Jeweled Breadcrumbs #2 : who do you think you are?
Although i would gladly melt into the silent space around things, my toes are dug in dirt, planted in holy ground next to my ancestor Moses. Maybe it is because yet another of God’s flock of human sheep is insisting, “You must write your story, Debra.” Maybe it is because in the peace of my afternoon meditation a wise elder appears and hands me my self even though there is no sense of me, no sense of God, no sense of sense, yet i know that i know that i know this is so. How do i know that i know? i do not know, except the consuming silence that does not consume is wide as forever, penetrates my deepest self and absorbs what i call me into unswerving certainty. In a decade of Zen Meditation, three decades of Contemplative Prayer and more therapies than i care to admit, i have experienced nothing like this. Something has happened to me and in a flash i am both lost and found.
Inflamed with a blaze that does not burn, today i stop asking, “What’s next?” and respond to God’s question, “What will you do with all you are given?” Stealing courage from Moses i respond. “Here i am.” i consent to the invitation to tell the story of becoming a real human being. Mine is a story of leaping ahead and falling behind through a series of mind-body-spirit altering moments that I recognize in vanity’s rear-view mirror as varieties of religious experience, the crazy ways that God of surprises scatters jeweled breadcrumbs for me.
My historical mentor, St. Teresa of Avila, puts it this way. “Whenever I have surrendered in obedience, impossible things have become simple.” (The Interior Castle, translation Mirabai Starr, p 29) May it be so.
Jeweled Breadcrumb
Who do you think you are?
My first memory flows from the basement of Memorial Presbyterian Church in Newark, NJ. Amidst a bevy of toddlers i sit, mesmerized as the nice lady places felt figures in a cramped row boat stuck on a board that is balanced on an easel as she tells us how scared the floppy figures are seeing the other felt figure called Jesus walking on the water. “What?” i wave my pudgy arm until the nice lady lets me speak. “You cannot walk on water. i know because we go to the real beach in the summer.” Silence. The scary of silence i know from home means i am in trouble.
Bare butt exposed to my father’s narrow black leather belt, his words ring over the crack slap of the thrashing, “Who do you think you are? Children are to be seen and not heard.” Instinctively i shield my head with my chubby four year old arms. They fail to prevent the madman’s words from burning their bitterness onto my brain. “Who do you think you are?”
My teachers and parents conspire. i, the smallest child in my group, will be removed from the nursery and put in a class with older children. This is the death of Jesus for me. He and the rest of the church people cannot be trusted. In the ensuing eight years of Sunday School, never again do i raise my hand nor ask a single question. The day i play-act my way through confirmation was the last one i spend in church for decades. Still, my father’s razor edge question echos, “Who do you think you are?”
Debra Asis
INVITATION — will you join me tracing the trail of Jeweled Breadcrumbs? Please add your stories of Jeweled Breadcrumbs in the comments. I will respond.
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The assignment that brings me to the writing of these words is to unapologetically tell the story of how God nudges, cajoles, drop kicks and masters me to be the real human being that I am … becoming … following God’s Jeweled Breadcrumbs. My daily writing challenge for 2025 is to share the Breadcrumbs with you.
You may also visit me at https://www.debraasis.org/
