Let’s talk about it. We are all carrying a bag. A long, heavy, pretend-it’s-invisible bag. Poet Robert Bly has A Little Book on the Human Shadow, explaining it to us. He’s building off Carl Jung’s work on the shadow self, but in a way poets can. He gives us the metaphor.
You see, we are born fabulous and free and unaware that there are ways to be and people to please. We just are. Bagless. Full of potential. And other things that need refined. So as we grow, we begin picking up the messages from our parents: the shoulds. We parents can’t help it, we need to teach you how to get along in polite society. Although, a kind society would be much better. And we are losing our politeness now anyway because everyone’s bags are too big. But I am getting ahead of myself. Those unsavory behaviors our parent’s point out, we stuff in the bag. And maybe those parts of our selves that beckon some good exploring and developing—sometimes we stuff that in the bag too. Because we are immature as we are receiving these messages and sometimes we feel shame for the different parts of us. So the real shame messages and the imposed ones all go in the bag. But we must carry it around all the time.
And then we go to middle and high school and begin jamming all kinds of new stuff in our bags, trying to fit in. So by the time we reach our twenties, we only have like a sliver of that beginning fabulousness that needed to be developed. Maybe later we notice someone else’s sliver and we get married—both carrying some loaded-down, not-talked-about bags. Can you see it? Can you feel that? And what do we do with all that is hidden and stuffed into this partially invisible bag? It’s heavy and hard to carry around all the time. And we don’t want to look at what’s in it. But, oh, how it haunts us—there will be a reckoning. Anyway, not now, so we project those stuffed down emotions, experiences, desires, messages, and memories on others. And we kill it in them. Doesn’t that feel good? Can you believe Nina wore that? Does she think she is still 24?
Some people don’t even look into their bags until their forties or later, and this causes a lot of problems. But it is a very brave thing that they are looking after this long. And yet, the longer these things fester in our bags, the more primitive they become. Bly:
…when we put a part of ourselves in the bag it regresses. It de-evolves toward barbarism. Suppose a young man seals a bag at twenty and then waits fifteen or twenty years before he opens it again. What will he find? Sadly, the sexuality, the wildness, the impulsiveness, the anger, the freedom he put in have all regressed; they are not only primitive in mood, they are hostile to the person who opens the bag. The man who opens his bag at forty-five or the woman who opens her bag rightly feels fear. She glances up and sees the shadow of an ape passing along the alley wall; anyone seeing that would be frightened.
I’m in my forties. And it’s turning into a decade of looking in my bag. But I also am learning that families, institutions, societies—churches—have collective bags as well. We’ve got piles of bags on top of bags! Some are sealed up tight, while primitive apes are growing larger inside. I’ve had to leave some of those spaces. In love, I don’t want people to have to carry these apes. And I think we’d be way kinder to each other if we could get them off our backs. But I have my own to deal with and if you won’t look at yours—individually or collectively—well, you can be quite harmful.
I realized this week that I carry a bag into church every Sunday. Some parts really come out on Sunday.
My brokenness.
My “You’re too much, Aimee, just keep your thoughts to yourself.”
My trust.
Sadly, on Sunday mornings, my sense of adventure and playfulness take a little vacation into my bag. Good Aimee walks through the door. Quiet. She’s a total bore, and her other parts in her bag are poking to get out, looking around to see if there is any curiosity in the room. If anyone will talk to them. Shh!, I say. I mean, can’t you hear the prayer requests? I know everyone’s health problems and those of their family’s and neighbors’, but I don’t know their longings. I don’t know their unrequited desires, their life’s disappointments, their soul-wounds, or what they delight the most in, where they see God breaking in their lives, and how they experience him. And they definitely don’t know mine.
