When I was young, around ten or eleven, I got into the habit of blessing those around me. The blessing consisted of making a cross on their forehead with my thumb and murmuring ‘bless you’ (what? I was raised in a large Irish Catholic family. These things happen.).
In retrospect, it comes across as slightly creepy. But at the time I was convinced I was going to grow up to be a priest or a monk. It’s a goal I have yet to achieve (I still might make it; the simple uncluttered life of a monk has a definite appeal to me).
Really, what I want is to be nominated for sainthood. I want to be the saint of self-forgiveness and letting go.
Many of the wounds we carry around are self-inflicted. It’s not because we won’t forgive ourselves – we just ignore the pain and choose instead to shove it deep inside where they become a fertile breeding ground for all of our insecurities.
There is a lot of things in life worth fighting to hold onto: friends, family, sense of self. But most of what we struggle to hold onto becomes a burden we carry with us everywhere. We worry about job security. We condone our jealousy. We harbor anger towards those that wrong us. We keep a death-grip on our guilt (earned and unearned).
The blessing I want to bestow is that of freedom. To give voice to a truth we already know but have difficulty accepting.
What profound words you have shared here. You are so right, and it takes sometimes a lifetime to learn how to let these things go. Thank you for your words and your blessings, tho I think I might have a hard time calling you “Father d’javale” ;)
xoxo,
nina
Thats really beautiful, Thank you for sharing it… Sometimes everyone really does need to hear that its ok to let it go… Hope all is well and good luck on sainthood, all you need is to do three miracles, and really how hard can that be? hehe. Hope all is well.
I would feel more than comfortable confessing all my sins to you
This made me think of some forms of Buddhism. I wonder if clinging to the past, clinging to guilt, and the refusal to forgive oneself is not an unhealthy form of egotism. There’s a grandiosity: “No one has ever done the terrible things I have done! My guilt is so special!”
To let go, I have found, I have to take myself a little less seriously, and this is very hard for me to do.