Part 05 - Introspection Continues10/14/2008 7:21:23 AM Journal Entry Thinking back on the ---- situation. Even here, how people saw this was their construction of reality, but their construction of reality doesn’t define me. But neither does it define them. Their opinions don’t make them bad or evil or stupid. What applies to me also applies to others: if my constructs aren’t me, then neither are their constructs them. The more I understand this, the more accepting I will be. It’s all part of the interplay of life. The only thing that defines me is child of God. But—even that can be a construct. I guess it always has been—until now. But thinking that makes me anxious. If being a child of God isn’t a construct, certainly my understanding of what it means is. But now I’m left with no boundaries. How can I construct when I now know that my construct is simply that—a construct? What am I left with? So, I must hold my construct with tentativeness, with openness to being changed. This makes me anxious. If the most basic thing I am, my identity, is a construct—well, it isn’t. My understanding of it is—the identity is based on/grounded in Christ. That is unchangeable. Being so firmly grounded by the grace of God, I’m free to grow and experiment and not be threatened with the seeming lack of ‘truth’ or ultimate reality in constructs. Why does the concept of pastor seem so confining? Reality really is what we make it, but that doesn’t mean everything is okay, or that everything is relative. I think this is one of those paradoxes. Does seeing things this way mean I’m more able to hear God’s voice, and respond without constructs? Except I don’t think we can live without constructs. We always are making sense of our world somehow. This is a puzzle. The question is, what comes out of the ultimate reality of being a child of God and what comes out of my construct? And can I even know this? I don’t think so, and yet, I don’t know. Journal Entry My way of knowing is not who I am, so I can’t say I’m changing who I am or asking others to change who they are. What I’m looking at is how we construct reality—and that, as basic as it is, is still not the same as who we are. I am still me regardless of how I construct reality, so different constructs don’t determine whether we are ‘good’ enough as we are; they don’t determine our humanity. Maybe imagine our constructs of reality to be a pair of glasses we can’t remove except through a long and painful process—they’re how we see and understand the world but they’re not us. We filter everything through them, we respond to the world through them, but they aren’t us. We can take those glasses off and put on different ones, and we will still be ourselves. We may feel differently, act differently, respond differently, understand differently, but who we are—child of God—remains unchanged. We’re still creatures attempting to make sense out of the Creator’s world. I think of the many ways I have failed as a pastor, and yet I wonder if I can call it failure, for what has occurred have been, more than anything, learnings—mistakes that helped me to grow and understand differently. Is there a point mistakes/learnings become failures? I can’t do things differently if I’ve not yet learned what the differences are, that there is another way of seeing and understanding. That’s why forgiveness is so important—both for ourselves and one another. Most people really do believe they’re doing the right thing. It’s also why learning and growing are so important—so we do grow and don’t keep making the same mistakes forever, without insight. Journal Entry Constructs—people hang onto their glasses for dear life, but they’re really not being stubborn, rigid, etc. To take off the lens means a time of not seeing—disequilibrium—before another pair can be picked up and put on, and that’s a painful process. I’ve experienced gradations, a very slow learning/transition where I see clearly for awhile (I think), and then another time of disequilibrium. Not firmly planted yet in another way of seeing, and yet leaving the old construct gradually behind. Because I understand that how we experience things is through our constructs, that doesn’t make the experiences, thoughts and feelings of others less real because they don’t understand that. Someone who has a different construct experiences this world and knows and feels in real ways. I can’t blow off their feelings by discounting their construct. Our constructs are terribly real to us and we experience the world through them. Journal Entry This idea of ‘becoming.’ We don’t change who we are, we change how we see, so can we call it becoming? That usually refers to who I am. The term ‘evolving’ is more accurate, as long as we realize it’s not the essence of the person that changes. It feels that way, though, because changing how we see brings radical change to our lives, to how we interact with others and this world. Journal Entry Right now, I really do feel like an observer—of life, relationships and even myself. I don’t think it’s the typical withdrawal, objective thing. This seems different. Like I’m evaluating everything, sorting it out, sifting it through, trying to see how it all works together and how I work with it. Journal Entry I am me. Not part of the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) system in a sense that it owns or identifies me. I’m part of it in that it’s one of the systems in which I function, but I really do move between systems, connecting with them and the people in them, but they don’t overshadow me or determine my destiny. Journal Entry I’ve been depressed and avoiding myself. I’ve self-anger—looking at the old self critically, feeling terribly inferior. I wasn’t this all-together, perfect super person/pastor I thought I was. What I think about mostly are things I haven’t done, ways I’ve failed. That’s probably at the root of my anxiety when I think about being a pastor. I don’t think it’s a matter of can or can’t, did or didn’t. I think it’s a matter of God’s call upon my life. What puzzles me: if I’m not my standards, why do I care that I didn’t meet them? Still transitional, I guess. Journal Entry I’m also doing a lot of thinking re: overeating. These past few days I’ve hit the mint chocolate chip again and my weight is up. When I’m angry at myself, do I say it doesn’t matter anyway? Does the image of a heftier person seem more attractive—more stable, stronger? Or do I use the food to escape me or to love me? I don’t know. But never has the connection been so clear between depressive self-anger and eating.
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