Oct. 13, 2010 Wednesday: Secrets that keep us sane
Ch 1: The Secrets that Keep Us Sane
Secrets are instruments of discernment. They determine where the lines of demarcation between the inner and outer world are drawn. Secrets are walls. They can isolate us or protect us, depending upon the nature of the secret. The dark secrets of our lives can fill us with unbearable pain because they isolate us from ourselves and the world around us. But just as certain secrets make us sick , other secrets can keep us sane.
Whenever we expose an intimate part of ourselves, a quality of self-presence is lost...And those things that are most intimate about ourselves are also the most vulnerable to the criticism of others. St Therese experienced, at a tender age, the damage that is done when we expose a secret grace to the curiosity of others...(Her miraculous cure at age ten when she saw "ravishing smile of the Blessed Virgin") Marie, her sister, coaxed Therese to reveal what had happened and asked permission to tell the nuns at Lisieux Carmel. Therese agreed reluctantly. When Therese went to Carmel to give her account of her miracle, she was bombarded with questions that so confused her that she began to doubt her own experience. And just as she thought, her happiness disappeared. Therese instinctively knew that this grace was for her alone. When we try to communicate an incommunicable experience, it ceases to be an experience. It is depersonalized. It becomes an event, something that happened in the past.
As Therese grew in wisdom and age, she became more discerning regarding whom and to what extent she would share her life. Obviously, she shared her inner life, or we would not know so much about her. But she did so only with her intimates, and even with them, she was selective about what she shares of her soul.
The soul may be likened to a beautiful garden that contains delicate and precious flowers. In order to protect the flowers, we need to be selective about whom we invite into our garden. In our discernment two extremes should be avoided.
The first is a lack of discrimination concerning with whom we share our life. It is like not having a wall around our garden; anyone can traipse through it at will. It is like casting our pearls before swine.
In our desire to be accepted or understood, we can expose ourselves to being stepped on. By the very act of exposing ourselves to curiosity, we risk the danger of being depersonalized. An example of this is the afternoon talk show. When we make an expose of our intimate life, we vulgarize it in our own eyes.
The other extreme is to have the wall that completely encircles our garden, a wall so high that nothing gets in, not even sunlight. Because lack of human warmth and connectedness, our flowers wither in the darkness of loneliness, and we shiver with the cold fear and anxiety of isolation. As our defensive walls grow, they press in upon us. Fear begins to suffocate us; it suffocates us and backs our lives into a corner.
To avoid these extremes, we need a wall to protect our garden from harm, but we should have a gate in the wall, and stationed at the gate, a discerning gatekeeper who selects the soul's company with wisdom.
Therese knew how precious and fragile are the deep graces that God implants in the secret garden of the soul. As she matured, the importance of living a "hidden life" became central to her way to God.
