I’ve been listening to a new podcast that Cyndy recommended called “Heavyweight”. Have you ever listened to it? I highly recommend it. The show, produced by American humorist Jonathan Goldstein, tries to help people resolve a moment from their past that they wish they could change. Thus, the name: “heavy weight”. In the first episode of this podcast, an episode called “Buzz”, Jonathan tries to get his dad, Buzz, to make amends with his older brother, Sheldon. Buzz and Sheldon haven’t spoken in years. It is fascinating stuff!
As I’ve listened to the show, I find myself pondering some of the “heavy weights” on my soul. Traveling back and resting on moments that I wish I could change. And as I do, I marvel at how much I continue to carry! Why is it that we humans insist on holding on to so much from our pasts?
One of my favorite books is “The Things we Carried” by Tim O’Brian. There are so many quotes I love from this book, that challenge my thinking about life and war and death. One that will always stick with me is this one: “They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity.”
I think we are all feeling that sense of carrying “the atmosphere and even gravity itself” as we work through what is happening in Israel and Gaza and Ukraine. As we try to hold the ever-persistent reality of war. It’s hard to carry all of that, right? And we aren’t even there! I can only imagine what the folks living and breathing the atmosphere of “war” in their living rooms must be feeling! I hope you will continue to join me in praying for these places and many more.
The thing is that many of us have a war going on inside us sometimes. I know I do. A battle of sorts that goes on inside of me about trying to let go of these heavy places in my heart where I feel injustice and pain. It’s so easy to say, “Let them go…forgive!” But to do it, sometimes we need help.
As I listened to this first story in “Heavyweight”, one thing struck me: that when there is an injustice that happens in our lives, our wounded heart weaves a tight-knit story around it. We take that pain and the facts around it and weave it into a story that makes that pain make even more sense to us…even if it might not be true.
In this podcast, for instance, the big moment of weight comes early in these two brothers’ lives when their mother decides to leave (the father was abusive) and in an act of desperation she asks the police to go back and remove Sheldon, the older brother, from the father and bring him to live with his mother. She doesn’t try to bring them both to her, just the oldest one, Sheldon. Now, of course Buzz, the younger son, feels slighted. From that moment on he feels as if his mother chose his older brother over him. “His older brother was the favorite and he was left behind!” That becomes his “life” narrative. And from that moment on he lets that narrative affect his relationship with his brother to the point that as they get older, they completely stop communicating!
But his son, Jonathan, on Yom Kippur, decides to intervene. He tries to get these two brothers, now 84 and 80, back together to see if there might be a way to rehear the story and understand what actually happened. And, miracle of miracles, he gets them to agree on meeting in person. In this meeting, they begin to retrace their lives back to that critical point. And what they find is that the older brother was being beaten mercilessly by the father, and that the mother wasn’t playing favorites, she was trying to protect her older son’s life! This knowledge changes the heart of “Buzz”, the younger brother. He starts loosening the string of his own narrative. He becomes aware that his narrative (constructed by his 5-year-old brain in pain) wasn’t totally accurate. And he begins the work of reconciliation.
As I listened to this podcast unfold, I found myself working through some of my own narratives. Where has my wounded heart bent the story so that I would stay hurt? Were there places in my story where I would benefit from hearing another side? Was there a way I could loosen the knots of my story narrative enough so that mercy might enter?
To tell you the truth, I think sometimes my wounded soul just wants me to stay bitter and angry! It plays better in the drama of it all! But then I think of how much of my life I’ve spent carrying the immense weight of my story, and even adding to it! And it’s then that my sacred self says, “Stop! No more! Carrying all this is just too much! Do the work, Brook! Get some help so that you can live fully, again! So that those around you can love you more fully!”
A part of the church’s ministry has always been the work of reconciling, of bringing people in conflict together in a way that both parties might be reconciled and made new. In a way that both parties might find not just “my story” and “their story”, but a third story: ours!
Dear Sacred One, teach us to have the courage to loosen up our grip on our own story just enough so that we can listen not only for our “enemy's" story, but especially for a third way to tell the story…your way.
"Cast all your burdens on him, because he cares for you" 1 Peter 5:7
Your friend and pastor, hoping to learn a new way to tell our human story so that peace--not war--will remain, Brook
PS: Here is a link to the “Heavyweight” podcast called “Buzz”!
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