Be Brave Friday
What We Hold: Grudges, Knowledge, and the Shape of a Soul
I almost titled this post, “Jesus, please shut the door behind you.”
It didn’t seem quite right.
No titles do, but I’m just going to forge forward here. I hope you stay with me.
I grew up a religious vagabond.
One of my dad’s family were atheists, later changed to agnostics. Turns out his mother’s family were Jewish, but she hid that if she ever knew at all. The back of a photo with the last name as the big clue.
Another dad was Catholic but believed that we were living, right now, in hell.
Another dad was sort of Catholic, too, I think. I didn’t know him well.
Anyway, my mother’s family were methodists, but my mom (a very competitive woman) was a great bowler and she caught her minister cheating one time.
He wouldn’t admit it when she called him out and made her look foolish.
She could never forgive him.
She could never trust a spiritual leader again, she said. She didn’t.
But that left me a bit lost. When I talked to my nana about it, she told me that religion helps people find lights in the dark.
When I was little, I wanted religion so badly. I wanted lights in the dark.
I grew up going to all sorts of churches with all sorts of random friends. I went to Bible school, to Bible camp, to Catholic dances and an occasional and an occasional synagogue. I was in a Presbyterian choir. I taught Sunday school for another denomination. One of my first jobs was as a part-time church secretary in Lewiston, Maine.
One time, still searching, I stopped two priests walking across my college campus and asked if I could come to their church.
Did you grow up in the faith? they asked.
I said no.
They said to go find a protestant church.
I was pretty devastated for a hot second.
But they were just not my lights in the dark.
When I was super little, the family down the street and up another one, the Albertsons would take me to church and Bible camp and Pioneer Girls with them pretty constantly from first through fourth grades.
They were worried about my soul, which was kind of them. They wanted to bring light into that little soul of mine.
Kathy’s mom made Swedish meatballs and worked in a library and did arts and crafts and took me to Pioneer Girls at the Calvary Baptist Church every Friday and this is where I would hope really hard that Jesus had come into my heart finally.
We’d sit around in a circle, close our eyes, and silently ask Jesus into our heart. We’d raise our hands if we wanted help.
I was really concerned about Jesus coming into my heart and forgetting to close the door behind him and all the blood rushing out of my heart and into my chest, which is probably what a heart attack was maybe.
Maybe?
I didn’t know.
But I would always silently ask, “Dear Jesus. If you are not in my heart already, could you please come in and also could you please shut the door behind you?”
I figured that it was a good idea to be polite to Jesus.
Then I’d ask Jesus to come into my mom’s heart, too, because everyone seemed to think she was headed straight for hell because she was divorced pretty unrepentantly.
“If someone doesn’t have bowling honor, how are they supposed to be my spiritual support system? Huh?” She steamed. “A man who cheats at bowling is not my pathway to Heaven.”
She never got over it.
Nobody listened to her.
Everyone said that my mom held a grudge.
Here’s the thing: When we are calm with who we are, transparent with who we are, we become unshakable.
We are the bowling balls heading right down the lane for the perfect strikes, knowing our destination.
We become stronger.
We become someone that isn’t swayed by people’s negativity or their praise.
We become someone who is.
My mom held that grudge. She was open about it. She knew exactly when and where and how the direction of her life hopped into another bowling lane where she kept bowling strikes.
Here’s the thing though: My mother (and my avó and my nana) didn’t just hold grudges. That’s a simple way of looking at it. I’ve said this before.
What they held? It was knowledge.
They held knowledge of wrongdoings for a long time. They had to remind themselves of the wrongs that had happened because nobody else would listen to their voices.
They held that knowledge close to their hearts because that was all they had power to do.
They held those grudges to keep themselves safe and sane.
And holding knowledge? That’s pretty brave.
But sometimes, we get so focused on the things that we don’t like (that minister cheating, let’s say, or worrying about all the blood rushing out of your heart when you’re asking for Jesus to come hang out there) that we forget the original goals: having fun at bowling, finding religion, finding faith.
This man who is the headmaster of the Shaolin Temple Europe talks about how when we are on a path and it rains and we don’t like rain, we stop walking sometimes. We focus on the rain and complain and complain and complain.
The rain gains all our attention and our path? We forget it.
It’s easy to forget our paths, right? It’s easy to get distracted from who we are and our knowledge and our experiences.
This man has a lot of beautiful thoughts and quotes, but here’s one of them: “The most powerful knowledge out there is the kind that lets you see for yourself what you are capable of.”
How beautiful is that?
How brave.
“The most powerful knowledge out there is the kind that lets you see for yourself what you are capable of.”
I hope you get to see what you’re capable of today and if you bowl? I hope you get all strikes.
QUICK NOTE
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COMFORTING
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