Recently, I was scrolling through posts by one of my favourite faith-based writers, Sarah Bessey. She has a complicated relationship with religion and the practice of faith, as do I, and so often her words name something that I’ve been struggling to bring into focus for myself.
In one of her posts she quoted from Pádraig Ó Tuama’s book, In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World. He writes, “What I do know is that it can help to find the words to tell the truth of where you are now. If you can find the courage to name ‘here’—especially in the place you do not wish to be—it can help you be there.” Sarah then went on to invite her community members to post their “here” in the comments, just simply naming where they found themselves.
Reading her words, and Padraig O Tuama’s, opened a space for ease in me. There is gift in naming where I stand.
Naming it is not changing it, or fixing it. It’s simply stating what feels true to me in this moment. It is a kind of surrender to my experience. This is what is, for me, right here, right now.
This is one of the gifts I seek to offer through my practice as a spiritual director. In the confidentiality of one-on-one conversation, I endeavour to create a safe space where experience, feeling, or situation can be named, can be spoke of aloud with whatever words, tears or gestures honour it.
ln this space we don’t have to pretend to be “okay”. There is no need to offer qualifiers about “trusting God” or “having faith” or any of the cliches that try to squeeze pain into manageable capsule-sized bits. We sit with uncertainty and discomfort and discover the comfort of being not-alone.
Naming a thing, or a feeling, or a situation right-sizes it.
My experience, both personally and in being present with my directees, has been that when we are able to give words to what we’re experiencing, that which seems overwhelming becomes a bit smaller. It loses its magnitude. The cacophony of feelings becomes more of a tapestry where I can attend to just one colour at a time, or be soothed by a pattern that is emerging.
Naming a situation or an experience honours it.
This is what motivates my writing. My hope is that by wrestling to find the words for my experiences, others will find words they can borrow for theirs. Perhaps someone else will feel less alone in the vulnerability of being human and being affected by all that life brings us.
Pádraig Ó Tuama goes on to say, “Instead of resenting another’s words of gladness or pain, it may be possible to hear it as simply another location. They are there and I am here. At another point, we will be in different locations, and everybody will pass by many locations in their life. The pain is only deepens when the location is resented, or even worse, unnamed. Hello to here.”
The beauty of naming this “here” is that as we give the attention to it required in the naming, we begin to notice nuances and variations in it. What felt like deep weariness yesterday, today wants to be named as weariness with threads of gratitude. What I experienced as irritability an hour ago now reveals itself as both anger and sadness. Naming a flicker of joy opens my awareness perhaps to the gentle warmth of contentment.
Where is your “here” in this moment? As you begin to name it, do other names come up for recognition as well?
Wow this was a helpful read! Thank you!
Thank you for your affirmation, dear one.