Boundaries and Prayer

Thinking about several things at once, here! Talked about “boundaries” at the Al-Anon meeting on Wednesday, then, the next day, the issue arose in discussion around whether or not to go and check on a group member because she had not responded to two txt messages from the hostess regarding our weekly group meeting. It has also been raised in connection with another group member’s health issues and employment situation, which also involves his financial situation.

Boundaries.

When do we just let people make their own choices and take responsibility for the consequences of those choices - rather than running around after them, making sure they are “all right”?

This continues to be a vexed question for me!

The reading from One Day at a Time in Al-Anon on p.86, contains a sentence which makes sense to me:

Acceptance ... means accepting the fact of a situation and then deciding what we will do about it.

Again, at http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/info2/a/blbud01.htm,

... everyone has the right to make their own mistakes, and learn from them, without my interference or assistance! The key to serenity is acceptance. But ‘acceptance’ does not mean that I have to like it, or condone it or even ignore it. What it does mean is I am powerless to do anything about it, and I have to accept that. I MUST accept it!

Something to do with the idea that churches are sometimes the very worst places for being enabled to continue in one’s own misery and personal disempowerment, simply because there is an idea that in looking after each other we need to do stuff for the other, stuff that the other could reasonably be expected to do for themselves!

Step One stuff!

We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.

I have no control whatsoever over what this group member or what that group member or what the hostess does.

But we do have a power, derived from God, and that is the power to change our own lives.

[ ODAT , p. 86.]

Where does praying for others fit in to all of this?

I suppose that depends on what I understand by the term “prayer.”

We seem to have inherited a notion that prayer is about asking God to give us what we want rather than releasing ourselves to God to do with us that which is God’s will for us. What is God’s will for my friends or my self at this moment? Perhaps that is what intercessory prayer is about? As individuals and as a group, each finding out what is God’s will for us, and then seeking God’s strength to do it?

The issue of boundaries must also come into this, I think. Something about each of us seeking God’s will for our selves and for each other and for the group - not about seeking to impose my will on another or on the group in the name of God.

This whole thing about trying to control what is not mine to control, and relinquishing that control I think I have or want to have. I am not God. I cannot impose my thoughts and feelings and decisions on another or on a group - especially a group that purports to meet in the name of God and to seek God’s will for us as individuals and as a group.

I can share my strength, hope and experience, but others are not obliged to take it all on board as some sort of Gospel truth.

Take what you like, what you can use, what speaks to you, and leave the rest.

There is still a place for reasoning things out in discussion with others, also, again with that idea of taking what you like, what you can use, what speaks to you, and leaving the rest.

Progress not perfection. So much good learning has come from Al-Anon! So many important life-lessons, life-lessons which are also echoed in the words and stories of the Bible!

God, thank you for what you are teaching me today, what I have learned from you in the past, and the lessons you have in store for me in the future, as I walk with you on my life’s journey. I have not always been able to hear what you have wanted to say to me, and yet, in your great love, you have continued to present me with opportunities for learning about you, about my self, about others and the interdependence of all things in my life, you have persisted with me in spite of my self, perhaps even because of my self. Continue to draw me to your self in love so that my life will be shaped and moulded by - and put to good use for the sake of - your great love. Amen.

Coins, Mirrors and Images

The idea of finding images of my self reflected in others, and considering the possibility that some mirrors of my self are distorted, thus reflecting back to me distorted images of my self, has been very much a part of my thinking this week.

If I look to unhealthy and dysfunctional people for a reflection of my self or some part of my self, then the reflected image will be distorted.

Also wondering about my tendency to black-or-white thinking, “either/or” rather than “both - and” thinking. I do have that tendency, no matter my growing ability to look also for the grey areas in between.

Something else I have become aware of during this week is that I tend more to reflective writing than to stream-of-consciousness writing - stopping to think along the way about something I have written and to go from there rather than just putting down the first thing that comes into my head.

Mind you, I can see that there is a place for both these kinds of writing - not necessarily an either/or choice at all, but a both one and the other as appropriate!

Perhaps, too - I am both needy and clinging as well as strong and independent. Yes - again the idea of two sides of the same coin.

And, when I look at a coin, I can only really see one side of a coin at the one time. It is not actually possible to see both sides of a coin at one and the same time. Even to hold a coin up to a mirror to see the other side of the coin in front of me is not to see it accurately, but in a distorted kind of way. It is as if one side of the coin is occluded at any point in time, and so the view of that side of the coin from the side of the coin at which I am looking will always be obscured, or inaccurate in some way.

So - what does this mean, for me?

Possibly that, when I look at my self reflected back in strong independent women, my understanding of the part of me that is needy and clingy will be distorted and inaccurate, perhaps bigger or more important, or in some other way “more than” or “better than” or “worse than,” somehow, than what I see reflected back at me in those strong, independent women - it holds me back, somehow, interferes with, prevents me also being a strong and independent woman, my self.

And possibly, too, that when I look at my self reflected back in needy and clingy women, my understanding of the part of me that is strong and independent is likewise distorted, and gets in the way of my being the person I more fully am, with both a dependent and an independent aspect to my self.

