Paradox of Love

“…God will fill it (creation) with himself so that it will both remain an independent being, other than God, and also be flooded with God’s own life. The is part of the paradox of love, in which love freely given creates a context for love to be freely returned, and so on in a cycle where complete freedom and complete union do not cancel each other out but rather celebrate each other and make one another whole.” N.T. Wright

“Love is union with somebody, or something, outside oneself, under the condition of retaining the separateness and integrity of one’s own self. Erich Fromm

I have been intrigued by the social psychology and psychoanalysis of Erich Fromm. It really makes sense to me. He even has an accepting stance towards spirituality, in a universalist way, but none the less makes room for the validity of spiritual expression. As I have read his book “The Art of Loving” I feel congruence with the teachings of Jesus. I try, though, to not “Christianize” what he says because that was never Fromm’s intent. However I can see the truth of Jesus in what he writes…call it general revelation if you so desire. Then I have been reading “Surprised by Hope” by NT Wright and found the above quote that captures I think the essence of what I felt when I read Fromm.

It is simply fascinating to me how much of God is infused in our world, in the fabric of who we are. How many people are seeing glimpses of Him in their own thoughts and beliefs and yet are so turned off by Christianity. We have got to do a better job of engaging people on the ideas and beliefs at the core of who they are and genuinely being loving (caring, responding, respecting and knowing). I don’t know how many times in the last several weeks I have shared with others Fromm’s core concepts of love and each time it provokes an amazing conversation. And the more I ponder it the more congruent it is with my beliefs about Christs’ love and the kind of love he has called us to. At times when I was reading Fromm’s book I felt guilty that so much of it resonated with on a very deep level. For so many years I was fed a belief that it is only from the Bible and good Christian authors that we can learn anything. Now don’t get me wrong, the Bible is essential to understanding God, it is His story, our story and everything I believe is measured against what is taught in it but as I have matured in my faith, my journey I am not threatened by and value all the glimpses of Jesus no matter where I see them.

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Just What We Needed

Tom had planned a 5 day kayak trip which would have resulted in ending at Astoria on Sunday where we would have picked him up…what really happened was weather and currents that didn’t co-operate and an early pick up of Tom at Scappoose Bay on Thursday night and a HUGE BLESSING for our family.  I bailed on 2 events I had earlier in the weekend, which is unusual for me and we ended up having an extended weekend at the coast. The weather was absolutely beautiful. We spent 2 days at the Jetty, driving on the beach, kids’ body surfing, climbing rocks, laughing and just having a great time. I cannot think of one argument between the kids…miracle, they really enjoyed each others company. Attitudes all around were fabulous. Every morning we woke up to a field with horses grazing and bright blue skies outside our window. I got to take two saunas…the wet steam kind, none of those silly dry sauna’s :) Ryan got to skate at the skate park…he resolved his skateboard issue! I got to take the family to Coffenbury Lake in Fort Stevens State Park where I spent many years of my childhood at. Ryan got to watch his Papa clean a sturgeon

Papa, Ryan, sturgeon and Mummi

Ryan, sturgeon head, and spinal cord

Ryan, sturgeon head, and spinal cord

My dad has this sick habit of hanging all the fish heads of the season on a tree. Notice the various stages of decay. I told you I come from an odd family!

Mackenzie has the rest of the photos on her camera…she took the normal ones. It is a good thing she got a camera because Tom and I suck at taking pictures.

It is amazing how just when we think we know what we need to feel better about our life God throws a monkey wrench in it and gives us what we really need…I am so grateful that Tom’s trip got “ruined” because we definitely got what we needed, all 5 of us! of and even the dog:

Samantha grinning

Samantha grinning

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Life Lessons

Time after time we have told our son to put his skateboard in the garage or at least in the backyard. He argues and argues that no one will take it. What should we do insist he put it away or let him make his own choice? At age 7 we insist at age 10 we let him make his own choice, especially since he bought it.  At some point they need to start feeling the pain or blessings of their choices. So far he has had pretty moderate boards designed more for kids than adults so his boards have not gotten stolen. Just a few days ago he upgraded not price wise but size why to a bigger board. And low and behold the board has disappeared. No back up boards either laying around either. On one hand I want to loan him the money and let him get a new board but my wiser side says no. First he has to learn to care for his stuff and on the second he can’t get in the habit of using “credit.” It just sucks that it all happened the night before Tom took off on his 5 day trip and we are going to Astoria where there is a cool skate park. Life lessons are hard to learn but it’s better to get a head start on learning them…the cost is much greater after 18.

