I finally figured it out.
The truth about babies.
Not where they come from.
Where they lead us.
They lead us back to ourselves.
If we let them.
An ancient rabbi will help us understand.
Have you ever heard the saying, "Love brings up everything unlike itself for the purpose of healing?" Different sages, gurus and pop-psych purveyors say this in different ways: The purpose of intimate relationships is to heal childhood. In partnership, we encounter our deepest wounds so through loving we can become whole. Etcetera. They refer to intimate, adult relationships.
Too often, however, we hear that lovers mistake the distress catalyzed by their partner as coming from something outside themselves, and don't take the opportunity to heal what is within themselves. When recognized, held and brought forth as what they are, deep distresses can uncover opportunities for profound healing.
I've just realized the same thing happens with our children. What are babies but pure love? Along with their myriad demands, they can and often do, present us with everything we never thought we'd encounter about ourselves since birth. All our own reactions to being domesticated. Everything we love and hate about security, authority, family, boundaries. What an opportunity to become aware of, and to heal our hurts in these same areas!
What I mostly notice in others, and what I often feel pulled toward doing myself, is shutting down that process, and instead trying to domesticate the young person to behave in ways we and other adults feel most comfortable with. Through acting like what the culture tells us "adults," "parents" and "caregivers" ought to, we often slip into the role of simply teaching our children how to get by in this world, rather than giving them the room to show us who they--and we--really are.
Granted, to reflect upon and heal the wounds parenting can bring up, and to engage in the kind of slow, transformative dialogue with a young person as an alternative to a quick authorative injunction, takes time. It may seem a luxury of time and resources available to a minority of parents. But a moment with a journal, poem, or the ear of a sympathetic friend, or even lovingly welcoming one's own tears can move mountains of grief, dislodge ridid patterns. Slowly following a child's own trajectory, on her own time, rather than herding her into our schedule, can reveal new universes.
Everyone "knows" parenting is stressful, and sometimes we even stop to think about how grossly undersupported the whole enterprise is. For once I'm putting my ever-present sociopolitical framework down, and looking at the huge spiritual opportunity a baby provides.
In my study of Jewish spirituality and healing, I'm looking right now at how personal growth paths recapitulate a very powerful creation myth, developed by Rabbi Isaac Luria during a time when Jews were scattering in exile in an attempt to remain Jewish in the face of the Catholic Church's far-reaching persecution and oppression of non-Christians. Along with some other Jewish mystics, Luria, also known as Ari Ha'Kadosh, or the Holy Lion, would engender a Jewish spiritual renaissance whose effects we still reverberate with today. I'm extrapolating from my one of my teachers, Estelle Frankel's, amazing book Sacred Therapy: Jewish Spiritual Teachings on Emotional Healing and Inner Wholeness. The Holy Lion told us creation passes through three distinct stages: tzimtzum, a withdrawal or opening of space, shevira, a shattering and scattering, and tikkun, making things whole again.
tzimtzum--holy withdrawal
According to Luria, creation began with YHVH (God) creating a sort of vacuum into which all that Is could come forth. In a similar way, a pregnant woman creates a space within her self for a new being to grow, a couple or family makes room in their house for the new being. We make room when we want to intentionally bring something forth. This is the first stage.
shevira--divine shattering
The Infinite, or Ein Sof, sent out a single ray of light into a set of vessels, the sephirot, designed to contain that light. But the sephirot could not hold the divine light--instead, some shattered, as when a new life comes forth it shatters the unity of mother and child.
So, too, with each new threshold we cross in life: something is always lost. Life is continually pulsating between chaos and order, just as the undivided oneness of God that existed prior to creation had to be sacrificed in order for the world of multiplicity to come into being. (Sacred Therapy, Estelle Frankel)
The Kabbalists talked of seeds which must decompose in order to bring forth the life within them. So too do we humans leave behind one form to come into another.
tikkun
The third stage of creation Rabbi Luria described is tikkun, or healing and repair. After the shattering of the vessels, most of the light is said to have returned to its Divine Source. However, some fell to earth and became trapped in the material world. Our work of healing is to find and redeem the divine sparks within each person or situation.
Everything in this world including ourselves, our intimate relationships with friends family, all life on earth, according to Luria, is essentially a shattered vessel, splintered into many pieces. The work of tikkun olam, or universal repair, is to join the shattered pieces of the whole back together, so that the unique sparks of light and truth may shine forth from each part. (Sacred Therapy, p. 30)
Estelle Frankel had begun the course talking about how we are all broken vessels, and it is through those very places we call cracks or brokenness that divine light shines most brightly. This image gave me a sense of relief and hope, that there may be another way to look at what we call "faults" (which also means cracks or weaknesses in the earth!) or challenges.
We made space in our bodies and in our lives for new life to come forth. Not only did this life shatter our bodies, s/he also cracked open the frame holding our sense of ourselves together. Sleep, love, routine, all this cracks open with the arrival of a newborn. The daily mitzvot (good deeds) we perform in caring for the new life complete small cycles with tikkun.
As the child matures, we keep getting cracked open. Who is this new being? Our expectations keep getting shattered; we get triggered. They aren't doing what we want them to! Who will we become in response? We can become our parents. We can channel the voices of authority that wanted to domesticate us into so many sheep.
Or we can stop and choose another level of consciousness. Through the shattering of our ego through too much sleep-deprivation and too little support, we can retrieve the divine sparks in the most trying moments. We can let the holiness of the little beings fill our soul. We can let grief and frustration fill us and move through us, decomposing and revealing fresher parts of ourselves.
The other day in the grocery store, I exchanged yogurt preferences with a woman in the dairy aisle. I noticed her sparkling eyes and nice curves. Later sandwiched in the bread lane, I overheard her tell her son or daughter on the phone, "If you don't get home by 5:30, you're coming straight home every day after school this week!" and I couldn't help it, tears welled up in my eyes.
I so wanted them to connect. I already really liked this woman, just tasting her passion for Greek yogurt. What was eluding her finding a place of love with her child? Is the feeling of time pressure, that we must "resolve" rather than stay with the process of discovering what will allow multiple needs to get met?
Time and again I see that if we actually enter into the broken places, light will emerge. We may have to play with standing in different places. We may have to pick up and tenderly relocate some of those shards. We may have to show a little one just how sharp something is so they don't hurt themselves or us. But light, or harmonic resonance of our human passions, does emerge, in direct proportion, I find, to the loving attention and expectation of same we shine toward those involved. When we fight what we're given we don't see the light.
Alex found this series of beginning reading books that his kindergarten teacher trotted out--against standard curriculum--over three decades ago. Cainan has been picking them up like an old pro, and having a ball. Alex has been diligent about regulating the flow of books--they advance in difficulty and he has been wanting to make sure Cainan masters one, with its new words and all, before taking on the next. So far it's working well. Maybe we owe one to the superhero cape he's wearing...
This is an old typewriter that's been sitting in its case in our living room as "decoration." I think it's much more interesting outside the box, and apparently so does Cainan. But then, aren't most things?
