Sitting at the Feet

How’s it coming, friend?  We’re ten days into 2022 and I’m curious how you’re entering into this January. 

I’ve been grateful over the last week or so to reconnect with other souls on the journey and to really listen to each other’s stories and struggles, wild hopes and dogged fears.  The image that’s been coming to me is that we’re in a base camp, somewhere up the mountain called Life, each having trekked a different stretch of terrain.  And we gather around a camp fire and listen to one another.  This soul experienced a breathtaking vista.  This one is walking the hard pass through grief.  Another is switching paths altogether, trying to find the next clear blaze.  While another is finding ways to lighten the load of her pack. 

We are all different, carrying different loads, hiking different paths at different paces in different seasons of life.  We know we have to make our own journey.  But we know, or at least we’re beginning to sense, that we are not alone.  We warm our hands and hearts by the collective love and wisdom in the circle. We read sacred texts--ancient and contemporary maps that help us each and all find our way.  We’re nourished by the stories and celebrations.  Our hearts soften and expand as we take in the heartbreak and anguish of others.  We learn and grow without another soul trying to teach or fix us.

We’re different, but there is also a sense of solidarity.  We’re in this together.  And we love, encourage, and support one another by showing up regularly to one another, risking the vulnerability of sharing our own experience on the mountain.  We sit and listen to another, and discover we’re sitting at the feet of the Beloved, Wise Teacher and Friend.

The story of Jesus visiting his friends Mary and Martha has long been a favorite.  Here’s Eugene Peterson’s rendering from The Message:

As they continued their travel, Jesus entered a village. A woman by the name of Martha welcomed him and made him feel quite at home. She had a sister, Mary, who sat before the Master, hanging on every word he said. But Martha was pulled away by all she had to do in the kitchen. Later, she stepped in, interrupting them. “Master, don’t you care that my sister has abandoned the kitchen to me? Tell her to lend me a hand.”

The Master said, “Martha, dear Martha, you’re fussing far too much and getting yourself worked up over nothing. One thing only is essential, and Mary has chosen it—it’s the main course, and won’t be taken from her.”

As a Type A, Enneagram One, recovering perfectionist, I have long identified with poor Martha, clanging around in the kitchen and growing more resentful by the second, until she lets Jesus have it.  I am all too familiar with that, “Don’t you care?” refrain, often offered as a silent, desperate prayer.

But resentment is a flag and a cover for me, I’ve discovered.  It signals that I have an unmet desire or need--usually for more rest, pleasure, or ease--that I am pushing down because I feel like I HAVE TO be responsible, to keep on cranking in the kitchen to get things done.  Long thought to be in the anger family of emotions, it turns out resentment is a form of envy, as I’ve learned from devouring Brene Brown’s podcast Unlocking Us, and her newest book, Atlas of the Heart, where she defines and describes eighty-seven distinct human emotions and experiences. 

Here’s how she defines resentment:

Resentment is the feeling of frustration, judgment, anger, “better than,” and/or hidden envy related to perceived unfairness or injustice.  It’s an emotion that we often experience when we fail to set boundaries or ask for what we need, or when expectations let us down because they were based on things we can’t control, like what other people think, what they feel or how they’re going to react.

Ah, so maybe Jesus was on to something.  Maybe he was telling dear Martha where she longed to be. Maybe he was saying, we have to take time to rest from our labors, and come sit at his feet and hang on his every word.  Maybe he was inviting us all to come out of the kitchen, off the trail marked responsibility, and come warm ourselves with stories and poetry, looks of love and words of grace.

Yes, that’s where I long to be.  And who knows, but that sitting at the feet of Love may just transform the way we head back up that mountain called Life, and remind us, we never walk alone.

Warmly,

Kimberly