catharine (disclaimer that I actually am deeply obsessed with this album and adore it and it was formational for me, and I listen to certain songs from it all the time. this song just made me think)
I was listening to “This is Your Life” on The Beautiful Letdown and thinking about how Switchfoot was singing about how we don’t belong here… “you don’t belong here.” (link)
thinking about how deep that message is within Christianity. that we were meant for more than this.
and also “are you who you want to be?”
…
having taken a little time away from the immersive religious experience I once had, it shook me a bit to hear it, because it’s such a stark contrast to thoughts like
“you belong here.”
“you’re doing the best you can, and it’s enough.”
“who you are is good.”
I started thinking about the importance of belonging and acceptance and feeling like things are ok, and knowing that things are ok. That we have what we need. Realizing that for me in my therapeutic journey, it isn’t “in my head” to have cognitive dissonance when I try to reconcile thoughts of acceptance with the religious ideas I once embraced.
I am reflecting on gratitude and how it’s impossible to feel gratitude when you feel like what you have isn’t even yours, and like you were meant for something different. There is a certain disdain, even, towards “the world” in a whole lot of Paul’s writings (I think), even disgust for it, that I think probably creates a conflict in the brain when people want to practice gratitude.
I’m thinking about loop de loops I’ve made for years on end, trying to resolve cognitive dissonance and calling it a crisis of faith, or “doubting,” or… some other thing, that really does not address the fact that these ideas are in contradiction to other ideas that I know promote healthy attitudes towards oneself, and others, and the earth, even.
where does God end, and man begin? that’s not something I want to even begin to touch. it’s a question
I just thought I’d note that dissonance as I listened, because… it is so dissonant, to simultaneously think that one is and is not good enough, and simultaneously think we belong, and we don’t belong.
And as I think about my own experiences of belonging and not belonging (with a lot of my life and time having been spent feeling the second)… and the fact that most of us have a gaping wound of needing to belong, and how that is not met when interactions are compulsory or forced or formal
how we all want to be chosen
how we want to choose others
a pulling together rather than a ripping apart
it just made me think.
and I guess, at the end of the day, I like the thought “you belong here” best.
that the earth and humans evolved together and that we are meant to exist in symbiosis
–
how in the world are we supposed to accept others, if we cannot accept ourselves?
how in the world are we supposed to love others, if we cannot love ourselves?
it’s dissonant
it’s a setup, quite literally a plan to fail.
because whatever we hate in ourselves will be what we externalize in our treatment of others
so the solution is to not hate at all. which Jesus stood for. but the words around him… lead people to self flagellation that makes love impossible
