Day 15

We are none of us born into a vacuum.

With our very first breath, we begin to internalize norms, habits, cultural markers. Even before we are born, the circumstances surrounding our parents (both biological and otherwise) impact who we will become. 

We are born with a socially-assigned racial identity, gender identity, and class status. Some of us were born with a religious identity, and most of us were raised with some sort of religious or spiritual inclination or anti-inclination.

The systems and structures surrounding these identities attach themselves to our psyches before we can understand that they even exist.

Some of us were born into trauma, absorbing the habits and patterns of survivors before we ourselves experienced anything traumatic in our lives. 

Those traditions, inheritances, and systemic structures, the foundations upon which each of our lives are built for good or ill, are what the Man card (also known as the Hierophant) represents. They are our first sense of order and structure, of safety and wellbeing. And sometimes, they cause us a lot of harm. 

Today's verse of Psalm 27 reminds us that we cannot place ultimate trust in any single human being, or even in any entity created by humans. Ultimately we will be abandoned in one way or another, even if that is simply because of the fact of death.

We can place our trust in God, the Psalmist says, but this does not mean a blindly obedient trust in a benevolent anthropomorphic ruler. For me, at least. Your mileage may vary.

For me, to feel myself lifted by God even in the midst of abandonment and despair is a lifting of my heart and spirit. It is the belief that there is a path upward out of whatever shitty situation I find myself in. Faith that I am being called out of my depths toward that path, and hope that I can get there, move in that direction.

Our families, heritage, culture, structures, even our everyday routines, can help or harm us, and often they do both. Sometimes neither. The key is to intentionally examine them in order to determine their impact and decide what we want to hold on to, and what we want to release. It's not an all-or-nothing proposition. And the knowledge that God is there on the other side of letting go might just give us the strength to move on, move forward, become who we are.