Intrinsic Value
Once I thought I understood that I had value simply because I’m me.
A roller coaster then ensued.
At the tops I can feel my value.
I see the beauty of the valleys and the peaks, the trees and the rivers;
all of what made me who I am. And how glorious it is. Me, but not without questions, insecurities, changing, growth. Because that is part of it all.
It is where I feel full
and hungry.
As the roller coaster descends to the depths
I see more closely this beauty. It’s achingly deep
with much I haven’t looked at closely before.
Here, the roller coaster moves slowly, and I can get off for a time.
This is where I feel the hunger.
There are intricacies in the flowers, colors, and shapes.
Some of them pleasing to me and some of them repellant.
I see the tiniest of details formed by the seemingly tiniest of efforts,
and flowers thaat have not yet bloomed.
I come to the banks of the river to see the profundity in it. Wildlife. Rocks, sand, movement, clarity, reflection.
I am told that in order to carry river water to the flowers, I must create a vessel.
The nearby tree with a giant canopy and deep green leaves sheds enough for me to make a bowl. I quietly sit and sew the leaves together. Touching each one, feeling them, and caressing them.
I know those leaves now.
They are the vessel I use to bring water to the flowers - the unopened ones
and the repellant ones,
because I want both to grow and blossom to see what they will be.
I get back on the roller coaster. As I travel to the next vantage point I see more valleys, mountains, trees, and rivers. I see too, that they are not all here because of me. They were there before I came and
were formed in love.
I didn’t have to put the beauty there.
I was born into it.
Or maybe, I was born from it. And therefore, I could never be without the beauty.
With each descent, I can feed the growing flowers and the rising trees. With water, with feeling, with attention.
And with each ascent, I have a greater appreciation for the majestic views;
for how all of it connects together;
that I know more of the petals, rocks, and grains of sand that make those vistas.
And so I see more. And I feel more about them. And I know them..
And I know
that their value is
intrinsic.
Tree
One day I passed a tree that was bouncing with laughter.
Belly, joyful, instinctual laughing.
I asked her why.
I wasn’t ready to hear the answer yet. She stayed with me and waited.
I tuned in and got over my disbelief that I was hearing a tree laugh. When I was truly open and curious, she said,
“I’m laughing because no one can judge me this or that and change me. If one thought I was too short it wouldn't make me shorter or taller. Or too bushy, I wouldn’t be sparse from it. What anyone else thinks about me doesn’t affect me in any way. I’m this tree, this shape, this placement - whether anyone thinks that or not.“
And her deep laughing continued.
Mine chimed in, bubbling up from an inherent sense of freedom and bliss over what she shared with me.
What a joyful privilege to be me.
Intrinsic Value Part 2
I am an intelligence. This life tells me I am more or less because of what I do or don’t do. It also tells me I am everything - when I am able to experience it. After healing comes. Once I am able to part with what I held on to prove that I am worthwhile.
I read of Jesus teaching the people. The Pharisees hated Him. When I read of the Pharisees, I read of the soul corrosion held in self-inflicting value and unhealed wounds. I have felt it. Why were they angry? Because He was taking away their roles. He was challenging their tightly grasped, self-placed worth with the truth.
This is what Jesus does.
It is not scary. It is not possessive. It is soul-bearing because as we come to Him, He shows us there is nothing we grasp to that creates our value. Nothing that secures our worth.
“Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.” In that rest I begin to see what is covering the beauty that I am. And it is never Him. In that rest, I start to let go of the things I am using to prove my worth. In that rest, I become naked, reversing the temptation of Eve to cover her nakedness, believing that I am enough without a covering. I am naked at birth, naked at every rebirth.
“I Am”, the Lord says.
I Am.
