I'll tell it to you straight: I don't deserve the love I
have been shown by my "beloved community."
Now, before you get your panties in a twist, and start
shaking your heads sadly, or shouting, "YES YOU DO!" at your computer
screens, or frantically typing out your replies of "You are a person of
worth and value, how many times do I need to tell you!?!"...please hear me
out. Seriously. You can argue with me in the comments section
when you're finished.
The thing is, I don't deserve this love. I have done absolutely nothing to earn
it. There is not a rational reason I can
point to and say, "yes, see here?
According to the Official Karma Record, I have exactly 476.25 Karma
Points, which made me eligible of 3 acts of little love or 1 act of Big Love,
so it DOES look like I was due for some love.
That must be the reason." The
fact that I have received -- and continue
to receive -- love from this community is literally beyond what I can
understand. I've tried. I keep trying. And my thoughts keep coming back to: I don't deserve it...and yet it's
there. It's just there.
Perhaps it's because I am a behavior psychologist and I like
having data: I LIKE being able to graph rates of behavior and make decisions
based on that data. I like being able to
predict what behaviors will happen. I am
good at looking at the antecedent (what happens before the behavior) and the
consequence (what happens after the behavior that either maintains or
extinguishes the behavior) and determining why the behavior is occurring, and
what you/I /we can do to make it continue or make it stop. My head understands behavior.
And my heart -- my heart understands gratitude, and she
understands how to Be With, and she understands listening, and witnessing, and
being present. I like to think that she
understands giving love, and she understands loving. She understands whole-hearted ways of being
in this world, and she understands being present with the good, and the bad,
and the ugly things together.
But I don't understand this love. I don't deserve it. I didn't earn it. There is nothing I could possibly do that
would make me worthy of love like this. I'm driving myself crazy, trying to
understand the how of the how, and the why of the why, and I can't seem to get to
either. Yet even as I struggle, the love
is there. It just is. As though it were the most common thing in
the world, it's there.
To put it bluntly, love like this scares the shit out of
me. It makes me want to run away. To disappear.
To be there in community one day, and then to never come back. I want to get out before I lose it, before it's
taken from me, before everyone realizes I'm not really worthy of it after
all. I don't want to go through the pain
of losing that love -- and that surely will happen, given that even its very
presence is not rational. I convince
myself every week that I will go to church, and suddenly, inexplicably, I will
be alone. I steel myself for this
possible reality every week -- and every week that it does not occur, I feel
tremendously blessed. Lately, I've tried
to convince myself that I will go, and I attempt to remain apart. I'll
just go quietly and leave, I think. I won't talk to people, I won't engage. I'll just sit quietly and leave.
But then people come to me and say things like, "I
didn't get a hug from you...my week would have been 'off' if I didn't get a hug
from you on Sunday."
And I tell them, "you're right," because they are,
and I am pulled into engaging, and loving, and letting myself be loved
again.
From my vantage point in the choir, I can look around and
see the faces...or at least the back of the heads...of many people I know and
love. I can watch the simple acts of
love and kindness that are done over, and over, and over again on Sunday
mornings: hugs. A hand on the shoulder. Questions asked. Conversations had. Smiles, and laughter, and tears, and everyone
just being together in all of the hustle and bustle of singing, or setting up,
or setting out snacks, or just standing or smiling or sitting together. I watch the faces of the children as they
leave for their classes, and I marvel at the way they wait for one another, or
grab a sibling's hand to help them through the gaggle of children leaving
together. I listen to the words of love
and belonging that are said every week, and this week, in the middle of all of
that, I had a startling revelation. A
revelation that may be controversial. A
revelation you may not want to hear me say, but I'm going to say it anyway. (Again, arguments are welcomed in the
comments section below).
Sitting in the middle of the alto section today, what I
realized was that I was right. That I
could stop the struggle of trying to figure it out: I'm not deserving of this love, this community, this gift of
friendship. In fact, none of us
are. As I looked around, I realized that
none of those incredibly beautiful people -- not a one -- was not deserving of love and community, and
yet, certainly, there were many people there today who have experienced
isolation, and pain, and harm at the hands of another. Looking at the beautiful people in front of
me, I realized that although none of them would ever deserve to be harmed or
hurt or lonely or unloved, it has surely happened to many of them. This, perhaps, is just the other side of that
coin: just as no one is deserving of pain and harm and isolation, none of us
are deserving of this love. In order to
be deserving of love, there must be some who are not -- or there must have been
a time when I or others were deserving of hurt and betrayal and pain. I don't know about you, but I cannot believe
that's true.
So what I was struck by today was the fact that we are here,
together, in this beloved community anyway, loving in spite of the fact that we
have felt unloved, and being loved in spite of the fact that we do not deserve
it.
This was, strangely, the most comforting thought that could
have come to me today: it is a fact that we are not, actually, deserving of
this love and community and support and care.
None of us -- not one of those many, many beautiful faces I looked at
today -- none of us -- are deserving
of the love I have been shown, or of the love I watched them show to one
another, or of the love that I feel for them.
And that is precisely why it's there.
The fact that we don't deserve
it...that we can't earn it...that is why they do it. Why we
do it. That is why we show up, and sit
together, and sing, and listen, and learn, and share, and why we ask about each
other's lives, and why we learn to be with one another. We don't deserve it. We didn't earn it. We do it because it's necessary. Because if any of us are going to hope to travel
through this life, we are going to need to have loved and been loved.
Earlier this week, I was able to articulate the terrible
paradox I seem to be living on the wrong side of: before you know deep
betrayal, or hurt, or violence, you never imagine that it could happen to
you. After you know deep betrayal, or
hurt, or violence, you can't seem to imagine life happening any other way. Yet, in spite of that, I can also be loved,
and be shown kindnesses that swallow me up in their warmth and holiness. It doesn't make sense. In fact, it's actually really confusing, and
no matter how hard I try, I will not be able to tease apart the how of that how
or the why of that why. It is
irrational, and undeserved, and scary as hell, and also beautiful, and
precious, and everything that I want for the world. It doesn't make sense and that is, exactly,
the thing that makes it right.
Even after that moment of clarity, and even after this
writing and thinking, I still feel very much like I want to run away. I still feel very much like the best possible
solution would be to pack my bags and move on before the fact that I don't
actually deserve this becomes widespread knowledge.
But I won't.
Yet. Instead, I'll try to sit
with the knowledge and consideration that I don't
deserve it. I can't. It will not make sense. And yet, it exists, and it is precious, and
it's the only way to get through this life, and it is mine for the moment if I
choose to step inside it.
There is no how of the how, or why of the why. It is irrational, and that fact, and that
fact alone, is precisely the thing that makes it right.
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