We are what we allow ourselves to become

The choice of what we allow is always our own

We love lists. I cannot imagine the number of pads of paper conjured and sold that have the invitation to make a list on them. “To do” “Books I’ve read” “Wedding Registry” “Movies” “Groceries” “Birthdays” “Books to Read” “Dear Santa” “2025” (I meant that as a yearly planner list; as I typed it, however, the ominous tone of those numbers in that sequence chilled me. Damn.)

Workflowy has turned list-making into one of the best online project management systems I’ve ever used. It’s stupid-simple because it’s built on exactly that favourite human addiction: making lists. I’ve used it to plan my projects over many years and to collaborate on shared projects with others. As I go through files searching for poetry I wrote years ago¹, each piece gets filed in a new Workflowy list. It’s where I found today’s poem.

This List

I made a list a few months ago that sits somewhere on my desk. Sometimes I forget that I made it and it doesn’t matter. Other times, I forget that I made it and it does matter. A lot. Things begin to unravel.

It’s a list of things I can do to recall myself to groundedness, to confidence, to the morning as it is unfolding, to the place of possibility in which I love to live but to which, in that moment, I have forgotten the way. It is a list that reminds me I can let go of the stories cycling through my head about things I did and didn’t do, can and can’t make real, would and wouldn’t choose to heal if I could. It is a reminder that I can be whoever I want to be in that moment and so, too, be whatever it is I want to offer the world. It is a map to the hope that justifies my life and it invites me to continue along that hallowed, though pot-holed, route.

Beading to calm. Design and Photo: gretta vosper

I came far too late to this practice of reminding myself back to me, easily distracted throughout my life as whatever-my-goal-might-have-been was regularly overtaken by an emotional reaction to something I heard, or read, or that popped up on my social media news feed². Each one had the power to anger, frustrate, depress, or destroy me and almost every time, I handed my power over to it. It is only in these past few frustrating and challenging years that I have grounded myself in practices that can rescue me from whatever had picked me up and carried me off, practices that will turn me back toward the heart that resides within me, the person many of you actually know.

The practice isn’t yet intuitive. It is an ongoing process but one with which I am becoming more familiar, more comfortable, and more agile. Not always, but more frequently, I remember to look for the hand-written list, often hidden under to-do lists, still-to-read books, and half-completed projects, which, when found, can be the thing that reminds me how to save me. There I am reminded to walk, play the piano, do a session of EFT³, bead, sew, read Churchill and other things. When the list isn’t working and it’s not the middle of the night, I might try Teddy Swims singing The Door, Jack Savoretti singing Breaking the Rules or Jonathan Roy singing anything at all. The point is, I’m learning to look for something. To reach for a different possibility. To slow the wild ride to wherever, slip from its saddle, and start looking, in the general vicinity, for me.

The list. Photo: gretta vosper

I don’t think any distinct change has come about because of any particular “technique” I’ve learned, or the daily meditation practice that guaranteed to rewired my brain after eight weeks, a guarantee I’ll just have to trust. I think it has been a change long in coming, one that has accompanied me through challenging times, that I practiced whenever I remembered to step back from the frantic pace of what was happening around me and tune into what needed to be heard within me.

And perhaps part of it was taught me, bits of it planted by others long ago. Perhaps I haven’t been alone in it, but was gifted morsels of it by my mom in her last years when she seemed to have been figuring herself out through the same sorts of reflections. She preferred to sit by herself and look out a window for hours rather than take part in retirement-home-styled activities, many of which she found juvenile; her own thoughts and memories were infinitely more interesting to her.

Perhaps I’d been introduced to it by some of the grounded souls I’ve met in my life, like Jim Adams, founder of The Center for Progressive Christianity, and Jack and Christine Spong, each of whom found their way to calm no matter what was blowing up around them. Perhaps it is those who answer the phone when I’m frantic and simply listen, breathe, listen more. I am learning.

If all we ever

And, perhaps some of it is simply intuitive, a knowledge deeper than learning.

If All We Ever was written in 2018. It wasn’t a great time for me. I was at the end of three years of my heresy trial and both emotionally and intellectually exhausted. I wouldn’t learn for almost two more years that the significant cognitive issues I was experiencing were being caused by a medication that should only have been used short term but which I’d been on for almost two decades for its off-label benefit: controlling migraines⁴. I was still processing the implosion of my family after my mom’s death four years earlier. And I was almost half a decade away from creating the list I now use to turn me back toward calm.

So, I cannot account for the things I wrote during that time that seem to have come from somewhere else, somewhere other than the chaos and trauma I was navigating. Despite all that, I still tied words together in ways that offered images of possibility, disentangled and exposed the lies beneath arguments for privilege and its fomenting of hatred, boldfaced truth so it could stand strong against arrogance and ignorance. I sat down regularly to lay my hands gently upon the keyboard of my laptop, bringing only the wisp or whisper of an idea to mind.

