My Jesus Birthday: Celebrating God Within

At some point when I was younger, someone told me about the concept of your "Jesus Year," and it has always stuck with me. Jesus did most of his work between the ages of 30-33, and (spoiler) willingly gave up his life at 33 to atone for the sins of all mankind. Today, I have my own interpretation of the what this story means, and it's all about love. In two days I will turn 33. Sadly, I don't think I'll be saving humanity in the next 12 months. But I can say I have put in the most work in my personal life since I turned 30, and that 33 will absolutely be a pivotal year for me. And, it's all about love.

Where to start...

I haven't kept my experiences with religion a secret (see previous post: How I Lost My Religion). While I certainly don't hold the same views I did at 16, I am eternally grateful for the role the church played in the formation of who I am. Over the last year or so I have really wrangled to make sense of who/what God is, what my relation to God is, and what to do with the information once I came to some conclusions.

Not coincidentally, these musings paired with very significant life events for me that provided the empirical data on which I based my thoughts.

Presented for you now is: Religious Epistemology According to Amanda (Word of Caution: These notions are valid only for me and my experiences. Any attempt to appropriate them without living it yourself will cause much cognitive dissonance-trust me).

It started with prayer-the internal running dialogue I keep with God. Prayer for me as always been more about this invisible force you talk to throughout your day, rather than time you set aside for this specific purpose. I began to think about the mechanism of prayer. What do my prayers do? How do my prayers, or the collective prayers or people work? Let's say you're praying for someone to get healed from a disease. Is there a prayer tipping point God holds? So if 100,000 gather at the exact same time and pray for the exact same thing, is that more powerful than a single prayer offered with honesty and authenticity? Can God change his/her mind? Was her/his mind made up in the first place? You had 996 people praying. Sorry, 1000 was the magic number, better luck next time. None of this felt right to me. I have come to believe prayer holds no power in altering the mind and heart of God. What I do adamantly believe is that prayer does everything for changing MY mind and heart to align to that of God's. In other words, my prayers don't begin with "Please God heal (insert name) from (insert ailment)." But rather, "Dear God, help me to see (insert name) the way you see them, and help me to love them the way you love them." The change occurs on my end, not God's.

Which leads to my next point, one that I struggled with for so long. How can a loving God allow a child to get cancer? Why would a loving God allow or cause disease/natural disasters/poverty/terrorism/racism? And on and on. From these questions I have developed a deist point of view that is simultaneously terrifying and supremely empowering. I don't think God causes any of these things. None. Nada. Hurt and heartache is never a part of God's will for our lives. It is present though, so what does that mean? Here it is, are you ready for it? It's pretty scary. We are formed from God of God (read that again slowly). God lives inside us, is us. God created us with infinite wisdom and love and set things into motion, and now God as creator does NOT intervene. Free will, the greatest gift a loving creator could provide, inherently means we are left to our own devices, for better or worse. The things that happen occur as a direct result of the actions collective humanity has taken. When a person gets sick, a hurricane wipes out a city, a loving word goes unspoken, these actions hurt the heart of God more than they hurt us. When science allows a disease to be cured, communities come together to rebuild, comfort is freely given, these things make God's heart swell with the joy a parent feels for their child.

So then we're all alone out here as God watches from afar? NO! A million times no. Remember the point about being created from God? He lives in us, alive and active! It is the literal embodiment of being the hands and feet of God. If I want to see God intervene in a scenario, I am compelled to act. I have the power to bring God to a hurting population-not just the power, but the responsibility. I firmly believe God ONLY acts through us. I make the decision everyday to bring God's presence to a hurting world or not to. Like I said, it is simultaneously terrifying and empowering. What a commission! When I realize it truly is up to me to bring Christ's love to the world, I feel overwhelmed by the responsibility. When I realize I CAN bring Christ's love to the world, I realize how empowered I am to affect change in a real and tangible way. Imagine, just imagine, if everyday we woke up armed with the knowledge God lives in us and acts through us. How would that change your interactions? Your motivations? Your aspirations? Your relationships? Your words? It is changing your prayer from "God please do XYZ," to "God, I want to align with your heart so that I can do XYZ." See, it's a not-so-subtle difference that makes all the difference!

How has being armed with this responsibility/power changed the way I live my life? As it always should, it comes back to love.

Love for others:

One of the greatest consequences of living the concept of being God (or, of God, for those who prefer it said that way) is that no matter who I meet or encounter, regardless of their similarity or relationship to me, I know they too have God in them. Our hearts can inherently connect no matter the divide. It might take work and effort to find the connection, but it is always there. Again, think about how revolutionary this could be if everyone first sought out our connectedness before anything else. We are a world that likes to sort and order people into neat categories. What is your race, religion, sexual-orientation, shoe size? Who cares?! What does the part of God inside of you want to tell the God inside of me? That's powerful. That's the connection I want with the people in my life.

