The Long Bag We Drag Behind Us

Photo by Jed Owen on Unsplash

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.