Do you think church is a place where we are meant to open our bags? Just a little? Maybe not with all there, but a community where we have some trusted holders of our baggage? Where it isn’t weaponized, but given new light to see differently. Where true transformation can happen. I know that church isn’t the therapy chair and we need to keep some distinctions. But spiritual maturity has to be an integrated maturity. And if we are talking about the institution, the collective whole of our church, don’t we want to be real with one another so that we can face our shadows and bring them before the Lord? Because he sees our bags. Think of all the times Jesus named what was in his conversation partner’s bag! Whether they are in a sycamore tree, at a well, bringing a woman to be accused of adultery, or asking for the best spots in the kingdom of heaven, he calls out what is in the bag. And he went for the religious bag too. The bags of his people. But he doesn’t stop there. He gives a chance for freedom from the load. You see, it’s just a shadow of an ape, not a real, primitive ape in the bag. It has no real power.
I don’t know, I can’t think of a heavier bag than Peter was carrying when he caught the gaze of Jesus on the cross after denying him three times, just like Jesus told him he would. Peter! Turns out the ending of this discipleship story would be betrayal. Not even acknowledging their friendship when he most needed a friend. Imagine the weight of that bag when Jesus shows up to visit in his resurrected body! I’m not a rock, I’m a coward! I don’t deserve to be with these people. I need to just try to return to what I know—fishing. And keep my mouth shut about Jesus, because I’m about the worst witness to his love. Man, did I know it. Man, did I experience it. Man, did I let him down. These were not my values. I turned my back on the truest thing—person—I’d ever known. Who am I now? Not your leader! Not worthy of a friend! But Jesus immediately does some bag inventory at this resurrection breakfast—so he can restore him. To him. But also to Peter.
I still have a lot of bag inventory to do. And I think this is a life-work. And I have a hunch that it is a huge part of the job description of being a door-opener.
So what did Jesus say to Peter? 'Simon, do you agape me more than these'? Peter replies 'Yes, Lord; you know that I am your friend (phileo). Jesus responds--'Tend My Lambs'.
You know the two repeats. Jesus is opening the bag, and showing us how to open the bag for one another. And we really need to do that.
I closed a bag off, when I left home; opened it when I thought it was safe to do so, in my late thirties. Discovered it wasn't safe; the place i thought there was safety, I was wrong about...and so I learned how much we need to have safe places, to open our bags, and do what God has shown us we can do for one another; help each other grapple with the realities of life; the wounds we have, the baggage we carry; bringing things out into the Light, together, where it's safe to grapple with them, and figure out how to overcome them, through the Victory we have in Jesus life, death and Resurrection.
So many today carry around bags with really heavy weights in them; that are hard to drag through life.
We need to let the light of Jesus and His Love, shine through us; to one another. And we can do that even from a distance, at times; but we all need a local part of the body, a faith community intent on knowing Jesus more fully and being alive in our union with Him, to one another.
It's difficult to build the depth of relationships necessary to be able to have a place we can open our bags, and truly 'share our burdens' that we are dragging around, in ways that lighten them. in my (late) thirties, after that bag was unzipped and I saw what was in it, I spent a couple years learning how to 'deal with what's in the bag'; in a group that fostered intentional community-and that understood what can truly help us. There was unconditional love that shone brightest; and in the bright light of unconditional love; a freedom to take things out of the bag, and honestly hold them up in the light and say 'I've been carrying this around, and I don't know what to do with it, or how to get rid of it'; and the community worked on the basis of that kind of 'processing', that involved a kind of 'confession' that didn't rush past it in ways that simply rezipped the bag, hiding what had just been disclosed; and then doing it all over again the next week. In that small family of people committed to helping one another, what was in the bag was brought out as fully as possible into the light shining with unconditional acceptance, so that it could be seen, grappled with, and over time, dealt with.
That taught me what REAL 'confession' is when we 'miss the mark'. I've found a few people over time, who are safe people with whom I can do this.