Beach detritus. Photo: gretta vosper

And the words would come. Out from deep underneath all the chaos and wilderness I was wandering through, the words I would place before my community that weekend, words that would point out the challenges, calm the frustrations, illumine the possibilities, would come. If I had learned they came only from the pads of my finger, conjured in the whorls of my fingerprints, I would not be terribly surprised. But it is likely, much more likely, that they came from that place deep within me that was cultivated long, long ago and which continues to shelter and support me now.

Because of that almost magical reality, I believe we become who we are through the perambulations that bring us to this day, the millions and billions of decisions we’ve made that are embedded in our consciousness, have altered our neural pathways, shaped and reshaped our stories. I do not believe we remember our lives perfectly. If we did, we’d destroy ourselves, built as we are upon what we believe, not upon what is true.

But that means something big and wonderful can happen. We shift and change the way we understand ourselves, grapple with who we believe we are and grow from there. We can build a new path, meander our way to a different future all while finding a fresh way to understand and and have compassion for ourselves.

Dissonant paths. Photo: gretta vosper

When what we believe about ourselves is good, we know it was built on what we took from our experience because no life is perfect. Somehow, we learned at an early age that we could lean in toward the good, the safe, and the enriching. And we learned that we could turn away from the bad, the dangerous, and the debilitating. You’re not here without scars; no one is. But you are fortunate to have been taught how to heal and to live comfortably with whatever scars you do have. You learned that you can carry them within you and that doing so is something that can be done with dignity. You have nothing to hide. Keep up the good work.

When what we believe about ourselves is toxic, we also know it was built on what we took from our experience. But what we need to learn is that we can tear that shit down and rebuild. We can find in ourselves what lifts our resilience, our beauty, our convictions, our power, and the wonder of who we are. Lift it up and into the light, because “your being here” equals “you are strong”. You aren’t the thing or the many things that happened to you. Neither are you the trauma you grew up in. You are you and you have the right and responsibility to go looking for yourself, to remake yourself, if you have to. Like me, however, when you find you, so ephemeral will be those wisps of magical reality that reside within you that you’ll likely have to practice being you every single, bloody day. Practice and practice and practice some more. Over and over and over again. Just like so many of us have to do.

And, if all else fails, make a list.

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I am grateful for that strange link between my keyboard and my fingertips that somehow also links my heart to a blank page and ends up with a Focused Moment. Otherwise, by now I might be entirely and completely lost.

If All We Ever

If all we ever hear 
is anger 
   we will surely learn 
   to speak it. 
If all we ever feel 
is hatred 
   we will surely learn 
   to make it. 
If all we ever know 
is fear 
   we will surely learn 
   to use it. 
If all we ever touch 
is pain 
   we will surely learn 
   to share it. 
If all we ever see 
is dark 
   we will surely learn 
   to be it. 
 
Silence 
 
If all we ever hear 
is sweetness 
   we will surely learn 
   to speak it. 
If all we ever feel 
is welcome 
   we will surely learn 
   to make it. 
If all we ever know 
is joy 
   we will surely learn 
   to use it. 
If all we ever touch 
is beauty 
   we will surely learn 
   to share it. 
If all we ever see 
is light 
   we will surely learn 
   to be it. 

September 2018
© 2018, gretta vosper

© 2024, gretta vosper

1. I am a terrible record-keeper. When theologically-focused liturgical pieces written by other authors - Ruth Duck, for example - no longer fit comfortably into West Hill’s emergent values-perspective, I began writing them in advance of the weekly service, typing them directly into the administrator’s computer as I made them up, and walking away from whatever it was. They’d be printed in the Sunday bulletin, but I didn’t think of saving them for anything. Later, I composed them on my own computer and sent them to the church office for printing. Still, the idea of saving them for later use was far from my mind. I didn’t intentionally keep anything I wrote until I captured the pieces written in 2004 and printed them in Holy Breath for my congregation as a gift on Christmas Eve. Since then, I’ve collated them in to several “Breath” books. Still, I continue to mine online and computer storage for poetry and liturgical pieces I’ve written, sometimes googling the content to make sure it isn’t already online and that someone else didn’t write it! Even then, I sometimes note that I’m not sure if the piece is original to me. I’m not a very good curator of my own work, I’m afraid.

2. I’m delighted to be newly on Bluesky having left Twitter in disgust a couple of years ago. I remain on Facebook on my “official” page and my “personal” account (though there is little difference between them), and you can find me, rarely, on LinkedIn.

3. EFT. Tapping. Known as the Emotional Freedom Technique. Works for me, perhaps because, with a therapist, I wrote a script that is personally relevant …

4. I suffered from undiagnosed migraines (10+ per month) for 35 years. Once diagnosed, I was provided prophylactic medication - amitriptyline, an anti-depressant - which, at an non-therapeutic dose, acted as a migraine inhibitor. Longterm, it is now known to cause cognitive loss. I now take 400mg of Vitamin B2 daily which has almost entirely eliminated my migraines which result from a riboflavin deficiency. Pass this on if you know anyone who struggles with regular migraine headaches.