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 Shame upon shame upon shame upon…
Did we ever truly feel that shaming someone is the answer? That the high folutin’ squish squash power of a good shaming session will cause anyone to dare to strip away all wrongs and find their right!? What ever kind of thinking, or not thinking, led us to believe that piling on shame would make one a believer in who they are once again? We were not born shame bound. We were not upon immediate inspection immediately expected to twist and turn towards an ideal of idiotic distortion. We were not measured and found not up to the mark. No. That happened later. Perhaps moments later. Shame upon shame upon shame upon… Two wrongs dont make a right. They take away our right. Our right to breathe. Our right to dream. Our right to roam free. Our right to walk side by side. Our right to our very place of existence on existing before its time to exit once more. No one life is better than another. No one being gets a gold plated, Jesus blessed, angel juiced, holy molly fuckin star from God! Despite what those religious bindings have told us, carelessly whispering our forever sins, marked by the DNA of our ancestors, who knows whether being sinners or saints, visions of goodliness or scoundrels of pariah. Shame upon shame upon shame upon… Original sin. Leave them to paradise. Of pleasure. Of nature. Of original naked nature. Rumi told of a field. Out beyond ideas of right or wrong doing. I’ll meet him there later. You coming to? Perhaps it’s paradise lost. Found. Shame upon shame upon shame upon… We get very good at hiding. Hiding and swallowing down. Swallowing down seeds of bitterness and regret. Seeds of truth momentarily caught in our throat. Caught between speaking our truth and being silenced by shame. Shame seems the easy option at the time. Easy to press delete and censor. Censor to oppress, repress and depress. Depress and destroy the vine of voice and the true of truth. Apples go bad. They rot inside. We get indigestion, no longer able to stomach the wrong inside. Shame upon shame upon shame upon… Whatever happened to forgiveness? Whatever happened to seeing through the eyes of learning? Whatever happened to kindness over cruelty? Whatever happened to truth over tyranny? Whatever happened to singing the songs of our bones, our blood, our belly, our body, our bold beingness borne from the bounty of life. Of love. Shame upon shame upon shame upon… Peel the layers back. Spit out the forbidden fruit. It won’t bite it has no teeth. For shame can only rob us when we keep it hidden, keep us hidden. Light is inside the dark. Dark is the ground for all light. Be. Be ugly. Be beautiful. Be bad. Be good. Be mistaken. Be wrong. Be generous. Be a git. Be foolish. Be willing to know better. Be ballsy. Be a coward. Be naive. Be lost. Be all. Be it all. So fucking what! Shame only wants us in its club because we think you have to be perfect. That we have to get it right. That we have to fit in. That we can’t say that, do this, think like who we are. Shame upon shame upon shame upon… Pull off the scales of arid armour. Lay down our arms. Be in not knowing who the fuck we are and how the hell did we get here! Press our nakedness against I dont know and stay there. Strip ourselves bare. Bear ourselves stripped. What they told us ain’t the truth. Listen to the seed. The seed that came before they started to shame us. Maybe, only moments, after we were born. Aho X
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 "Belonging. What does that mean? As David Whyte discovers in his extraordinary book 'crossing the unknown sea', we feel the gravitational pull towards the centre of our being the more we begin to live following the truth of who we are.
We are living in a time when our sense of who we are and the bigger, truly existential question, of where do we belong, to what and whom, grows more urgent. Does belonging depend upon the colour of our skin, our religion born into and/chosen, our class, status, income bracket? Does it ripple out from the families we create and choose? Our vocation, careers, work? How we invest our time? Where we place our attention, a laser beam of luxury, freedom and privilege where we can pick at, like a buffet, and serve ourselves plates of what feels familiar, comforting and safe. Is it enough to say we belong to the human race anymore? And then look away, busy ourselves with matters closer to home, half blinded by the understandable helplessness that strikes another human. Another life. Another world. What does it mean to belong? By simply being born, and that's a whole other story or stories, we are part of a conversation of belonging to life each other and the world. By who we are. By the words that we speak. By the actions we take. The course we traverse willingly or with great grudge. By the work that we do. By the art, words, and expression that we offer. It's all a part of the great living conversation. The conversation of belonging. When we do not add to this conversation, for fear of the repercussions, we live a life crouched down, a life squinted and misshapen. We cower away, not desiring to rock the boat, the ocean liner, that carries us on the greater voyage of belonging, destination unknown. The boat marked 'in this together'..." (Published to Elephant Journal. To continue reading head here :-))  I burn.
