Everything itches me these days. If that seems like a weird way to start things off, go back and listen to this week’s episode with Sebene.
But.
Yeah.
EVERYTHING itches. January 6 was a giant itch. My boss who micromanages me is a gigantic itch. Worries about the future. Regrets concerning the past. The time with my daughter that I so wish I could make stand still so that it didn’t go so fast.
Sigh - so many itches that I want to scratch and make go away.
In the practice of meditation when you’re sitting still and quiet and you get a sudden “itch” the idea is to refrain from scratching it so that you can instead be with it - allow the itch to just be so that you can learn to co-exist with the things that bother you or make you feel uncomfortable.
Huh?
Let me explain it this way - I try to meditate every morning and every morning my beard will begin to itch about 3 minutes into a meditation time or an itch on my leg will make me wonder if a bug is crawling on me.
And the immediate desire is to do what? To scratch it, right? To make the bothersome feeling go away!
BUT.
Meditation is teaching me that the more I learn to sit with an itch and just let it be as opposed to trying to push it away and make it disappear, the more that practice will carry over into life so that I can learn to sit with the bigger itches I mentioned above.
January 6 was a horrible day. Like a gigantic itch I wanted to do nothing other than make it disappear, make it go away. As I mentioned to Sebene in the episode, though, my meditation practice allowed me to see that itch as something I could co-exist with long enough to ask myself …
What can this day teach me?
What is this day revealing about myself?
What is this day causing to rise up within me?
What is this day teaching me about what my place in the world will be?
What is this day teaching me about how I want to raise my daughter?
… That day was a horrible itch that I wish never happened, but it did and since it did and since there was nothing I could do to make it stop or make it go away, I began to peel back the layers of horror that I saw on my computer screen and began to peek beneath the immediate surface so that I could explore and wonder what the events that unfolded in front of my eyes could teach me about my life, this world, and my place in it.
What’s itching you these days, my friend? And what might it look like for you to stop trying to scratch the itch so that it goes away and (instead) try to sit with the itch so that you can study it, examine it, explore it, and allow yourself to wonder what it might be able to teach you about yourself and your place in the world?
✌️.
Glenn || PATREON || BUY ME A COFFEE
NEW AT THE HERETIC SHOP. 👕
NEW BLOG POST. 📖
We’re doing a series for Lent called, “God Never Said.” I might share some thoughts once a week or maybe every other week. Not sure yet, but the goal of the series is to push up against people’s comfort zones, bring them to the brink of wondering if maybe the things they have been taught to be certain about are actually filled with some uncertainty, and to challenge them to “give up” their certainty regarding certain ideas and doctrines and theologies for Lent and beyond.
First up - “God never said to build a new religion (Christianity) and get everyone to abandon theirs”
Here’s an excerpt …
“I'm starting to wonder what the point of all of that was because, really ...
Where does Jesus ask us to start churches?
Where does Jesus ask his disciples to pastor churches?
Where does Jesus tell anyone to start a new religion in his name?
Where does Jesus tell people to get everyone to convert to that new religion?
Where does Jesus tell people that Christianity is the way?
Where does Jesus say that he's the only way to heaven and all other ways are destined for hell?
... The short answer is that he doesn't. I mean, yeah - we can take things he said (i.e. "go and make disciples of all nations" or "where 2 or 3 are gathered in my name ..." or "I am the way, the truth, and the life ...") and try to use them to justify all of our evangelistic crusades and church plants and denominations and all of the exams and tests and hoops we make people jump through in order to land the role of a "pastor" and prove to some board of people that they really are "called" by God.
But.
Let's all take a nice trip back down to reality where the rest of the universe is and admit that Jesus never asked us to do any such things; rather, these are things that we created and systems that we put in place based upon what we thought was the best way to advance the ways of Christ.”
READ THE REST HERE.