Who says?
Sometimes the Spirit’s voice is a stadium full of people singing a Selena Gomez song...
Hi friends,
Some days, Spirit shows up in surprising sources...
Recently, I was pondering again the story right at the beginning of the Bible, of the first experience of human shame. God comes looking for their beloved children in the garden as they hide themselves, and asks them “where are you?” and their answer is shame. Shame has crept into their hearts and lodged itself there, and the only way they know to respond is to hide.
It’s a question I have heard Spirit whisper over and over in my own heart as I have leaned into my own spiritual awakening this past decade. Where are you? Why are you hiding this time? What shame has moved into your heart again and is calling the shots?
The specific answer that Adam and Eve give is that they are naked. They are hiding because they are naked. And then God asks them,
“Who told you…?”
The way I was taught this story growing up, the voice of God became the one speaking shame over me. The tone was angry, indignant and disappointed. The question was not curious but thrown like a missile, its answer already assured, and that answer was that I was wrong, unworthy, weak.
I’ve been doing the slow long work of unweaving those shame-filled narratives, and sometimes the leaps forward come from unlikely sources.
A while ago, I was scrolling instagram (yep, I do that too) and came across a video of Selena Gomez in concert. She stands on a dark stage with the wind blowing her hair, in a shimmery sheer white dress. And as she sings the chorus, the incredible noise of the audience sing-shouting along takes over the stadium so that she stops singing just to listen and take it all in, wiping away tears and laughing to herself.
Who says? Who says? Would you tell me who said that? Who says you’re not perfect? Who says you’re not worth it? Who says you’re the only one that’s hurting?
If it seems just a wee bit embarrassing to be referencing a pop star’s reel in a post about deep spiritual liberation, I’m going to quickly get over myself, because I have watched that reel more times than I care to admit. I think it is the look in her eyes that I resonate so much with - the delight of hearing those words sung over her, combined with the huge inner courage it takes to overcome the resistance to believing them even in that moment of external success.
It made me wonder what might shift if we brought that stadium-concert-energy into the garden of Eden story?
What if the voice I heard as an angry, accusatory man is actually a chorus of divine feminine energy that causes the wind to whip around me in delight and stuns the voice of shame into silence?
Who told you..? Who says?
The classic Lenten text is the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, when the voice of the Accuser (and don’t we all know that accusing voice) repeatedly whispers narratives of shame at Jesus.
Here, I love Jan Richardson’s blessing Beloved is Where we Begin for reminding me of the arc of this story:
If you would enter
into the wilderness,
do not begin
without a blessing.
Do not leave
without hearing
who you are:
Beloved,
named by the One
who has travelled this path
before you.
Do not go
without letting it echo
in your ears…
When those voices of shame came, Jesus was able to counter them, to withstand their accusations of worthlessness, because he had heard another Voice telling him his true identity: the beloved child, who always delights the divine parent.
Who says? Who dared to tell you that you are anything less than deeply loved, full of worth, endlessly delighting, already complete?
This is the energy I am bringing to Lent this time around. I appreciated Gideon Heugh’s reminder on his instagram last week about the Hebrew and Greek words that are translated “repentance” that mean, respectively, ‘return’ and ‘to change one’s mind/heart/inner being’. He wrote:
“This Lent, may you return to your soul. May you seek out and find whatever it is that makes you most alive. May you be released from this grip of anything that is keeping you from your own human-ness.”
What might it look like for you to return to these God-questions as a guiding star through Lent and beyond:
Where are you? Why are you hiding?
And who told you, who taught you the language of shame, who says?
May we hear Spirit singing to us in a divine chorus of voices, blowing new life into our weary souls, and calling us back once again to our true identity.
Thank you! I’ve learnt to really notice my physical reactions to your writings….so often they unlock something in me…peel back another layer of learned shame/untruth and revealed another glimmer on this journey! Xx
This is so utterly beautiful! Thank you