Synchronicity reading this mornings CAC meditation on ‘Torn as a Gift’ I would add a third voice

The CAC Reflection: The Thorn and the Mercy
Paul begged for his thorn to be removed.
God said no.
“My grace is sufficient for you.”
The thorn remained.
So did the mercy.
So did the love.
And Paul learned to give thanks for the thorn.

Sitting in the tension of the questions I wonder…
Can we sit with discomfort long enough to see what it reveals?
Can we search in the dark even if it scares us?
Can we stop searching for perfect and start cooperating with grace?

Hi Everyone

On the question of shame, I’ve found L.B. Smedes book ‘Shame and Grace’ one of the best I read on the subject. He emphasizes that much of our shame is undeserved, arising not from true moral failings but from internalized judgments, social conditioning, and the illusion of separation.

Shame not just a product of society or human nature, but a complex interplay of both. I wonder if a path to healing might begin by dissolving the boundary. Applying the metaphor of the blank canvas, not a Chicken or the egg, but chicken and the egg, both brush strokes on the Canvas.

I’ve been reading up on Sufism and they might speak of shame as something woven into the fabric of being human. ‘The heart must be polished until it reflects only the Beloved’. But the dust on the mirror, that too is part of the path. Even Shame, deserved and undeserved and ancient, can become a polish.

In Buddhism, we are taught that suffering arises from clinging to identity, to judgment, to the illusion of separation. But when we sit with what is, without pushing it away or pulling it close, we begin to see shame is not a flaw in us, but a misunderstanding in the world.

“Let us hold our stories lightly, and each other gently. Not to erase the shame, but to see through it to the light that was never lost.”

Radical acceptance of who we are, a reclaiming of Eden. I wonder, is Eden a destination or rhythm of a breath brushing its edge?

This morning I feel a desire to return to Eden as escape but flaming swords block the way marking the boundary between innocence and a world of words. The cost of consciousness, the turbulence of shame and guilt deserved and undeserved. We cannot go back as we are but perhaps if transformed, purified by the swords flame.

Last night I reflected on being surprised that Camus came to mind as I tried to engage in the questions asked and that the confusion I felt was similar to what I feel when engaged in conversation with family members on the topic of God.

My family would be troubled with the association of the word ‘absurd’ and the word God. Than it occurred to me that in conversation we were using the word God differently. My family relates to a personal God while I relate to a non-personal G_d. With that in mind I would rewrite what I posted about Camus:

Albert Camus famously rejected the “leap” the turn to a personal God or transcendent meaning as a response to the absurd. For Camus, the absurd arises from the tension between our deep longing for meaning and the universe’s indifferent silence. To leap toward a personal God, one who explains, redeems, or consoles, is to escape this tension. Camus called this philosophical suicide: a refusal to face the absurd honestly.

This notion of a personal God was the one I was the taught which I internalized as God as a Father who would make everything better, all I had to do was trust, follow the rules.. and above all avoid a feeling that such a God could only be a puppet master at best, a monster at worse. In the end I was not able to hold that tension or the mental gymnastics to justify such a relationship. Here I enter my ‘dark night’ of the soul.

Rejecting the personal God as Camus suggests, I feel clears a space for a different kind of relationship. Not a being who ‘watches’ over us but Being itself. Not a voice that answers, but a presence that holds. This is the realm of the non-personal G_d, the canvas beneath the painting, the silence beneath the story, the ground of being that doesn’t resolve the absurd but embraces it.

In this light, Camus’s refusal becomes a kind of spiritual integrity. He doesn’t leap, but he also doesn’t turn away. He stays with the tension. And in doing so, he points, perhaps unknowingly, toward a sacredness that doesn’t require belief, only presence.

Here the words of a ‘we must lose God to find G_d’ come to mind.

In this non-dual space, theologies of law and language begin to fade. What rises in their place is compassion, not as a commandment, but as a natural expression of being. In that compassion, “law” is not imposed but embodied. It is not followed out of fear or duty but lived from a place of deep remembering.

The absurd remains. This kind of G_d doesn’t answer the cry for meaning with a tidy explanation. Instead, it holds the questions not as a problem to be solved, but as a mystery to be lived. The world is still what it is: beautiful, brutal, unresolved. But in refusing to escape it, we may find ourselves more deeply in it. And in that, something softens. Not because the world has changed, but because we have.

Paradoxically, the refusal to leap has helped me see that the path of the leap is also valid. What I once saw as escape, I now recognize as another form of devotion. All wisdom traditions whether they speak of a personal God, an impersonal ground, or no God at all are trying to name the unnameable, to touch the mystery, and that is so very human.

Each path, in its own way, invites us to hold the tension.
Each path, in its own way, returns to the canvas – the shore beyond.
Every path, in its own way, pathless.

Gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā
Into the gone, into the gone, into the gone beyond, into the gone completely beyond the other shore, awaken.
Into the gone, into the gone, into the gone beyond, into the gone completely beyond the other shore, return.

Just a note: the serenity prayer is always good advice. One can hold the tension and take that advice but the the tension remains as it was and is.

correction – I might add a refusal to articulate it away, fix it with words.