The hardest person to love….
Some people just get on your nerves right? They have the ability to press every button in just the right way to do maximum damage. It’s like they know the insides and out of how we tick and can pull just the right irritation out of us at exactly the wrong time. It’s like oil and water, or sand in your shorts, am I right?
Some people you just don’t like the way they operate, how they view the world, who they choose to love and hate, agree and disagree with. You can never seem to get in proper alignment. You want something more for them right? To see the world from your point of view….but the contradictions you can’t get past.
There’s a war waging…because the world runs on love…and hate. The truth is the entire universe is sacred. We like to split it into twos, thinking that all things are simply sacred and secular. But the truth is that all things are only sacred and desecrated. At the core all things and all people are sacred, holy, other…but when we see them not as they truly are they become desecrated things, fallen things.
The Christian tradition and its story of sin leads us to believe that the sin of the garden was one of disobedience. That humanity didn’t do what god said and that is sin. But it wasn’t humanity’s doing that was broken…it was their seeing. Sin is choosing not to see things as they are…for what they are. It’s choosing to see desecration where God has said there is sacredness. God saw a creation that was holy, sacred and like him in every way. Humanity saw a creation that needed one more thing, one more rung on the ladder to climb to make themselves sacred, holy, like God. It wasn’t the disobedience that was the problem…they were much sicker than that. God always comes to bring sight to those who have been blinded…who sit in the darkness.
Which brings it all back to that hardest person to love. Here’s what I’ve learned…that hardest person to love….it’s ourselves. It starts primarily with ourselves. Can you see yourself as the sacred holy beloved thing that you are. Or is there always one more rung on the ladder to climb. We learn to hate ourselves because of the frustration that the final rung is always right out of our grasp. But what if we discover that maybe the ladder has been leaning against the wrong wall the whole time. Or better yet what if the ladder isn’t an ascent after all up to him but a descent into ourselves, into learning to love ourselves as we are for who we are, no strings attached. Because at the heart of us, of every living thing is where we find Him. Maybe we don’t climb up to find him because he’s hidden himself in our hearts. And we are scared to journey down there because our hearts are the scariest place there is. It’s full of contradictions, fear, disgust, and love, and hope, and joy. But it’s sacred there…the ground there is holy because, with all its messiness, it’s darkness and light, it’s the place where the creator of the universe chooses to make his home. Like the story of Moses and the burning bush, there we find holy, sacred ground and we take off our shoes, not to keep everything clean, pristine and void of clutter, but because it’s a place so full of vulnerability, mercy, and grace…of true seeing things as they really are, for how sacred they are…that the only proper response is the vulnerability of flesh on flesh walking into where He stands. In short…there’s a burning bush at the heart of you…and it’s a place so sacred. Seeing it for the first time begins with loving the hardest person in this world for you to love…yourself. God does…I have to remind myself of what he sees when he looks there and remember that maybe I can too.
From The Whale's Belly 