In Harry Potter world there is a character who goes through enslavement and then encounters freedom and then grows to become trusted and dearly loved by the protagonist of the story. There is a scene towards the end of the story where Dobby (the formerly enslaved house elf) is dying. Dobby, who has gone through the process of experiencing true friendship with a beloved comrade fighting pervasive darkness expresses the following sentiment.
“Such a beautiful place, to be with friends.
Dobby is happy to be with his friend, Harry Potter.”
I mean clearly this wrecks Harry. I’m just really being floored by friendship these days. I know parts of why that is. I finally took some of Brene’s research and started applying it to my own story in a more intentional embodied way, digging into the conversations around trust, vulnerability, and boundaries while beginning to move towards things that matter to me. It’s just been so beautiful to be with friends. I think I feel how I imagine Dobby felt in that moment. He knew that he was loved and seen and his friend was heartbroken to lose him, because he was deeply known and loved by his friend.
Maybe part of it is that I feel very much like I am stepping into a new season of adulthood as well. I’m engaging with aspects of my life in ways that are allowing me to cultivate self confidence and promote self acceptance and ultimately flourishing. What I’m finding in this process is a deepening love for my friends. (Not that I haven’t loved deeply before, because I have). Things aren’t just one way or the other often times. However, the depth of connection that my friendships are naturally seeking these days has been unprecedented in my life so far.
One of my friends was speaking into me recently and they said that I have a gift with connecting to people and drawing them out in a way that is oriented towards depth. It’s curious to reflect on that, because when I did strength finders, connectivity was one of my top five. At the time, I was like “who gives a shit, my life is still fucked,” but now I’m not feeling that way at all. I have said goodbye to the cultural clock. I didn’t make the cut of whatever that societal framework demanded (for a number of reasons that I’m not going to go into right now). That freedom to make peace with that and pursue things that matter to me is life changing. To accept what I’ve been given and to allow myself to grow from here towards things that bring me more alive.
The pure in heart shall see God is not simply a transcendent experience with ecstatic love that the structures I was formed by in my youth seemed to reach for in a future, obscure, nebulous, version of the hereafter. In my lived experience, this statement is speaking more to a reality within the tactile nature of an embodied reality that calls me deeper into the varied expressions of the divine in my fellow inhabitants of this life between the doors of birth and death.
To begin to see and know the beauty and rich inheritance I’ve been given within this body is impacting me. To see the preciousness of my own dreams, hopes and story allows me to see and call out the beauty I see in others and appreciate the beauty of the surrounding reality in a deeper more meaningful way. The orientation of my heart towards wonder and curiosity leads to a childlike approach within this lived experience. This tenderness and vulnerability acts as a natural door to connection with beauty in the world around me. This drawing deeper into the now and engaging with my own suffering in a way that allows me to heal has shifted me in a way that was unexpected. This living conversation keeps growing and deepening and becoming more rich as the words, “Your good son, Joel” reverberate through the corridors of my internal structures and empower healing as I learn to engage with desire in a way that leads to life. This is how I met Christ. The embodied sacramental nature of reality is compelling and a God who incarnates and co suffers with humanity is more beautiful than anything I could have imagined.
structures of home 