Love for my spouse:

First, I have permission to share this information. Adam and I recently had a our 11 year anniversary. Notice I didn't say celebrate our 11 year anniversary. A combination of life factors have made for quite the bumpy marriage road. I don't need to share the details, but what I can say is this: I love my husband and he loves me. Adam's greatest attribute has always been his unconditional love for people-all people. His heart inspires me and pushes me to want to be better at loving without limitations. Neither of us can definitively state we will stay together at this point. But the beauty of love is that it is not bound to a piece of paper. I can love Adam and he can love me because we recognize we are made from the same divine source at our core. Regardless of where life events take us, that bond will always connect us. Again, that's powerful.


Love for my child:
Remi. Sweet, magical, Remi Isabel. Anyone who spends time around R knows she has an old soul; this is not her fist rodeo. At four, I believe she is still closely connected to the divine power. She is loving, funny, stubborn, and quite emotional (sorry kiddo, you get that from me). How has holding deist views affected the way I raise Remi? I subscribe to the idea that my child belongs to God, not me. I have been trusted to guide her on her path, but ultimately it is her path, and her's alone. I do not get to make life decisions for her. She is being raised vegan. Once she is old enough to understand what this means and why we made this decision, she might choose to not be vegan. And this is her choice, and I will support it. I did not pierce her ears as a baby. They are not my ears to put holes in. She has recently expressed interest and when she is firm in her decision we will make a special day out of it and celebrate who she is choosing to be. For about four months when she was 3, R was adamant she was a boy like daddy. We let her be a boy. She now identifies as a girl and her favorite color is pink. Whatever her future holds is up to her, but it is my understanding of who I am in relation to God that encourages me to be the best example I can be for her. She is my heart.

Love for myself:
This one is tough. Only recently have I begun the process of disregarding who others expected me to be and began focusing on who I am, and who I want to be. Think about it. How many decisions do you make about your life based on the expectations others hold for you? Most of them? All of them? Internalizing my own divinity has allowed me to step back and view my life as part of a greater story. Taking care of myself is not a luxury, it is a requirement for fulfilling my duties on this planet. This has caused me to confront scary aspects about myself, my own journey with depression, and my relationships. But acknowledging and owning my power as part of the divine has enabled me to confront the scary, and you know what I learned? At least for me, the opposite of scary is not safety-it's pure, unadulterated, beauty. Beauty is the wellspring that replenishes me and gives me the strength to keep pushing my own boundaries. Some of you have been privy to this, and have given me the feedback that the evidence of it is overwhelming. I agree. I have opened myself up to the possibilities that exist and have refused to accept that the way things are, are the way they have to be. When I became able to ask for what I needed, the universe responded in kind. That is to say, the divine in other people responded to me and I have begun to heal.

33.

In the Gospel of Matthew we are told Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was. He responded:
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Love God (yourself), love others (the God inside of them).

I will spend 33 asking myself what this looks like. Challenging myself everyday to confront my biases, opinions, assumptions, and laziness towards my calling.

The greatest gift you can give me by far is walking with me on this journey. Letting me share my heart and encouraging me to be real and present with you. Being open-minded to my expressions, affording me what I'm sure will be much needed grace, and remembering through it all we are already connected in all the ways that matter.

Self-Reflection Counseling Beliefs Paper

Topic-Discuss the following: role of the counselor, how people change, world and religious views, personal strengths, weaknesses, and biases that might be pertinent to the profession of counseling.


