If your name isn’t known, then it’s a very lonely feeling. Madeleine L’Engle.
Every time I have a revelation, a Madeleine L’Engle instagram post backs up what the universe has revealed to me. Look at this book advertised on the page—the foreword, specifically. God hears me. I know this is true. Read the caption on the picture. That caption is what is inspiring this post.
I have been on two sides of our very broken justice system now. I have discovered we are living in a world that is separating from each other and it is a disaster. The apathy that is coming from our systems is literally killing your neighbor—your friend.
A therapist on twitter said recently that while they know there is a mental health crisis and a lot of people need therapy—that is not the answer for everything. WHAT WE NEED IS A REVOLUTION. I have been saying we need a revolution of friendship. Jesus is with me on that. John 15:15. Also, side note: our family has called six different therapists this past week and none are taking new patients. They also rarely take insurance because the insurance system is a mess. Y’all, the problems we are facing are big. Best not to sacrifice people on the altar of self-interest and self-preservation. It will come for you too. To back up the quote on L’Engle’s post—our insistence upon our independence is causing us to become malignant. That is exactly what is happening.
We as a society are telling people to go to therapy for the trauma created by the damn system. A system that refuses to self-reflect and reconsider its ways. A system that sacrifices people working on the ground nearest to the pain while people further from the pain are making sure their ass is covered and not taking responsibility for what we needs to be learned.
What I find most troubling is how the system aims to get people to forget about you. It counts on that short-term memory that so many have in our culture because it needs to be able to manufacture whatever it needs to be true in that moment and for the people to believe it. But it is not true. And if we are a society that says the truth does not matter or is whatever we believe it to be, then we are heading toward what is coming with our own permission. We broke from the inside—not the outside.
I hear the quote “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” often in the world of faith. Y’all know that is Aristotle, right? Not Jesus. Jesus was one of the parts sacrificed by a system attempting to maintain the whole that really was not whole. Easier to wash its hands like Pilot. Jesus leaves the whole for the one. There are a series of parables in Luke demonstrating the joy of finding what was lost and what was lost seemed so small, but the joy was big!
We are not whole until we connect to each other.
My name is Lindsay Bruehl and “I’m Speaking.”
There is Life Out There 