Jedi Soul Care, Resentment and The Reasons We Drink

4/8/22

Sitting outside on a lawn chair, my toes are dug into the wet grass. I'm soaking in the early sun. Threads of the new chili peppers' album groove through my mind.

It's a crisp, Florida spring day in soundside suburbia. Here, this way, I can just let it happen: listening for birds, boats, breeze, Spirit. The light this time of year brightly demands we reckon with any winter cobwebs or sullen-sulking. I'm starting to cooperate. It's irresistible. I don't even need the distraction of music. I can be present to this. I breathe deeply. I'm open to a message.

So what is Spirit saying? Especially when I am asking, underneath it all, “What do I do now? What’s the next strategy? What hack do I need to figure out my path? What step do I take? This… or that? Or…?”

I keep getting the same thing:

Who you are is the gateway to what’s next. You don’t need a thing. You are the thing. Who and how you are is the key to what’s next.

There’s no hack. Nothing productivity mindset will produce anyway. This is about cultivating discernment. This is about being a channel. A gate.

Why is it so frustrating to get such pleasant guidance? Would I rather it be hard so I can get some kind of reward or approval? Would I rather have clear marching orders? Something weird or edgy? Well… yes. I'm trained to respond to clarity and I love edgy.

This is deeper. And in the training of Spirit there is a hefty module of Soul Care. This Jedi needs to cultivate a garden within. (I'm also cultivating a real appreciation for whiskey, Netflix and snacks. But that comes naturally.)

Soul Care. I do know from experience, as this is a recurring theme, that if we weren’t practicing soul care yesterday we can do it today.

It’s just too easy-sounding for many of us to take seriously.

What’s next in our lives isn’t about hacking the way forward by discovering something outside ourselves. Who and how we are will determine our ability to step into new territory.

We are being asked to pay attention with love and patience to real things in proximity, not information machines. Grass. Sky. Breath. Belly. Toes. Face. Smile. Anger. Fear. We are being challenged to make room for ourselves again right here in the world around us. What would happen if we attended to our souls, bodies and surroundings like we were tending a fire that needs to stay kindled?

There is a wonderful measure we have been given for how well we are doing with this and whether we need a shift. It’s a powerful check-in:

What is your resentment level? I'll give you a minute.

Resentment is actually an escape from your needs and from paying attention

Resentment is actually an escape from your needs and from paying attention, with patience, to yourself and what you require. It is born of over-productivity, martyrdom, jealousy, hypervigilance and over-functioning. Resentment threatens to become a trainwreck of all these doused with a few bottles of cabernet sauvignon and then maybe ignited by a bitter flash of anger.

Yeah. We often drink (or whatever else) to escape returning to ourselves.

Resentment is an escape. It just doesn't feel like one.

Why do we want to escape? Well I don't know, but I suspect it's because we know that we are our own greatest responsibility. And that's a lot to process when we (especially women) are recovering from being told to ignore our needs by the dominant religious tradition. Let's just admit that The Holy Bible as we have it is written by men with certain privileges already. Far more challenging is that it has been interpreted by the same perspective for generations.

Resentment is an escape from the hard work of caring for our own precious, battered souls.

So how do we choose the inner path instead of the habits we have learned - those which do not specify soul care as our priority?

In this season maybe you, too, are called again to the loving arms of silence in the early morning, the riveting fresh breeze and grass in your toes. The chirping of birds. The smells of the earth. Toes-in-grass time is an act of resistance: we can get ahead of and shrink the rush, the demand and the pressure that can and will shape us. We can see ourselves differently and put a new foot forward.

Tending that inner garden is/was not on the agenda of the empire (both literal and spiritual) that Jesus resisted through his way. (Do you see the who and the how in that word? "The Way" was the earliest term for the followers of Jesus and what they did together.) The empire was then. And the empire is now.

While his followers were oppressed by the literal Roman Empire, the only tools they knew to fight it with were just empire tools - violence - control - expectation - scarcity- anxiety. But Jesus knew that who he was would reach the world. Not an empire strategy. He and Mary Magdalene seemed to know that what would turn hearts to “the good” wasn’t goal-setting, but the passion of weaving and stitching our insides to unconditional love.

To resist is to be a real warrior who sits down, closes her eyes and visits the garden. She decides what to take with her into the day. A wise one explores that inner territory and brings out skills that allow not only a different future for ourselves, but for all those around us.

Breathe. Resist. Love.

(Read more about Mary Magdalene and her relationship with Jesus Christ in "The Gospel of Mary")