Joseph Campbell, a revolutionary figure in the field of mythological research, coined the term “monomyth.” Campbell, after extensive research into folklore spanning centuries and the globe, realized common elements exist in the stories we create about our heroes and our legends. These elements form the stages of the Hero’s Journey—the path towards redemption forged by the protagonist, and are still relevant and present in today’s most popular stories and films. Campbell postulated these commonalities exist because the human spirit is innately the same across divides, and we relish these stories because they represent metaphorically our own journeys towards defeating dragons and finding elixirs. As I reflect upon myself and my experiences at this beginning stage of my educational career in counseling, I find I am balancing my lack of content knowledge with my desire to not lose sight of the fact I can intrinsically connect with others through our collective monomyth journeys.
Individuals, myself included, most often enter counseling because they are already in the midst of a transition or a crisis. Change in life is inevitable however, and I am struck by the notion society considers routine mental healthcare superfluous, when in reality it is the one form of healthcare that contains the most transformative power. A little less than a year ago I entered personal counseling due to feeling stuck. Having long term mental health issues, coupled with major life changes, was too much for me to handle on my own. I am by nature a conscientious planner. I grew up believing if I did all the right things—college, marriage, career, children—in the right order, life would naturally fall into place. The reality though, is that some things you can plan, and other things you can only plan around. I have been changed more by the things I didn’t see coming than by the collective power of all my best-laid plans. I would venture this is true for most people. Change and growth occur at the intersection of biological life processes and outside social influences—both of which are inevitable. Through counseling, I have come to realize the necessity of coping skills in tackling life’s unavoidable crash course. The process of intensive therapy and the relationship I have formed with my counselor, have been intrusive, frustrating, and infinitely rewarding.
I came into therapy expecting my counselor to have all of the answers I was looking for. A few simple yet sagacious comments, a bit of life-tweaking, and I’d be on my way. I’m a high school educator, and as such, I never want to give my students the “right” answer; I want them to use their own critical thinking and strategies to form their own conclusions—a process I now understand serves as a more accurate representation of the role of a counselor. With a skill I can only assume comes with practice, my counselor helped me to distill complex emotions and situations down to targeted counseling objectives, while leaving the door open to the possibility sometimes I would simply need to talk and not reach any actionable results that day. As I formulate who I want to be on the other side of the office someday, I am confident in knowing it is the integrity and complexity of the counselor-client relationship that is paramount. My therapist and I have established a history together; she can make connections between what I am saying and my experiences in the past that even I have missed. This has taken time and dedication for both of us. I appreciate the fact she pushes me out of my comfort zone and forces me to confront my experiences in a safe environment. A few months ago I began EMDR under her guidance. I was at first skeptical and hesitant. Were it not for the mutual trust that exists between us, I would not have journeyed down that road. EMDR has been a powerful and effective force in tackling my personal dragons. I am thankful she knew me well enough to not suggest it until I was ready, and for continuing to guide me safely through the process. Her example has demonstrated for me the role of establishing deep, working relationships in the counseling setting.
A major benefit of having taught high school for nine years, specifically English, is that the content of what we are reading and studying comes alive in a very real and present way in my classroom. My content allows me to gain insights into the lives and struggles of my students in a way that is not as easily facilitated in other classes. Indeed, it has been the joy I receive from establishing these relationships with my students that led me to pursue counseling. Perhaps it has been the exposure to so many students from varying socio-economic classes, religions, nationalities, sexual identities, and learning abilities, that has enabled my to quickly connect with others. I find I am relatively skilled at helping people break down their emotional barriers in order to talk through their situations. I have been told on several occasions I feel like an old friend within a relatively short period after meeting someone. I appreciate this ability within myself to deeply connect to others with relative ease and believe it will serve me well in my career.
Concurrently, I am aware there are populations of people with whom I will have a more difficult time connecting with. I value intelligence in myself and others. I have a difficult time being under the guidance of a leader I perceive to be less intelligent than myself. I find myself judging others based on their language and writing, and often have to remind myself intelligence is expressed in many ways outside of established norms. At the risk of sounding egotistical, I believe I would have a harder time working with individuals I perceive as less intelligent, because I would have a more difficult time establishing our therapeutic relationship. Even in my teaching career, I find I am skilled at taking naturally gifted student to the next level, while I am less apt or excited about working with students with learning disabilities.
In addition, another group of individuals I believe I will find difficult to counsel, are the fundamentally religious. My own religious and spiritual backgrounds have spanned growing up in a very conservative Southern Baptist church, to embracing elements of Eastern religion, to today having settled into a very deist point of view. I do believe in a divine creator, but have come to shirk the idea he or she plays an active role in our day-to-day lives. I embrace the idea of being the hands and feet of God and believe divine love is shared only through one individual to another. In other words, if I want to share God’s love, I am compelled to act, not simply to pray for a certain outcome. I reject wholeheartedly the notion natural disasters and disease are God’s will, and instead firmly believe these are are natural consequences of the human population over time. Holding such beliefs makes it difficult when talking with religious people who feel most circumstances are out of their control and that “whatever happens, happens, and was God’s will.” I believe in a loving creator who compels me to love others, and personal responsibility and taking ownership over our actions is an integral part of this.
The twelfth and final stage of the Hero’s Journey is “Return With the Elixir.” At this point the hero has battled and conquered their adversaries, grown in strength and spirit in the process, and comes back to their ordinary world ready to share their experiences in order to help themselves and others. I can think of no more beautiful of a representation of the intended outcome of therapy. I am in the middle of my own personal journey, and the very beginning of my journey of formally helping others. I value introspection and the ability to challenge my own assumptions and beliefs in order to better serve myself and others—a process I believe will continue indefinitely.