Labor
I’ve been weepy lately. Feeling ready to emerge, I went up into the mountain by our house. I cleared a spot for myself, ripping up yellow weeds in between juniper trees. I love those trees. Their helter-skelter branches, their lack of symmetry and seeming order. They live alone in the desert, gathering water with their roots from the earth. Their branches spread out as they grow if they are stable in their centers. If they aren’t, then that branch will grow to twist around its core to steady itself against high winds and heavy snow. They have been worshiped as healers and protectors by cultures other than my own. I feel safe in my grove of junipers, honored to be among them. Sitting on my daughter’s blanket that I had garnered from the trunk of the minivan, I leaned my back against a rock. Then, I prayed.
Previous to this, I was laboring in the Spirit. Feeling ethereally held in a process of emotions, traumas, beliefs, and physical experiences that were surfacing. It was for me to feel those things and to see them. To honor them and to allow them life. No longer held down by me, but now moving through me, birthing into the light. Without the structured comfort of a therapy office, I was simply opening mysefl to feelings unfelt. Letting the emotions do their job - to move me.
I also am birthed in the process. Coming out with new skin, slimy, and pink. New to the world in my baby state with fresh, untried understanding. And not untried. That is how I am there. So when I am reborn, am I an infant or a wise old woman? An infant in that I am clean. I feel purified and whole. Loved. The wise woman in that I have answers to deeply held questions and healing in places of gaping holes that experience provides. In all things are the opposite. All that is whole will have hunger and fullness; sin and repentance; healing and hurt; to abound and to suffer need. In rebirth I am new and I am ancient. I am fresh and I am tried. In my rebirth, I am made whole.
Where is the fear?
New things aren’t scary.
The projection of old traumas and beliefs onto new situations is scary. When anxieties come up,
they are reactions to the past.
Some obvious, some not.
And maybe the real principle is that I am reacting to things that I don’t have the truth of.
Where I don’t believe love is.
Where I am wired to believe a lie.
And so, there’s fear.
Steps
I forget what an adjustment it is to have a new baby. I think we all forget because while our brains are acclimating, our whole body is also healing, all while a newborn human is needing you to keep it alive.
No wonder we just remember snippets.
I have two friends who each had had their third child. One baby was two months old, the other one week old, but the same conversation was had with both moms. They each felt anxious about going out of the house with all three kids. And even anxious that they felt anxious about it. How were they to care for all three of them? They must have been feeling an anticipation to get out of the house, as well. Cooped up. I thought to myself at the time, “Of course you feel anxious! You should feel anxious!” Neither mom had been with their baby for very long and both women’s bodies were still recovering from pregnancy and childbirth! Feeling good and confident about being the mom of three children does not happen automatically. How interesting to expect so much and so quickly.
I get overwhelmed sometimes by how many things I want to learn about. There’s quantum healing therapy, writing books on womanhood and motherhood, I want to read the news, get my masters in social work, practice Equine Assisted Psychotherapy, finish painting my back porch, write and teach a course on emotional healing, own a horse, learn more in-depth music theory, perform piano with a symphony, speak Chinese and Arabic, finish my course in Astropsychology. To name a few. It’s just that I want those things now. I only have so many years to live! I want it all to look the way it looks in my mind now. I want to take my three children out of the house in a state of organized confidence now. I want to have knowledge from books in my head, without having to sit and read. I want to have a written manuscript for a book, without going through the discomfort of actually writing and editing. I want to feel close to God, without the process of giving my whole heart to Him. I want to know my own thoughts and feelings, without taking time to be with them.
Andy Rooney said that “all the happiness and growth occurs while you’re climbing [the mountain]”, rather than just being at the top of it. I suppose that is the only reason I am here on Earth: the journey. The whole point of the desired outcome is to have the journey. I am going to be made whole in my journey, not the perceived accomplishment of it.
What a thing to let go of.
“Disappointment occur[s] on the threshold of every human endeavor. It occurs when the boy who has been enchanted in the nursery by Stories from the Odyssey buckles down to really learning Greek. It occurs when lovers have got married and begin the real task of learning to live together. In every department of life it marks the transition from dreaming aspiration to laborious doing.”- C.S. Lewis
The illusion of the outcome is what gets me to move, but the growth from moving that way is what allows me to enjoy it. Everything is done in steps, and it is the steps that I am here to humbly do.