I wish the church understood the real power of that process I learned, and how to function as a true community; that two years in an al-anon group, taught me how to deal with these bags we carry; but doing so requires a community that understands the depth and richness of the unconditional love and grace of God, and the power of the true Gospel, to bring us real change and vibrant life, together.
That's not easy to find today; but it can be built; if people are willing to learn how.
Sadly, we have not only our own bags we drag behind us, but one with a branding on it; the one we are handed when we join a faith community, with their specific brand of amercan christianity. We have chosen to carry a common bag with us (even ones that are plain looking, still have the brand 'non-denominational' on it). they come with baggage already in them...though we can add our own items to these bags, too. We quickly sling them over our shoulder, and and don't really think much about, unless something happens that forces us to realize we are carrying it.
The branded bag I carried had mulitiple brands on it; 'evangelical', 'reformed', a particular denomination, as well; it had some very heavy items in it. You unzipped the bag, and handed me an item in it, when you wrote the book: 'why can't we be friends?'. I read the title; and I thought-hmm-that's interesting. It wasn't a judgemental question; it was a light shining question.
I have had a lot of women friends, over my life; some of my best friends have been women. The question, 'why can't we be friends' opened that community bag wider-and brought out a number of other things in it that I had little idea I was carrying around.
Some people are gifted to us, who are 'unzippers' or carry flashlights that shine into our bags, lighting something in them so we can see it plainly. or they are unlatchers, maybe: people who ask questions that unzip or unlatch the bags we carry-exposing some of the contents that are on the top of the bag to the light-maybe lifting them up where we can see them. Or they say something and we realize that we are burdened-that there's this bag that is weighing us down.
You, Aimee, do this, and did this; and shone shone a bright light all the way to the bottom of a lot of the bags with the 'evangelical' and 'reformed' brandings on them... And what was in the bags, around that simple question: 'why can't we be friends', is slowly being brought out into the light and grappled with. And there are many others who are unzipping and unlatching bags, and bringing what we carry out into the light.
We need friends we can open our bags with, and grapple with the contents with; who love us enough to help us with this task; it's called 'bearing one another's burdens' and something we need to learn to do, again.. We need friends. men and women friends. we're different enough that we can see things easier, 'outside our parameters', at times. But we can learn to step back and gain objectivity about ourselves, too. If we have friends who are willing to help us process what we've experienced in life, and face the baggage we carry.
How do we build such friendships? That's a larger answer than fits in a comment. but one well worth thinking about. Friendship builds around common interests and 'passions' (maybe there's a better word, but it captures something important to a life worth living shared with others). Friendships build when we seek to focus on what we share in common, and expand it, as Paul guides to do in many of his letters. It grows when we simply take time to do what Aimee has been focussing on, listen to one another, and do so in a way that doesn't condemn, but loves. We can do what Jesus did with Peter-opened the bag, and helped Peter grapple with what was in it, shining a light that reminded Peter of the purpose He gave to him that was still in effect: 'tend my lambs' was Peter's already given mission, from Jesus; and that mandate was unchanged by what Peter had been carrying for a long time. Interesting to note; that Jesus addressed a problem but it came back, and Paul had to speak to it later. But Peter eventually learned enough to share what he learned, instructing elders not to 'lord it over' others; but to be servants who love, who lead by example in ministering to others.
I'm so sorry you were 'lorded over' so badly, Aimee... it was wrong.. and yet how much light God has brought to shine into a place of darkness; through your testimony as you walked faithfully with Him through a hard set of trials... that showed the veracity of the faith He gifted you with.
I appreciate your insights, my distant friend...
God sustain you and be with you in your walk of love in life, sister in Christ Jesus,
Bill
"Jesus immediately does some bag inventory at this resurrection breakfast—so he can restore him. To him. But also to Peter." Beautiful, Amy. I don't remember thinking of Peter's restoration this way. Don't we all need restoring to our truest selves? I hear the gentle, relentless love of Jesus here + I tell you, I needed to hear this very thing. Thank you 🫶✨.