Let Your Feelings Have Their Say: Easier said than done

The tattered tape runs in the background. ‘Children are to be seen and not heard,’ ‘Wipe that frown off your face,’ ‘Keep your counsel,’ ‘Mind your manners,’ ‘There will be no tears here.’ The message is clear.. Feelings are suspect and when expressed cause trouble, so by whatever means, ‘Do not let your feelings have their say.’

Margaret Silf writes, “So allow your feelings and your moods to have their say. If you have feelings of tenderness or apprehension or anger in the situation of your scene, this is telling you something about what is happening between you and God at that particular moment…” From Inner Compass

poetOh, Ms. Silf, you have no idea! It took me forty-five years to discover how to find God in your sentence. Not until I learned to make a loop at the end of a very long rope, throw it beyond the moon while hanging on to a persnickety horse, and practiced this over and over and over again until finally I caught the white hairs of the high and mighty judge, yanked him from his celestial throne, pulled him past the angels and buried his feet in dirt, not until then could I find God in your sentence.

God, born again in me
attached in tears
cohered in fears
conjoined in joy
God and me
asylum seeking refugees

The Margaret Silf quote above is found in An Ignatian Book of Days by Jim Manney, a series of daily reflections from the Spiritual Wisdom of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Throughout the book we hear the voices of St. Ignatius as well as many great thinkers and writers, long gone and present day, each uniquely revealing the way of finding God in all things. And that is my intention; to find God/Divine Presence/Ultimate Reality in whatever presents itself to me each day in 2024.

Each day I will read, reflect and write on the selection, hoping to articulate the ways in which I come to know God/Divine Presence/Ultimate Reality via personal experience, impelled by the leading of my inner life.

INVITATION

Would you like to join me? The book is accessible on Amazon. Let me know in the comments to this post and sign up to get an email whenever I post. I would love to read your reflections too, public or private messages welcome!

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Learn more about me at
https://www.debraasis.org

All words are generated by grace and the grit of a real human being,
Debra Asis