The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”
—ROMANS 8:15
I am a southern male, and so all of this talk about pain, frayed nerves, poisoned souls, and therapists is somewhat difficult. Acquaintances, especially my more metropolitan ones, tell me there is no reason for embarrassment, but as an over-generalization, we southern gentlemen are a bootstrapping lot. We like to believe we can lick any enemy. Yes, in the event of being snakebit, we could tie our own tourniquets, use our pocketknives to make the deep incision, and suck the wound and spit to remove the poison.
We are self-sufficient men, see.
As a result, notions of dependency are stigmatized. We like to build ladders from the ground up, erect structures for pulling ourselves from mud pits. We’d rather not resort to the help of others, much less professional help. In some respects, this is born of a genteel spirit, I reckon. Let’s not burden others with our troubles and whatnot. In other respects, though, this is nothing more than foolhardy pride: I ain’t broke; there’s nothing to see here; move along, move along.
Even a southern gentleman can benefit from a good therapist, though, and I have come to think of mine as someone to whom I can complain without judgment. He knows I am a mired-down patient, a stuck fellow in need of a way out. He’s good with tools and has provided me with a shopful of them. He reminds me that tools are useful only if used. There’s a good word in there.
He sent me another tool this week, a tool to help as I push into the work of forgiveness. It is an internet link to a YouTube video, and he asked me to watch the last twenty minutes of it. It was a recording of a lecture given by Sue Johnson, a leading expert in the field of Emotionally Focused Therapy, or EFT.
“Johnson deals primarily with marriage and couples’ therapy,” he texted, “but I think there is something here for you.”
I unwrap a sandwich from Richard’s Meat Market, bite through cracked wheat, lettuce, pickle, onion, and turkey, and then I click the link. A three-dollar sandwich and a therapy video—this is not the sexiest of lunches.
I drag the time stamp to the fifty-five minute mark, and Johnson’s dry British accent quips, “Effective dependency makes us stronger as individuals.” This is not the salve I had anticipated, and it rubs raw against my bootstrapping heritage. She is a by-God scientist, though, and so I give her the benefit of the doubt.
Johnson describes how those who are secure in healthy, dependent attachments, those who feel safe in what she calls a bonded love, define themselves in more positive terms, are more coherent about who they are in relation to the rest of the world. Securely attached people are able to move with great freedom into spaces of forgiveness.
She turns to the Dalai Llama, describes how he holds fast to the love of his mother, how he carries it within him. It is a present, real love, one which calms him and bolsters his nonviolent stance, she says. It is so real, in fact, that he counsels his monks to carry the same love with them, to say the word mother when they are anxious or afraid. And now, she says, science teaches us that this not just a hokey religious practice relegated to the halls of Buddhist temples. Instead, she says, research indicates that if you “prime the attachment system by mentioning the name . . . of the people you love, [you] calm down and regulate emotions . . . [you] are more open to others.
“If you can seek comfort in the arms of another,” she says, “you can handle the worst the world has to offer.”
Her thesis then gets my attention: those who experience well-bonded love, she argues, are more able to forgive.
I consider this, feel the confluence of psychology and spirituality. Some might consider this some syncretistic marriage of Christianity and humanism, this combining of psychology and spirituality. I remember, though, John Michael Talbot, the Ozarkan monk who once said, “Didn’t God create me with psychology?”
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. But this never-leaving, ever-abiding God keeps sending me back to the days of early faith—back to the garden, back to the trees. He is deconstructing every structure I ever created to keep him out. He is my bonded love.
I can go into the pain with the bonded love of an ever-abiding God. I can walk into the cave of the soul, experience the death of the death whisperers. I know this.
There is a trick to this mystery of faith, I think. It is not a difficult concept, but in practice, it’s harder than charging hell with water pistols. See the God who was with you as a child. Hear him tell you he never left, not even in the darkest days. Believe him; count him as your bonded love, the two of you fused closer than bone and marrow. Follow this path of life knowing he is in you and you are in him.
This is the truth.
I know the next calling. It is to wade into the pain, to call it by name, and to forgive. I feel the flood of anxiety. Fight or flee; fight or flee. My amygdala is firing on all cylinders. This is the flesh’s fight against spiritual actualization. The Buddhist monks cry the name of their earthly mothers in these moments of anxiety. I cry the name of love Jesus spoke in his own anxiety.
“Abba!”
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Abba, have an ever-abiding mercy.