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I am being translated

I have found my blog translated into 4 languages now, Dutch, German, Japanese, and Spanish and it is always the same post I am perplexed as to the draw and how they are finding it. And it is my top viewed post since I began blogging. Hmmm….

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Love, relationships…

There has been a theme in my life over the past several weeks…love and relationships. As a therapist most of my clients are women and a common thread is relationships, broken ones, dysfunctional ones, lost ones, the search for one…you get the picture. Then I facilitated a relationship group at Evergreen and now we, at Evergreen, are working through 1Corinthians 6 and 7…sex, marriage, singleness! I also have read two books on love “Communion” by bell hooks and “The Art of Loving” by Erich Fromm…both excellent and I highly recommend. Fromm wrote this book in the mid 50’s and hooks in the early 2000’s…the gender language is quite different but the core message is the same. I prefer hooks language, go figure, but I liked Fromm’s inclusion of God, albeit not an exclusive Christian God, but the spiritual component added the transcendence that hooks lacked. The combination of circumstances, books, groups and the current discussion series at Evergreen has lead me to be thinking a lot about love. So far these are my thoughts.

None of us can escape the fact that we all long for union. We are created to be in relationship, we look for relationship and belonging, however, our culture has so skewed what love really is that what ends up happening is we search for an object to love rather than a state of being. We, as Fromm says, seek to be lovable rather than to be loving. Fromm defines love as “caring, responsibility, respect and knowledge” they are interlinked concepts that are inseparable. A brief examination of the definitions he implores for each term is necessary to grasp the impact of his definition.

Caring: “Love is the active concern for the life and the growth of that which we love.”
Responsibility: I really like how he defines this one because I think we get stuck in feeling responsible for others but that is not what he means. He defines responsibility as “my response to the needs, expressed or unexpressed, of another human being.” How we respond to one another is the essence of responsibility.
Respect: “the ability to see a person as one is, to be aware of his unique individuality…the absence of exploitation…to grow and unfold for his own sake and in his own way and not for the purpose of serving me.”
Knowledge: This is a knowledge that “penetrates to the core” For example, it has the ability to see past the expression of anger to the fear, stress, and pain behind the anger. To see to the core of a person. Knowledge is an “experience of union” and “it’s depths cannot be fully mined.” Knowledge must begin in objectivity (fact finding) and leads to an experience of knowing and connection.

Caring without respect becomes enmeshment and dependence. Responsibility without knowledge becomes control. Respect without knowledge becomes platitudes and fluff. Knowledge without caring, responsibility, and respect becomes exploitive.

All these character qualities of love equal a mature universal love. The focus of our culture is erotic love and erotic love without mature love is “symbiotic attachment or an enlarged egoism.” Love that is caring, responsible, respectful and knowing can be extended to all humankind and from that we may develop erotic love with one other person however the union we need and crave needs to be fulfilled from a place of mature universal love not the exclusive erotic love that seems to be the usual path. That is not to say erotic love is bad, it is not, it is good and a gift however it is so easily skewed and hurtful if not grounded in mature love.

Fromm states, “mature love is a union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity.” Erotic love without mature love is prone to deception, intentional and unintentional. Erotic love is fueled by a need to become lovable and often we sacrifice our true selves on the altar of erotic love…we may achieve our goal of union with one other but we lose our integrity, we lose our self. Then when the intensity and passion of the erotic love wanes, as it does, we are left with a hollow love that we “fall out of.” True, mature love is not something we can “fall out” of. Mature love is a deep character trait that transcends feeling, it is a state of being.

