“Water can carve its way even through stone, and when trapped, water makes new path.” -Chiyo in Memoir of a Geisha
New paradigm informed care is a shift from “What is wrong with you?” to “What happened to you?” – Valli Kalei Kanuha, PhD, MSW, Univeristy of Hawaii at Manoa
In navigation, the term reckoning, as in dead reckoning, is the process of calculating where you are. To do that you have to know where you’ve been and what factors influenced how you got to where you are now (speed, course, wind, etc.). Without reckoning you can’t chart a” future.
A friend and I were discussing reading and comprehending… My reading rule is, “…just read even when you don’t understand.” Learning new things doesn’t instantly imbedded in our minds, especially people with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). We forget quickly because the mind jumps to the next thought almost instantly. Experts tell us that it takes three times to learn a new thing: Hearing it, Reading it, and Seeing it. Seeing is an inward reflection, giving into introspection, a pathway to knowing, growing and doing.
Information are never lost, they’re just misfiled somewhere in our brain. The mind, like magnets catches all kinds of stuff – garbage and treasures simultaneously. What hinders us from retrieving the files are the garbage. Garbage are toxic. A house stinks if the garbage under the sink is not thrown out even though the house clean. Garbage attracts rats, cockroaches, flies and maggots.
Emotions like fear, shame, and guilt drive you to toxic thinking. Fear immobilizes you. You begin to control your environment. Guilt plays blame game. Shame hides behind the facade – pretending, projecting, etc. We can be so addicted to these feelings to numb our pain. It’s time to throw out the trash, clean the closet of excesses and reveal treasures. Paul calls “the circumcision of the heart”.
Positive and edifying materials can shift you to change your course. It is not religion, it’s relationship with LOVE. Love encourages us to clean house. My father likens this process to placing a bucket filled with dirt under the running water. Gradually the clean water washes out the dirt. All you see is clean water. It’s a daily washing of the mind with the truth.
When I was a little girl in Ngeremlengui, we walked from Ngermetengel to Ngereuchel by way of Lluul valley. There the water fountain bubbles out of the red earth and flows to a stream. The air is fresh. Water is cool. Amayong buzzed over the brook. Kerdeu in full bloom like a firewall protected the fountain. We dipped our tired feet in the stream while listening to the birds calling out to each other in laud song. Sunlight danced on water to the rhythm of the swaying leaves above. Smooth pebbles and rocks tiled the floor. The little stream made its way into the woods to meet other streams and form a river. Rivers become waterfalls.
The unconditional love of God is like a fountain bubbling within to overflow and washes away our fear, shame, and guilt; reveal the precious treasures in you. Love like water makes a new path to your destiny – fully human and fully alive not in spite of the flaws but because of them.