I burn with the fire of words escaping like flints that violently spark red and heated from my fingertips. Wired like charges from what my heart needs to say. In a way I don’t know what my heart needs to say but it needs to say something. We all have a voice, that still small voice that runs like God’s prayer within and through us, a veined cable of electric current; a current that links and bridges the truth of the divine that holds each cell a vibrant alive particle that makes us a living breathing Frankenstein creation of madness. There’s a madness that runs riotous within us. A madness that is in fact our genius. It causes us to squint and squirm if it doesn’t have its time unleashed to growl wolf and bare its fangs and let the slobber that foams at its mouth fall in globs and drips and piles of wet moist stickiness down our chin. What is this rabid frenzy? What does it want from us? Freedom. It’s our freedom and it wants to run and roam untethered. Many of us have a problem with this wild feral voice. Many of us have a wounding nestled deep down in our throats, a cork stopper of nicety and good girl/boy-ness, that swallows up the words, the voice, that threatens to upset the apple cart of Eve coated sugar and pour a bitter-sweetness out on to the city streets. I question what it is I need and the bile rises to be belched out. Not at him or you or something to pin the donkey tail of blame on to. Oh no. Blame and shame keep us spinning headless chicken like, plucking feathers out of integrity’s nest. We all have a right to our anger. When our boundaries have been blurred by neglect and carelessness and the allowing of another’s punch of dishonour to wind us of who we are. I have been learning about my boundaries these last few years. Learning where the frayed edges cower back afraid. Afraid to say No. Afraid to say yes to what is my truth. Tell the truth my teacher says. Tell the truth. I read some words recently, by Herman Hesse, one of those quotes that bound about like whores all over the place. But this one choked me up and especially one line. This line: “My story isn’t pleasant, it’s not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.” Who no longer want to lie to themselves. We live a lie each and every time we do not say no. We live a lie each and every time we know, and god damn how we always know, and open our mouths then shut em close like a goldfish blinking complicit in its own demented memory loss. We live a lie each and every time we betray our own soul, our own worth, our own truth, to become a pawn in the porn soul selling for the admission of another’s momentary thrill and pleasure. And we live a lie each and every time we make that choice, we topple over, into diminishing ourselves for the god forsaken validation and supposed ‘love/not love’ of another. Guilty. I’m guilty. Guilty as charged. Guilty and yet not gilded by guilt nor shame. Guilty and yet oh how I see, post incident, post accident, when the blood and guts have been mopped up and the sirens of emergency have gone back to drama land, and stillness descends once more and there’s only this, just this, just this left to be with. Guilty and yet bowing to the medicine of that gift, another reminder, another choice spilled over on to the wrong side of the road to splatter. And as the dust settles once more the voice arises. The voice of No, the voice vilified by the vice seduced once more on the faux shiny road of addiction. Addiction to the victim that no longer serves. No more, the voice rises full and free. No more. And I let the voice rebuild and re-enliven. And I let the voice be brave in its shaking. And I let the voice rip through the hiding and the denial and the silly folly of the old fool for love/not love. and I let the voice do its surgery on me tending and threading and stitching and pulling together taut its wires to knot back together that which fell apart, this time reinforced with steel so that those rips are stronger, perhaps some of that light that Mr Cohen spoke of, gets inside too. I can only hope. The voice is my doctor and my God right now, my life in its hands. There’s no anaesthetic, no soothing balm, for I must stay awake to its crafting, to its service. And when it is done and the instruments of forgiveness have been put down and its hands of words are empty I can only rest. Rest and surrender, and let the healing happen, the scar a part of my living, my wisdom, curious in the knowing that I cannot, and will not, go there again. No. No. No. |
Heidi Hinda Chadwick
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