Shelf Life of the Inner Life

Writing my current thoughts for you to see is counter to the very idea I want to explain tonight. But I think I can do it in such a way as to provide thought without giving myself away. A smattering (spattering, splattering):

Henri Nouwen first introduced me to what he calls keeping your drawbridge closed (Inner Voice of Love).

In a conversation late one night my cousin KED tried to help us explain it by comparing your insides to a jug, or anything with volume. The inner life can develop: it can get larger, and one can add shelves to it. Shelves, obviously, are for placing your wonderbread on so you can use its preservation to the max - no fear of degradatory chemical reactions here. With the talent we now have for keeping things 'edible', some cans or boxes could remain unopened until the next millennia. *

That's what a shelf does. You can put stuff on it and take it off when you want it. (Or not take it off like my grandparents who forgot some raw meat in the freezer for more years than you want to know.)

You could think of a clever facebook status post ... and tape it to a secret place inside your closet, where only you will ever see it, where only you will care about it's meaning... and feel glad about it! Your thoughts might come to seem legitimate to you even if they don't have the supporting legs of others' comments!

You could hear something about someone else and not have to say it to anyone. Which, according to LK, is always a good policy. THIS IS BIG. Hurtful comments. I think about the ways I would NOT burden people (though don't take this as advocating anti-sharing-real-life-with-each-other!!) It's not a matter of what is shared, but the expectations that go along with it; can I tell you the truth about hard things only so you feel weighed, or can I have dealt with them in my Inner Life, and have a peace in me about them?

You wouldn't have to be dependent on PEOPLE. (Again, the expectations are what let me down)

You could have a place to process what previously has been impossible to deal with, and only via suppression.

You'd have a place to disagree from.

Just think of the shelf life of some of those items!

The point being, you might actually meet God if you had a place for it to happen. I'm speaking for myself, not in a critical way, but in recognition of my culture's drivenness by schooling that tends to eliminate privacy and eventually desire for privacy (thoughts from Dumbing us Down - Gatto), which upon required graduation moves on in the same direction, praising most highly success, that ultimately desirable jewel, which is defined by giving up as much private-life-time as possible (except the odd affair or embezzlement deal).

Yes, the point being, instead of
Imagining,
Ignoring,
or being enraged against, you might actually
meet (the real) God.

It makes sense, so I'm jus' sayin'.

* (Exception: nothing with wheat or any other kind of grain. The ungrown mites we usually digest before the cheerios start flying of their own accord would certainly have developed and wormed their way out by that point.)