Cardboard Jesus

A number of years ago, I attended a workshop on group therapy at the University of Chicago. The instructor had us do a meditation exercise during which we would walk into a forest and meet someone~~anyone of our choice~~with whom we would have a conversation. The person who walked into my forest that day was none other than the image of Jesus that I always saw on a picture in the Methodist Church I attended as a child. You know, the white, handsome, long haired fella in flowing white robes knocking on a door? Why him, I do not know, because ever since I was seventeen and my parents stopped compelling me to go to services every Sunday, I rarely darkened the door of a church unless it was to go hear my mother sing in the choir on Christmas Eve or Easter. I have not been a believer for some time. I hover between atheist on a bad day and agnostic on a good day.

This is no way means that I don’t believe in the principles of Christianity~~I do. Or that I don’t believe Jesus of Nazareth existed and was a spiritual leader. I do. But I believe that if there is a God he exists within each of us as the goodness of which we are capable, not as an old, bearded white guy who lives in the sky. Some people might refer to me as a Pantheist, but I don’t think that’s completely accurate. My so-called religion is a crazy quilt of whatever works for me.

So I don’t believe in miracles such as Jonah being swallowed by a whale, or Lot being turned into a pillar of salt, or Jesus being the result of a virgin birth or rising from the dead. I think those are meaningful allegories. I think miracles are, for example, when a friend you thought you’d lost forever sends you a letter after twenty years and you reconnect (this actually happened) or when the $700.00 mouth guard you thought you’d lost forever suddenly shows up in the pocket of a forgotten cardigan (this hasn’t actually happened, but I’m still hopeful). I think miracles are largely the result of people struggling with the demons within and coming out on the side of the angels. Or lucky breaks given a fresh coat of paint.

I call my spirit guide Cardboard Jesus, or C.J. (instead of J.C). This is not intended to be blasphemous. Let’s face it, Jesus was not a W.A.S.P., Jesus was a dark-skinned middle eastern Jew. But a cardboard poster of Jesus knocking on the heart’s door is who I was raised on and so he is who came strolling up to me, quite unprompted, and he continues to visit day after day.

I question him about anything and everything and most of the time he actually knows the answers. When he doesn’t, he still manages to comfort me and make sense out of what seems nonsensical. Or reassure me that it will make sense at some point or that I will be okay. Or that I won’t be okay, but I will manage until I am okay. Sometimes he just walks up out of a thick forest; sometimes. he surfs up if I’m meditating in the fabulous beachside home of my dreams. If it’s raining, he’ll carry an umbrella and if it’s blizzarding, he’ll come clomping up on an enormous pair of snowshoes.

One morning this past week he came in on one of those long airport walking ramps, carrying a great big suitcase, because he knew I’d just come back from a trip to Italy. I called him a showoff; he laughed and said that boys just wanna have fun. I told him what I was struggling with and asked him to help me. He reminded me that, as a child, I was frequently told that what I felt was not how I should feel and what I perceived was not correct~~in other words, I was taught not to trust my feelings or my reality, leaving me without a reliable emotional compass.

He gently pointed out to me that I tend to expect myself to be invulnerable as a means of self-protection and experience deep shame and fear of rejection when I am not. As a result, I beat myself up when I fall short of my own expectations and blame myself when others fail to empathize or help me when I struggle. And when I beat myself up, the result is anxiety. Anxiety borne out of despair that I will ever get the help I need.

I marvel at how well he knows me.

I asked him what I should do about this particular situation. He told me, somewhat akin to Glinda telling Dorothy that she already had the means to get her home to Kansas, that I already had the answer to that question. Frustrated, but knowing he was right, I haltingly expressed to him what I thought would be the right thing and he nodded his head in validation and agreement.

Many times, like babies, when we send out distress signals, people can’t read them. Babies are pretty straightforward: they cry and we know it means that either they need to eat, to have a diaper change, or they need to be soothed. And we rock and caress them until they stop. As adults, our needs are more varied and we have language to express them. But somewhere along the way, our verbal requests about our feelings and needs have not been met reliably or have been met with contempt and we learn to subvert them. They begin to come out in ways that are unhealthy and unhelpful. We become snarky, passive-aggressive, anxious, depressed, and sullen. We drink, eat, and smoke too much. When we behave badly, people just think we’re assholes or crazy instead of realizing that we might be sending out an S.O.S. And really, can you blame them? What we didn’t get as children, we probably aren’t going to get as adults. And sometimes we have someone to hold us until we stop crying, but many other times we cry alone.

C.J. helped me realize that I need to push through my fear of abandonment or ridicule and just flatly ask for the help I need or simply for what I need. “Ask and you shall receive,” you know? If it isn’t forthcoming, then I always have the power to talk to the God within me. People send prayers out everyday into the ether; they have faith those prayers will be heard by the God outside of them and at least considered if not answered in the way they’d prefer. As someone who does not subscribe to an outside God, but an inside God, I can still talk to him (or her, or them or it~~makes no difference) and that God is reliably there.

It is unavoidable that the people who raised us will leave an indelible imprint and that we will be  hard-pressed to avoid sometimes repeating bad patterns with others, whether they are similar to our original caretakers or not. Our expectation/fear is that they ARE. And we will act accordingly. If our caretakers were loving and supportive, we will assume that others will be as well and sometimes will be sorely disappointed but, more often than not, will find that others can rise to the occasion. However, if we were raised with caretakers who were neither loving nor supportive, we see danger all around us and proceed with fear and caution.

We need to learn to proceed AS IF others are loving and supportive and go from there. If they are, hooray, all will be well; if they are not, we can take a step back, talk to our inner God or a trusted other or both and decide how to proceed in order to best care for ourselves.

It’s actually much more simple than it is easy. But it is a difficult and winding path worth taking, because our inner Gods generally don’t lie or sugarcoat or evade. He/She/Them/It can be our guiding stars so we will not take the journey alone. I also don’t believe that we should blame others for our troubles even when it seems that they’ve been straight-up shitty; I believe we must look to ourselves first because that is all we have within our control. The best relationships in life contain a solid pact of mutual accountability and we have no say over whether someone else chooses to take accountability. We do have say over whether we choose to continue to pour emotional and physical resources into those people.

Today is Easter and I was so jet lagged this past week I forgot to buy Peeps, my one remaining holiday tradition. I like to poke a hole in the cellophane and let them get nice and stale before I eat them. They are also quite nice microwaved. I could swing by Target and see if they have any left. However, in a few minutes, I’ll close my eyes and summon C.J. to come and spend a bit of the holiday with me. It will be my own version of sunrise services. I don’t have a lot to talk about today, so perhaps he’ll bring us both a venti latte and and we’ll talk about philosophy. Maybe he’ll skateboard up and we’ll discuss the Cubs. Maybe my mind will drift off as it frequently does and he’ll take off early. Or just maybe I’ll be surprised and find there is something lurking in a corner of my subconscious that pokes its head out like a spring flower and once again, he’ll manage to blow my mind with his insight and wisdom.

But secretly I’m hoping he’ll be wearing a big old rabbit costume and bearing an Easter basket. 

With Peeps.