Quagmires, continued

By the time Miss Tick and I met, she was sorting out some painful bits of personal history.
I remember how her eyes welled up with stinging tears each time I asked how her charity was going.
That seemed to be the most pressing issue...
She had received a beautiful vision for helping women artisans through her book-binding charity called Bound for Freedom.  Not knowing how to properly proceed with a God-given idea,  lacking confidence and inner guidance,  she had shared her vision too freely and soon she was surrounded by a gaggle of helpers...each with their own ideas of how things should move forward.  In the current ego and business driven church culture 'bigger is better'.  So it wasn't long before they were drafting business plans, organizing, delegating and so on.  It was soon decided that their newly organized charity should go nation-wide and then global!  Exciting times, indeed!
Their vision became so grandiose that many more people were needed....
and before long they had a runaway train on their hands.

There was no birthing of the vision with the attendant waiting and feeling and natural development. It was just pumped up and hyped up and ready to take over the world.  
As one might imagine, it didn't take much time to over-inflate and then burst from tension.  

Meg soon lost all management of her inspired idea.  
She did not know how to hold her idea and birth it properly.  
She just knew that something was terribly wrong as the months passed.
There was feuding and competition and all manner of entanglements.
Personality conflicts that should  never have arisen in that setting marred everything.
Friendships were strained and sometimes seen for what they were as masks fell away.
Her vision of women helping women was soon distorted and turned into a profit making endeavor that would further prey upon women overseas for western profit.
What should have been a wonderful and womanly experience turned upside down 
when it was finally wrested from her by a Christian businessman who offered to rescue
all the fair maidens by assuming control of her venture for a pittance. 
Her dream ended as a recurring nightmare. 


It was so painful and confusing that she could not move past it.  So that is where we began...
Some things can be let alone or forgiven or walked away from, but that is not always the case,
much as we would like it to be.
On a deeper level, it is still raw and horrible, unforgivable, not healing as it should.
That is always the call for a fresh approach....a closer investigation of the facts. 
It is a call for correction and revision of our thinking.
There are so many instances of unhealed wounds..and more than enough pat answers
that aren't working.
When all that 'good' advice fails to clear up a problem, people blame themselves...
and they suffer fresh indignity and loss of self.
Perhaps a partner has been unfaithful, someone has used you and then walked away.
In Christian circles, these wounds cut so deep that some people never recover.  
It is a double whammy when you bring God or religion into the transgression.  
It creates confusion and inability to trust on a deep and vulnerable level.  
If God and his people can't be trusted who can one turn to?  
They have already been taught since childhood that 'the world' is a treacherous and dangerous place. God and the church are the only safe refuge.
So when these fail, one is understandably devastated and injured to the core.
So how does one heal from these injuries?  How does one untangle from a lifetime
of questionable teachings and practices?  
How does one recover from a church culture that is hurting more than helping? 


It is the good fortune of the soul that it continues to grow and to question.
The soul begins to discern as it moves toward maturity.  
It continues to seek the light and truth...its very nature is to grow....and to heal.
  
Miss Tick, even in her painful and confused state, evidenced the desire to learn and seek
and grow beyond the flawed and insufficient church culture.  
She needed a firmer foundation and better soil to grow in.  
She had morally and ethically outgrown her old set of clothes.  
It was time for her to dismantle what had passed for truth and ultimate authority
and to begin again from the ground up...this time, from the ground of her own being.

She would need to wake up from a few trances first..and she would have to learn to feel her own feelings, her own body, her own thoughts and the stirrings of her soul and spirit.  
There was much dismantling to do!   
But first, she would have to wake up...