thinking. Feeding the Fire and thinking. This morning, and now, at the end of this day. Shame.
The Dog Cloth. Wendy's kids. What i have in common with them. How i think of Shame, what it Means to me, even though i am "old" now and they are so Young. How i was young.
The words came: "of course. You are a shameless heathen." as a child.
How shame is such a Tool of our culture. Christianity.
Being brought up in the Baptist born again culture. How the sermon on Sunday morning would be to "educate and instruct" but on Sunday evening, different. How the second to the last song from the hymnal would be T he Old Rugged Cross. "On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame...." This singing was so we could become sufficiently miserable for the final call to the altar, singing Just As I am, the preacher beseeching us to come forward and give ourselves to Jesus. How i was, so early in my life, very silently repusled by all of this. How False it all seemed. How ugly, really.
I was a shameless heathen. And since my mother had told me that the age of SEVEN is the age of accountability, and without having been told this yet...about accountability, i was startled to hear her tell me that the only unforgivable sin was to doubt the existence of God...and it was startling, because i already HAD. Doubted. so i found out too late and it was unforgivable...so.....
this morning i am thinking about how i felt then, hearing this, knowing my own EXPERIENCE....which was to Doubt. and i am thinking about it all, having a mother who i cannot remember one single image of Loving from....none of this i'm writing here is New, it's old stuff, but i cannot remember a single experience of my mother loving me, being happy about me, wanting anything for me other than to be saved from burning in hell
What chance does a kid have? To find their way of Just Going?, in this milieu? (sp) What chance?
But SOMEHOW, in some odd way, these things rolled off me. Similar to Tay. is it that because of experience, there is something that is really PRE Shame? That positions one to be almost immune to shame?...to notice it, but not be crushed by it? A kind of Pre Shame?....where even at such a very young age, you feel so isolated by where you find yourself living that it somehow doesn't really HURT?
I had the creek. The woods. This is where i Lived. This was my world. I would escape from that place where those people were, my mother, my father, the church people were. I would go down the back hill to the creek. When i Had to be UP there with them, i would go to those National Geographics in the attic and i would look to the point of mindlessness at the pictures of peoples that were "heathen". They were so Beauty FULL to me. Their dioramas. They made so much sense and i knew myself to be Of Them, somehow mistakendly finding myself where i was...
But down at the creek. This was my Home. And i was loved there, by that creek, the forest there.
so.
i think about how we are a culture of Shaming. For the most prominent example, how the Mayor of New York is being Shamed by police officers turning their backs to him. Shame is alive and Well in our culture, in our country. It is an excellent tool of Control. We are all so vulnerable to shame.
So...i will keep thinking about this. But in this Next Year, this New Year, maybe i will think about creating some new personal mythology that can be Anything At All. Just Anything At All. and i will also create one pinch pot.
