“Belief in providence may be difficult, but it is also productive of thanksgiving. It enables us in retrospect, whether that be at the end of a day or years later, to see what God has been doing in our lives and to be grateful.”
Richard Bauckham
Welcome to Marilyn Elliott. She has graciously consented to be a guest author. She brings a wealth of experience and wisdom that will challenge and enlighten readers.
I am pleased her first contribution joins the conversation on Hindsight is 20/20
Perhaps looking back isn’t about seeing clearly, or about getting all the clues right or knowing now how we would make a better decision.
Perhaps looking back is about telling our stories, gathering learning and gems, understanding ourselves in the universal context of all being.
“We tell our stories because all of us have survived something, because stories are signposts from the past that give us clues about the future. Finally, our stories are a witness to the next generation and an opportunity to understand the universal as well as the particular in tales of trauma, healing, and survival.”
Barbara Holmes
Maybe it is cold irrelevance to see the past clearly, as more and better data. Maybe the past is the miracle of our being loved and carried, our participation in the great mystery.
In my teens I made decisions w/o thinking. They were mostly driven by feelings rising like vapors from deep voids and crevasses in my soul. The result was pain, confusion and struggle.
At the time I was admonished about sin. I suffered banishment and shame. God’s wrath was being poured out, evidently.
Years later in my 50’s I was given a precious opportunity to revisit that early experience. As an adult I was able to understand more deeply what had occurred. But it isn’t in better knowing the factors at play that brings me wisdom or peace. These come from a deep realization that Father/Mother God intimately understands me, then and now, and holds me, always, in full acceptance.
My past is not shame. Nor is it a litany of what could have been done better had everyone known a little more. My story is about life, about being human and finding a way through this complicated universe. It is a story of woman, of participating with history and culture and family. But most of all it is a story of one of God’s little ones and how we participate with and in God in all things.
“The suffering creatures of this world have a divine Being who does not judge or condemn them, or in any way stand aloof from their plight, but instead, a Being who hangs with them and flows through them, and even toward them in their despair. “
Richard Rohr
My past is a story worth falling on the ears of another of God’s creatures as they find their way. It’s never the story of one person only. It is the story of US.
Marilyn