echo chamber

I grew up in a narrative that said I was a sinner and I needed a savior. In my religion, that was Jesus. He saved me personally and individually and as long as I didn’t sin too much I could stay saved. The pervasive, saturating message that so many of us received was that we were worthless, corrupt, and without the ability to be or produce any good thing. 

In a much better story, according to every version of the bible I’ve read, humans were crafted lovingly by God and called “very good.” “Let us make (hu)man in our image.” This is our essential identity. A very good representation and expression of a God who is an us - an interdependent community. Literally and mythically, our work is not fighting against our independent corrupt nature, but embracing our sacred, interdependent essential nature. To become whole and integrated with ourselves and with each other. Like God.

I talk to so many men, young and old, who feel like the not-yet-hero in a scared little boy’s story because they still can’t “do it” right. They are soul soaked by the message of their badness and their inability to do or be anything else. It is a damaging, debilitating, and false message. We can be good because that is our essential nature.

In God’s story, we are meant to operate in community. Two or more it says. In a curious, empathetic, non-judgemental, reverent, and generative community, we can escape the echo chamber of our minds that says we are bad and incapable of anything else. We can live in a magical, woven connectedness that awakens our true selves and sets us free from the bondage of brokenness when we spend our energy giving in to our goodness instead of resisting our badness.

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