Turn up the volume of your life

When I was little our bathroom had the usual clutter that accumulates around most people’s baths, but there was one piece of bathroom detritus that fascinated me. It was a rock that floated. Mom and Dad called it “pumice”. I later learned that pumice is formed in the bowels of a volcano when rock is liquid and bubbles are trapped in the hardening liquid, like the fizz in a cola. It is the bubbles in the hardened rock, which allows pumice to float. The bubbles also give pumice a sandpapery texture just rough enough for smoothing calluses. I spent most of my childhood barefoot and my hands and feet often became cracked as calluses became too big. So the pumice was a useful item in my bath time.

Look at the calluses on your hand. What stories do they tell? What do they say about the work you do? Manual labour tends to make the calluses at the base of each finger quite prominent. Guitar players will have calluses on the ends of their left hand fingers from pressing the strings on the fret. If you wash your hands using a rock to knead the cloth, the heel of your hand will be callused. And if you wear a ring it will create a callus where it rests on your finger – something the astute will notice when being picked up in a bar by the ring-less…

Calluses are useful to protect our bodies from the daily grind we subject them to. Sometimes, however, a callus can become too hard, too big, it cracks and become infected.

Read Isaiah 6:9-10

Isaiah is instructed to harden people’s hearts so they will not repent; a strange message.

Steve Cook points out that the hardening of people’s hearts is a form of emotional callus. A callus on the hand is useful and so we don’t notice it until it becomes a problem when the hardening becomes so hard that it no longer flexes with the surrounding skin. It is then that we notice the problem and deal with it. Similarly, an emotional callus is useful up to a point in protecting us from some of the traumas we face, but it becomes a problem when the callus is no longer able to flex, to mould to the circumstances of our lives. At this point it cracks and can become infected – perhaps with cynicism or bitterness.

Isaiah must push the people to the point where their emotional callousness becomes a problem they are forced to deal with.

Listen to these words from Paul Brand in “Fearfully and Wonderfully Made”:

“A troubling phenomenon recurs among young Christians reared in solid homes and sound churches. After living their early years as outstanding examples of Christian faith, many become spiritual dropouts. Did they fail because they concentrated on the exterior, visible Christian life? Did they learn to mimic certain behaviors, nuances of words, and emotional responses? Crayfish-like, did they develop a hard exterior that resembled everyone else’s and conclude such was the kingdom of God, while inside they were weak and vulnerable?

... An outside shell can seem attractive, trustworthy, and protective. It certainly has advantages over a dead, useless skeleton or over no skeleton at all. But God desires for us a more advanced skeleton that serves as it stays hidden.” (thanks to SojoNet for the quote).

Part of the reason we become emotionally callused is survival. It’s a coping mechanism: one that works but it has diminishing returns as the callus grows.

To switch metaphors: yesterday in our biker’s circle we talked about feelings and how important they are. Like the lights on the motorbike dashboard feelings are signs that alert one to needs within one’s system. Putting duct-tape over the oil light isn’t going to make the oil problem go away, yet this is exactly what we tend to do with our feelings – we ignore and bury them and the need becomes a problem. Emotions are signs that there is something in the system that needs attention.

Read Luke 5:1-11

We often think of Peter and his fellow fishers as living an idyllic country life. As Sarah Dylan Breuer points out, though, it was anything but… Apart from the obvious dangers of the Sea of Galilee which apparently is tempestuous for its size, the fishers of Peter’s day were caught in a debt trap, having to pay taxes over an above their usual overheads. There was also the cost of fishing rights on the Sea. At the end of each day, there was seldom anything left for their families. With no insurance, the daily worry of injury or accident must have worn away at their lives.

When Jesus asks them to cast their nets on the other side and their nets come up busting with fish, their world changed forever. They no longer were consumed by the daily question, “Will I catch enough?” but from then on their lives were determined by the question “Can I find enough people to help me haul in this generous catch?”

The emotional callus of daily worry is transformed into an emotional openness to new possibilities and people.

This is the promise of spiritual maturity that the Good News offers: a transformative experience that liberates me from the narrow confines of my daily grind so that I can see people as people again, not just instruments, clients, allies, enemies, providers, takers and so on. I can be transformed from callousness to compassion. My heart becomes soft again so that, like a child, I am sensitive to so much more of the world around me.

This doesn’t mean that the spiritual journey is one of instant and perpetual joy. On the contrary, Peter embarks on an emotional roller-coaster ride with Jesus all the way to Jerusalem. As one reads that story, one cannot but be amazed at the volume of the emotions Peter experiences. It is an intense experience – the highs are mountainous (remember the transfiguration?) and the lows are hellish (remember his denial of Jesus?).

Let me switch metaphors again: when we were talking about feelings yesterday William pointed out that out feelings are like a Hi-fi system without a graphic equalizer. The graphic equalizer allows one to manipulate the volume of specific frequencies so that, for instance, one can make the music have more base or treble. But in the emotional system, there is only a single volume control. Turn down the volume when one is angry or sad, and one finds that affection and ebullience are muted too.

The spiritual journey tunes us in to our feelings so that we know our needs more acutely. Similarly we can tune in to the needs of others because we become more sensitive. We become more compassionate.

The discipline of the spiritual life is to spend time with emotions, to discover the underlying needs. This is especially true of the darker emotions. Spiritual maturity is characterised by an ability to know oneself and so be in control of oneself. Feelings become the wind that blows through a flute each with a distinct note that together creates music – to borrow a Buddhist metaphor!

Discovering the energy of our personal emotional systems also tunes us to the possibilities in the world. Instead of being overwhelmed by the massive problems the world faces our creative energies are released to find innovative strategies of dealing with these problems. We can move from the cynical, “There just isn’t enough to fill this bottomless pit” to the insightful, “Poverty is stupid in a world that has enough but will not share.” (Bono paraphrased)

Jesus is calling you to the bounty and wealth of your own inner life and the gift of vulnerability to others. Discover the joy that comes when you spend time with your own feelings – especially the dark ones. Discover the connection that comes when you open yourself up to those around you and trust them with your feelings. Discover the power of God’s generosity in your own life and the world.

May your heart grow soft and supple.