The either/or reflection of my self in another is not the whole story - it is only one side of the coin. I am both the side of the coin I can see at this moment, and the side of the coin obscured to my view in this moment.

Perhaps it is possible to see both sides of the coin at the same time? Metaphorically at least? Or have I merely been shifting focus from one side of the coin to the other when I look for - or see - a reflection of some part of my self in another who may be either dependent or independent?

Like that image from Plato, I think it was, of a person sitting in a cave and seeing the movement of shadows on the back of the cave as people walk by between the sun and the entrance to the cave? Perhaps whatever image of my self I see in another is a distortion? A distorted reflection of some truth? It is not the truth itself, but always a reflection, always a distorted reflection, of some truth. [ See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave for more information on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. See also “The Cave: An Adaptation of Plato’s Allegory in Clay” at http://platosallegory.com/ for an animation of the story. ]

Now - if I have a history of being a prisoner in a cave, and a distorted understanding of reality, my view or understanding of the “real” world will be informed by that primary distorted understanding of reality, and I daresay elements of that primary distorted understanding of reality will never really be entirely replaced by any new understanding of reality derived from my experiences of and in the “real” world. Thus, freedom is relative, surely?

By the same token, I am free to make sense of my world for my self, incorporating all of the images and distortions and reflections into my self, taking what works for me and leaving the rest. Seeing what I can learn from all the images, distortions and reflections I have experienced, and re-forming them to make a whole for my self which is more real and appropriate for me!

Co-creating my life, hand-in-hand with God, as I understand God?

Mmmm ....

Push and Pull

Something going on inside me head at the moment, but just can’t quite pin it down. Something about church? Something about a depressed friend? Something about Al-Anon? Not quite sure.

Coming home from church, a few weeks ago, I was aware of being somewhat in awe of the new presbyter, a sort of fear, more negative than positive somehow. Wanting to keep my distance, and yet also drawn to her - maybe a bit like with Mum - scared of her and yet wanting/needing her.

Then, again - like when I brought Trudi home and for a long time I expected her to be just like Girlie in what she did and how she did it! But, they were two very different cats!

Maybe expecting the new presbyter to be just like the previous one in what she does and how she does it?

Maybe expecting the women I am drawn to to be just like Mum, somehow?

Caught between two extremes - the utter neediness and demandingness of the friend with depression and the utter confidence and serenity of women like the presbyter?

Maybe moving between the two extremes in my self, in my own life?

Coming into my own power?

I want to say a bit more about the friend who is depressed! She seems to know everybody’s business - and that does not feel healthy or safe, to me. I need to have my wits about me, to use my wisdom to keep my self safe from her. I also need to be able to respond from the heart to others, like the presbyter.

It seems like a push-pull sort of situation. Pulled towards women like the depressed friend, almost as if they represent my ongoing experience of my mother; and pushed away from women like the presbyter, almost as if I have no right to be in their presence or to have anything to do with them.

Something to do with my self - something to do with my self in relation to my mother, somehow. Like I am not really a free agent at all - I bring with me into any relationship my feelings and attitudes about others developed in that very early relationship with my mother - one of dependence and need and yet also of not being able to fully trust and relax with her.

The friend who is depressed is not unlike several of my ex-partners in many respects - damaged women, angry women, maybe even manipulative women.

How to break that enchantment? That magnet? How to become more my own person in relation to others, rather than a wounded child constantly meeting her mother in others? And desperately wanting to be able to really connect with women more like the presbyter? Maybe in a fantasy of my own making, somehow.

Something like the distinction between God’s whore and God’s mother, in my mind - maybe idolising both forms of women and not really able to relate to either?

Who am I? Lusting after women like my ex-partners who were not really healthy for me.

Why do I think I need to be like anyone else? Why do I think I am not good enough as I am? Why not just accept who I am and go from there? Like trying to find a r ôle model for my self as I strive to become more the woman I would like my self to be - although that is not quite right, either.

Wanting to be self-sufficient like the new presbyter, which actually means distancing my self, somehow, from others; and, yet, seeking abusive, manipulative women like my ex-partners for partners.

Maybe two sides of the same coin - like the depth of sadness and the heights of joy - propensity for one as a mirror of a propensity for the other?

And the imagery of a mirror perhaps not so far from how I understand it, with the object in a mirror as far away from the mirror and it is deep into the mirror, when the mirror is flat. Distortions arise with convex and concave mirrors, but even then, measurements can be made and distances calculated.

A metaphor for my life, perhaps.

Maybe I am not looking into a flat mirror, but, rather, into a convex or a concave mirror? Distorted images of womanhood? Maybe needing to be more aware of my self, more honest with my self, more diligent with my self, in order to continue moving towards the person I would like to see in the mirror?

Other women just do not interest me. As rôle models or as anything else I might wish to strive for - sort of wishy-washy - neither really basic nor really solid.

Sort of caught between two extremes. I don’t see much of my self in other women - but I do see my self in women like my ex-partners on the one hand and like the presbyter on the other - like that false distinction between body and mind, sexuality and spirituality. A struggle between the two, as if the two should somehow never meet. As if one would contaminate the other. A splitting in two of my essence, somehow?