I once said to a young female client whom I’d been counseling for some time with no surcease of the incessant anxiety that reigned over her mind and was now causing her to wound herself: “In your vulnerability is your power.” I never saw her again.
My intervention was probably insensitive and perhaps ill-timed, but it worked in a very paradoxical way. I heard later that she had gone to a psychiatrist, a recommendation I had made several times to which she’d responded angrily, “I’m not crazy!” The “shrink” of course prescribed medication, and I got a call from her mother who wanted to see me for some therapy for having been a “bad” mother.
* * * *
I do believe that none of us is invulnerable and that we all have wounds. A wound needs attention. As a Christian, I think of Jesus’s many wounds, openly displayed yet mostly managed in worship—objectively but not emotionally.
When children have dreams, as all of us do, they start small and expand in breadth. A little boy child dreams of being a fireman—first, to be able to drive a huge shiny red fire engine, later, to be able to help save lots of people. A little girl child dreams that one day she will be God—first, to give orders that her parents must stop fighting, later, to end warring violence, establish world peace and justice, and end gender stereotypes.
When I was a child I dreamed that one day I would be like the old daddy-God I’d seen in a book who made everything happen just as He wanted it—first, to sit under a big table and give orders according to my own will, later, to lose faith in this kindly patriarchal God and devote my life to finding a new kind of God.
* * * *
By the time I was eight years old, I’d become an expert little nagger. I nagged my way into an invitation to go to New York’s Radio City Music Hall to see the The Rockettes, amazing precision dancers I admired too much. The big day finally arrived. New York City, my hometown, sparkled at Christmas like a million different trees all lit up at once. I had a brand new skirt to wear, and my aunt and I took a taxi downtown. I sat in the huge theater, holding my breath watching and waiting for the curtain to rise, revealing wonders unimaginable—miracles I thought, maybe even like God. The curtain finally rose—slowly, slowly. And then I felt someone’s hand on my left leg. Sitting next to me in the aisle seat was an old man with a long scraggly white beard, not Santa-like, but God-like. You know all those images of a bearded old man God reclining on a cloud making the world buzz with life. The man next to me looked just like this image. He had nimble fingers that tickled my thigh—going up higher and higher, causing my skin to tingle with an odd pleasure to accompany my terror. I was paralyzed, save for my left hand that removed his hand—over and over.
I never saw the Rockettes.
I never told a soul.
I hung my brand new skirt in the closet to stay.
I lost God.
* * * *
I turned to school, because I could do it well, get great grades; then to marriage and bearing children, because I wanted to love and be loved; then to therapy because I lived in my mind and had lost my feelings, and therapy helped me unbind my rage; then finally back to school again, this time God-school, seminary. All of this coping soothed my soul and blew my mind open. But nothing worked to restore me fully to God as well as my own coming to terms with my wound of so long ago, with the help of prayer, spiritual retreats, and a Jesuit who introduced me to Jesus.
Revelation #1: I had fallen in love with an IMAGE of God that was beautifully childlike and immature— limited, visual only, yet not totally false.
Revelation #2: I survived, and even thrived, thanks to one part of that image— the portrayal God as a listening Presence within me—my inner god-voice.
Revelation #3: God, in whatever image, does not eliminate or prevent evil.
Revelation #4: Whether wounded or well, vulnerable or hearty, I am powerless over the awesome Mystery I name God.
Revelation #5: For the very first time, I remembered, with a grin, that I’m not too powerless to pray—actually hammer my dear old listening God to change that precociously almighty, omni-masculine image—all by “Himself.”
* * * *
Half a century later, two tickets to the Christmas show with The Rockettes appeared on our kitchen counter. This time I went with my husband who sat to my left—my hand in his.
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