What 1 Corinthians has been teaching me is that without a foundation of love through Jesus we cannot love others. My mantra to people who are seeking a love relationship is begin a love relationship with yourself and if you are a Christ follower He is at the core of who you are thus self-love includes knowing your identity in Christ. Self-love has gotten a bad wrap in Christian circles. I hear so much self-hate and self-loathing, I have participated in my share of it, and it is so damaging and gets us no where. The extreme, I know, that is trying to be avoided is narcissistic love that is selfish and other disrespecting. However I believe we must find a healthy balance. I love hooks emphasis in “Communion” of learning to love oneself because it calls out the masochistic tendencies that end up being a false humility and false modesty that leaves one feeling like a hypocrite, because deep down we truly want to feel proud and loving towards ourself. I absolutely love what CS Lewis says about true self-love and humilty in “Screwtape Letters” :

The Enemy (God) wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbor’s talents - or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognize all creatures (even himself) as glorious and excellent things. He wants to kill their animal self-love as soon as possible; but it is His long-term policy, I fear, to restore to them a new kind of self-love - a charity and gratitude for all selves, including their own; when they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours. For we must never forget what is the most repellent and inexplicable trait in our Enemy; He really loves the hairless bipeds He has created, and always gives back to them with His right hand what He taken away with the left.” C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters

This is the paradox of self-love for the Christ follower. We need to have the selfish, narcissistic love extracted, this is true, however He will give us a true self-love that is grounded in His character. It is the second half that I think we miss…at least I missed in my journey towards Christ for so many years. Living as a new creation is freedom, freedom to love from a place of caring for, responsibility to, respect for and knowledge of all of humankind and each individual in our circles. To value equality irregardless of our differences or similarities. I believe, we can only get these true and altruistic character traits in their fullest sense from the Creator of them.

I think Paul’s point in 1 Corinthians 7 is that the benefit of singleness is one’s status frees one up to seek the true Lover. When marriage is our goal it becomes our idol and it will not satisfy. When union with Jesus is our goal than marriage, when and if it occurs, will be in it’s right place and most likely will satisfy only that which it was created to satisfy, oneness with another human. Sadly I think the modern church has made marriage an idol and does a disservice to both marrieds and singles. How many singles I have heard in the church express a feeling of second class standing! Our status whatever that maybe is of secondary importance. In all honestly marrieds and singles who have not developed a mature love grounded in Jesus lose equally…loneliness is grounded in separation from God not from people. When our goal becomes another human we will always be left wanting. However when we make our goal loving and serving God that it frees us up to love from a place of security and honesty. In Corinth, and today for that matter, if you are already married and have not sought to correctly order your life this journey will be more difficult hence why it is better to remain single. Singles should not seek to be married because it makes someone other than God the goal which is idolatry.

The beauty of doing things the way God calls us to is a person wholeheartedly seeking to love and serve God, behaving in a loving way towards self and others will be attractive to and attracted by the same kind of person. What I mean by attraction is not the objectified or goal oriented attraction but the natural drawing towards that is not manipulative or deceptive. The trouble is many people think they are doing just that but on closer inspection they are not, how do I know…I have been one of those people. I am just now coming to a fuller understanding of what it means to be a loving person, so much of my energy has been on being a lovable person and trust me it is easy to deceive oneself into believing one truly is loving when in all actuality all one is doing is trying to be lovable.

