The word shed has two meanings: letting go of, or the noun for a storage unit. It’s often hard to know we are storing because habits are automatic. Whether we accumulate objects we think we might need or keep too many fixed attitudes in our minds, we are storing and unbeknownst to us we are stagnating. Movement is essential for life, so to let go of what is no longer needed in the now is an act of trust. Storing “just in case” can clog our dwellings and our psyches.
Phrases posted on Facebook, April 2016
This is the time of year at least in the North East when many animals shed their winter coats. They are getting ready for the warmth of a new season. We, too, can shed in order to enter a warmer time in our lives. I’ll be mulling about this in April.
As I put away my winter coat I am aware that we all have “overcoats” that protect our feelings–attitudes that keep us layered because we are afraid or have been hurt in the past. We need to unbutton a bit to shed them. Even releasing one single button can bring welcome change.
There is so much to shed to be current in the stream of our lives. What we hold on to holds us fast, doesn’t it? How to know what to hold dear for life’s sake and what to let go of for life’s sake is a daily, prayerful choice.
Looking deeply we can sense that in a throwaway society we are apt to throw away more than things. In that atmosphere persons also become somehow dispensable as long as they are no longer of “use”. I don’t ever want to forget that I belong to the family of man so even when things like Spring-cleaning come around I can be more mindful. It’s one thing to purge what we don’t want which eventually will end up in the landfill, and it’s another to recycle what has been useful for the use of someone else. That someone else could be any one of us under unexpected circumstances.
Witnessing the shearing of sheep makes me shiver. Without its wooly coat the sheep look so naked, so utterly vulnerable. Life sometimes shears us right to the skin, doesn’t it? Then there is little we can do but trust that a new protective layer is already growing though not yet visible.
Shedding judgment of our selves might feel very vulnerable making. You’d think it would be relieving, but that habit of self judgment is often a paradoxical strategy of the ego to keep feeling that it is right. If we are the ones to judge ourselves first then the sting of judgment from others hurts less. It tells us we were right all along. So then we win by losing. Capricious and slippery, no?
Shedding judgment is a difficult thing. I need to understand that judgment distances by adding negativity while discernment just tells the truth. Here’s an example: Judgment might say, ”That’s an ugly old sweater.” Discernment, on the other hand, would say, “That’s an old sweater.” Discernment helps me manage in the world. Judgment always seems to make things harder.
When we are purging our things because we are moving or just because it’s time, we can make four sensible piles: toss, give away, keep, don’t know yet. The don’t-know-yet pile can be larger than the others. For me hanging on to the don’t-know-yet pile often means that I don’t trust the future to provide. If I approached that pile aligning with trust it becomes smaller much more easily.
What would happen if we could dare to shed everything that is in the way of love? I suspect we’d live in a glowing sense of freedom.
Shedding resentment is not easy especially if we have spoken up for ourselves and it did not change things. Doesn’t it finally come down to choosing whether we would rather be right and righteous or free and peaceful?
There is so much we don’t know and can never know. Wouldn’t shedding “having to know” be a relief and open us to daily amazement?
There are so many ways to shed that will hone us into truthfulness and peace. Sometimes I don’t even know I have gossiped during some idle conversational sharing that then got embellished into gossip. Making a pact with ourselves to do better in such situations frees not only the persons we may be talking about but it frees us, too.
Pure, simple rest doesn’t happen for many of us the way it does for animals that know how to stop. Relentless, automatic over-working is common in our culture and needs to be shed (if we can manage it economically considering the essential needs of our families ). Then “loafing and inviting our souls”, as Walt Whitman put it, becomes possible. Doesn’t such loafing soul invitation renew our bodies, our minds and our ability to fully love and live?
It’s in the miraculous moments when we somehow shed our usual preoccupations with our little selves that we are able to experience, for a short while at least, the oneness we are all part of. For me that is the most welcome and grace filled shedding of all.
