Dunk your Oreos in Raw Milk
Thoughts on Radical Acceptance and embracing contradiction.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that I likely cried all 365 days of 2024. I cried in the shower, in my car, and in the bathroom at work. I cried on the beaches of Maui, the forests of Ireland, and just about every place I found myself in between. I cried in disappointment, in grief, in frustration, and joy. I howled in lament and whimpered in fear and raged in refusal. I cried in the company of friends, in the company of my ancestors, but mostly in the company of God.
My teacher, Christina, has often said that there are teaching years and there are training years. 2024 was a training year. This year was a boot camp that I will be mining for its gifts for the rest of my life, but also wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
The gift that has most immediately presented itself is the gift of contradiction. As I have gotten older, the complexity of the human person has been the many-sided jewel that I find endlessly interesting and most difficult to explain. I am no closer than any philosopher, theologian, or poet to nailing down what it means to be human, but I can name the exquisite pleasure of what it means to me in this moment, today.
As we speak, I am a mass of contradictions. I am both excited for the new year and anxious to let go of where I’ve been. I am ready to begin Grad school but also finding myself puddering and procrastinating on little details that would better display my readiness. I have a fridge overflowing with beautiful whole foods and a cabinet full of processed food. I want to exercise, and I want to rest. I crave the company of friends but also my solitude.
As we speak, I am both ash and cosmos. Soil and sky. Strong and soft. Dark and light. Beautiful and ugly. Clean and messy. A great mom and a mom who has caused harm. Sexual and spiritual. Gracious and judgmental. Scarce and generous. Selfless and selfish. Content and striving. Patient and grasping. Trusting and questioning. Disciplined and lax. Open-handed and close-fisted. Rash and wise. Progressive and traditional. Angel and animal. Sacred and profane. Happy and incredibly sad.
Perfectly imperfect.
This is all before the sun has even risen to bless this new year.
If I am this complex in the pre-dawn light of my own awareness, then how complex must everyone be in the light of day? In the light of love and loving awareness?
My tradition is its own mass of contradictions. It is a history stained with blood and incredible goodness. It says, “The first shall be last” and “Blessed are the meek.” It is a magnet for people hiding their fear behind righteousness. It can be rigid and demanding. It is unrelenting and terrifying in its expectations. It can fortify the ego and imprison the soul or do the exact opposite. It can redeem and purify in a way nothing else can. It is full of perfectly imperfect humans who are human-ing and Christian-ing imperfectly. In that way, it is like every major spiritual tradition. It shoots for the moon and leaves people somewhere in the stars. The touch of its light is only almost eclipsed by the size of its shadow.
Our shared life together is full of contradictions. We sometimes lose people to love them. We have to surrender when we most want to fight, fight when we most want to hide. We have to sacrifice our hatred to create peace. We have to fail to learn. We agree to grief when we agree to love. We must die to ourselves to gain ourselves.
Our minds love black-and-white visions of the world. We like to think of people as good or bad, right or wrong. We like to label. I am no better. I like to know where to put things, in my mind or in my processed food cabinet.
Resisting the idea of limiting any person, any situation, any system into a narrow frame is the work. Stretching our nervous system’s capacity to hold differences and complexity while remaining regulated is the work. This is creating physical safety for the vessel that holds your spirit in a moment when it feels threatened. This is holding yourself and your concerns as beloved, so you can honor and then transcend and include the complexity that is presenting itself to you.
The first step is seeing it all and then accepting it all. In the recovery community, this is the teaching of Radical Acceptance. This wisdom knows that half the battle is having the bravery to look at ourselves and our lives straight in the face. This wisdom knows the peace that comes from acknowledging what is. The truth shall set you free, that includes the whole truth.
The whole truth can be that you are sometimes a good person who also sometimes treats people poorly. The whole truth can include that you are trying to do the right thing and end up hurting people in the process. The whole truth can include that you have dark thoughts, that you are greedy, that you want more than you should ever want, and that you are never content. The whole truth can include the fact that sometimes we do things that hurt ourselves or others because it feels good. The whole truth can be that you spend your time oscillating between thinking that you are somewhere above or below everyone and everything.
If we know we are good, then we don’t have to wonder if maybe we are bad. If we are bad, then we don’t have to try and be good. If we are good OR bad, we don’t have to be good AND bad.
This is all collapsed identity. This is all shame. This is disgust internalized.
Accept this. This is the juice.
Bite into it. This is the gooey, delicious, messy, raw, wild part of life that is dripping down your chin. This is where the people are. This is where you are, fully. This is beyond the world of Self-Help and obsessive striving.
Once you land into acceptance, you get to play in the magnificent freedom of Humor.
Every court needs a Jester to laugh at the King and Queen, even if that court is being held in your mind.
I wrote a note last month about our identities and how much we love knowing what clubs we belong to. We like to think we are right and then surround ourselves with evidence and experts that we are extra right. Beautifully human. I threw out the idea of blessing our contradictions by actively engaging them. Push two things together would traditionally be kept sacred by being kept separate. Try being a little less precious with ourselves and our rituals. I offered the idea of dunking an Oreo in Raw Milk. Not everyone loved this. They found the idea offensive. That’s okay.
They made my point for me.
Moving through life beautifully Unbothered by every fluctuation in thought, in feeling, in culture, is the real pro-move. It is the Serenity Prayer with breath and body attached.
It is that pocket of space in a moment when your hackles go up, and your ego is threatened, and you could launch into a courtroom-worthy defense or attack the person in front of you, or you could collapse into laughter and find intimacy instead. This is creative and disarming. It is making art with our lives.
It doesn’t mean that your opinions change, as a matter of fact, they probably won’t. It doesn’t mean that you feel less passionately about what you believe is right or wrong or that any of your identities have to go. It just means that you spend less time hunting the enemy in yourself and others, and more time enjoying the absurdity. Roasts are only funny when everyone can laugh at themselves.
Make the unclean clean by blessing it with your acceptance and the lightness of love.
I’ll leave you with my favorite Rumi poem because I will forever be a New Age girlie at heart.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
-Rumi
Mercy and Mercy and Mercy,
Happy 2025, everybody.
❤️