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Loving Goodwill

Lately I have found some great books at Goodwill. I gave up on second handing for the most part. For a season I rarely found anything good and the prices were not much different than Freddies’ and Target’s sales. But then I began perusing their books and lo’ n behold I have found several gems for 3.99 or less. Today I picked up The Theory and Practice Group Psychotherapy and The Gift of Therapy by Irving Yalom…I began reading The Gift of Therapy and was reading it at stoplights, it is that good! I also got Feeling Good by Burns and Boundaries by Cloud and Townsend…oldie and although I use the concept of boundaries a lot I have never read the whole book, maybe more of an intuitive concept but for 3.99 it’s not a loss to buy the book and I might pick up a few more insights. I think over the past few months I have bought about 20 books from Goodwill. With shipping at most online bookstores at 3.99 I figure I am ahead of the game and I get my book instantly. I have heard I can find better deals at other thrift shops but what I like about Goodwill is that they organize their books so they are a little easier to find…I’ll pay a little more for the convenience. Now I just need to talk Tom into building me an awesomely beautiful bookcase!

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Boundaries and parenting

$51 in text overages = 511 individual overage textes in one month I might add = many hours of free babysitting…I have wrestled with giving our daughter unlimited texting and even with this painful lesson, for both us and her, I still think learning boundaries and self control is crucial. Teens are exposed so much “unlimited” everything. I am finding fewer and fewer parents, at least at our kids’ school, that are willing to say no…from everything to phones, computers, movies, and TV. In fact for us the first month of overage charges are worked off, the next will be paid off with cash and the third text blocked. I think the hardest thing for her will be drawing boundaries with her friends but so important to learn. Now our daughter is not a people pleaser for the most part but it still is hard to say no…at least for now she can blame the parentals. At some point though kids need to learn to set boundaries for themselves and own them. If they are not given opportunities at home the cost is so much graver in the college years…trust me I worked in a college counseling center for a year. So the easy way out for us would be to cave and give her unlimited texting however that would short change her in the long run…so down the narrow path we must travel :)

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Milestone

I have hit another milestone…

as of today all my kids are in the double digits. We just past the half way mark of parenting…8 more years of parenting or at least parenting minors. I have heard parenting duties don’t magically stop at 18 but hopefully there will be a significant shift in the weight of the responsibility. Plus our plan is to guide our kids towards independence while they are still in our home so that the transition to college is smooth or at least smoother. But for today my baby is 10!

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Adventures in Parenting a Teen

So…we are three and a half years into being parents of a teen…a teen young woman at that. So far so good. I have to say I am really proud of our blossoming young woman. I had decided that I didn’t want to be one of those parents with a string of no’s. Saying no invites rebellion…I know from personal experience ;) Tom has dragged his feet to indulge me in my strategy. It is hard to do things different than what we were raised with. He is a good guy that trusts me…what more can I ask!

Well…she has made a few decisions that have made me so proud. She broke-up with her boyfriend (DO NOT tattle on me that I am sharing this) because he was basically trying to control her and not respect her boundaries (again NO telling her that I am sharing this). The beautiful part is the thing that I have told her over and over is to ask herself “How do you feel about YOURSELF when you around X?” I never gave her a list of specific do’s and don’ts except for the whole sex thing but even then I acknowledged that ultimately it is her choice. So when she told me why she broke up with the beau, I was so impressed that…it worked. He made her feel like crap and she decided he wasn’t worth it. The beauty of it is as time has went on his true character has emerged…it isn’t pretty.

The reason I had her ask how she felt about herself when she is around x is because it will tell one of two things. Either she IS being treated like crap and feeling insecure or she is feeling insecure and questioning her self-worth because she is unsure of herself. In either scenario it is a tell tale sign that she is not ready to be in a relationship. A good and healthy relationship requires a solid sense of self. If she herself is too immature to handle a relationship it will show when she answers said question, if her boyfriend is the immature one it will show, too, most likely it is a combination of both…which is why as I support her and side with her I try not to demonize him too much but just enough ;)

I am both loving and anxious about this stage of parenting. I am constantly recalling the memories I have of my teen years. The one nice thing about about starting our family young is my memory of the teen years is still quite fresh. It is still hard to be on the other side of the coin.

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Techno dork

I am such a techno dork. I have had a cell phone for 4-5 years now and whenever I have been on hold for a operator I have given myself a crook in my neck holding the phone to my ear. Today’s epiphany - Speaker phone :) Dork, dork, dork…

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