I’ve always been one of those people who, when I feel something, I feel it strongly. But without a safe place to express my emotions, this truth about me has been a well-kept secret, even from myself. There are old, familiar voices inside of me, telling me I’m too much, that my emotions are wrong, bad, harmful, that I should just keep it together. Those voices often make me oscillate between two extremes–to either bury the emotions or act on them rashly–both of which end in the killing of my desire. When I cut them off, they get buried deep, left without a voice. When I act on them, they explode and fizzle out, leaving me tired, frustrated, and often alone.
Several months ago, in the midst of a conversation with a man that I respect beyond measure, after expressing my frustration that I couldn’t seem to find a way to repay The Seattle School for all of the goodness it has given me, he spoke words to me that I am sure I will never forget. His words were prophetic. Not prophetic in the predicting the future kind of way, but in a way that called me to more. I heard them as a prophetic invitation to live in a way that is very different from what I have known:
Be the one who burns.
What if my calling, my vocation, could be to simply feel those things? What if, for now, my position in life is to receive goodness and to feel gratitude and love in return? What if I am being called to burn with those feelings, to be nearly overcome with how much I love this place and to not do a single thing about it?
As reading week rapidly approaches, more or less the midpoint of the semester, I am beginning to see that my calling as a student at The Seattle School is to be a student at The Seattle School. To take my learning here seriously, to engage my readings, papers, and class discussions, to allow myself to be challenged and to challenge others, to bring myself fully to my work. What I want to do this year, the “gift” I want to give The Seattle School, is to simply receive fully, with open hands and an open heart, the gifts it wants to give me, and then to burn with my deep gratitude and love.
Those words — be the one who burns– are still speaking to me now, several months later, giving me a new desire for my life. Those words are drowning out the voices that tell me to either smother or detonate the feelings that come up in me. My new, growing desire for myself is this: that when I see that woman crying on the bus, I would cry, too. That when I fall in “like” with a boy, I would allow myself to fall hard, to just like him even in the midst of the uncertainty of not knowing how he feels about me. That when I’m angry at my former therapist for leaving me, I would allow that anger to fill me up and bestow upon me its gift of justice. And when I recognize that some of that anger is covering up sadness, that I would push the anger aside for a time and allow Grief to bestow upon me its gift of healing. That when I am unwittingly swept off my feet by a beautiful song, I would allow myself to cry tears of joy at the absurdity of its goodness. That when I feel excitement, I would let myself giggle and do a happy dance.
Too often, we are people who either burn out or refuse to be lit on fire to begin with. But what if we could be people who smolder? What if we could let our emotions, from the simplest to the most profound, make their home in us and work their magic? What if we could be like the burning bush, allowing ourselves to be engulfed in the flames, trusting that we won’t burn up?
“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves. “
– Mary Oliver
