In Process: Blobbiness

I feel like there is a space in the top of my head of about 8 cm where the snot has receded a tad, and if I squash myself in up there I can think a bit clearly. Even though my head feels fat. So this is where I hope to live today. Squashed up into the top 8 cm of my head :)

I have been becoming a bit more aware of this paradox going on in myself which concerns safety. On the one hand, I feel safe in the world; I feel sure of my ability to go out into the world and make my own stamp on it. I feel comfortable that I can go out and get what I want (not in some kind of crazy egomaniac way, just in some kind of self-actualised way). On the other hand, I am becoming increasingly aware that at my core, I don't really feel safe in the world, or grounded, or something. Or there's a pocket of unsafety in me that doesn't. Maybe that's why it's a pocket that's remained uninspected for so long, because it's a paradoxical pocket. Me, feeling unsafe in the world? No! Can't be true! And yet none of us are all one thing; surely we all contain the seeds of our opposite within us, at least a moderate amount of the time?

But it is true, this pocket, and I am looking at it a bit this week, airing it, not sure yet of its shape or size or consistency or how deep its roots reach (it feels like something old from childhood I am dealing with here). Where once I would have felt so terribly uncomfortable at having this blobby unknown sitting there airing itself out in the sun, I don't feel at all uncomfortable about that anymore. In fact, I welcome it. How very strange. And cool!

I guess these days I feel more comfortable about being in process, about being able to just rest right where I am (well, except for when I'm sick, but more of that another time). I'm aware of not only being fearfully and wonderfully made, but being in the process of being fearfully and wonderfully made, bricks being knocked down and other ones put in place right in front of my eyes, my hands doing the work and yet unable to do the work unless God breathes, in some deep DNA kind of way. Co-workers.

Maybe God and I are co-workers in the way that you see a very young child "helping" their parent. You know that the child has very basic skills at best and te parent is really being indulgent, allowing them to learn, that they're not really "helping" but really creating more work. But that's okay. Part of the process of learning how to do the work themselves at some point in the future.

But that analogy doesn't really fit either, or at least not unless you extrapolated it out much larger, so that the area of the child "helping" their parent is a very broad area indeed containing a whole mass of wisdom and knowledge and such things, and the parent is extrapolated out just as much, into areas of those things we have no conception to contain yet, that if we did it would explode our heads. Maybe that would fit.

But there's no parental indulgence in the way God says to me, "Enter into your own work." It's not like it's not hard work, this knowing yourself. It takes guts to go there. Plenty of people never do. I don't understand how they don't because the ride is as correspondingly exhilarating and the benefits gleaned as priceless as the fear it takes to step out on the road. But all you need to do is step out and take one step. That's all that's ever required at one time. And then to wait until you know what the next step is. That's how the world is. Safety in the darkness.

Ahhh, dear, dear Land of Philosophia, I have missed being able to swim in you as much this week, and articulate about you out of the cotton wool. I love you, Sophia, you and your many facets. I'm glad to be back, even if it's rather squashy in an 8 cm space.

Happy Saturday, bloggers :) (And go Hawks).