, I grew there. Yes, I have friends and experiences and connections I wouldn’t have otherwise. Yes, this experience led me to reconsider unhealthy ideas so good ones could flourish. Yes, this nurtured a desire to help others listen to their lives, to write and listen and offer safety in a world that too often feels anything but safe.

Both are true. And the river flows on.

As I said… this is an idea I’m still processing, so I welcome your thoughts, questions, and stories about living in the tension of past events. And if you do the spiritual autobiography exercise, let me know how it goes! 

Peace to you, wherever you are.

~Jen