A reflection on spiritual rebellion, wounded healing, and learning to love the unlovable

Some people feel most at home in places of polish and perfection.

I have always felt most at home in the trenches of the human soul.

A small note before I begin

Although I reference spiritual teachers and traditions that shaped my early life, I am not writing from a religious perspective. I am, at heart, a seeker—someone devoted to the wisdom that emerges wherever truth reveals itself, whether that comes through ancient teachings, contemplative practice, psychology, mysticism, or lived human experience.

This morning’s meditation stirred something deeply in me, and I sent my spouse a message that felt both provocative and honest. I loved every word of the reflection because it revealed the rebel in Jesus—the one who went against the rigid norms of the religious hierarchy of his time, a system in which women lived only at the outer fringes. After all, it was Jesus who allowed the woman at the well to wash his feet and then, in turn, washed hers in an act of unconditional love, acceptance, and solidarity. “What is in the one is in the Whole.”

The more I read the parables and metaphors and stories of Jesus going against the grain of religious doctrine, the more I see that his message was not about exclusion or worthiness systems at all, but about loving everyone equally and spending time with those the world had cast aside. When I say that I want to become more Jesus-like, it is not a religious statement in the slightest, because everything I admire in him is the complete antithesis of religious dogma.

That reflection also made me think about something much more personal—why I have some reservations about an exclusive living develpment as a possible home in the future. Beyond the practical distance from where I physically need to be, there is something about the place that feels monochrome and uppety, or filled with the newest generations of hipsters, and it feels unrepresentative of the whole to me on a human level. Perhaps that is simply where I find myself spiritually now, as a wounded healer whose calling is to love the unlovable into loving themselves so that the love they discover within can be carried outward into the collective. And yet when I look at environments where everyone seems to look the same, act the same, smile the same, drink the same expensive coffee, I cannot help but wonder how deeply people truly know and love themselves if they all must stand in line like ducks in a row.

For me, my comfort zone has always been somewhere else entirely. You will find me much more at home in the middle of the muck—in the war zones of addiction, trauma, hate, and self-loathing that exist in the trenches of the human condition. That is where my purpose leads me and where my passion tells me I belong. It has taken close to sixty-two years for me to even begin to feel comfortable saying that out loud, let alone understanding it and welcoming it as my calling. And I have never been one to do anything in half measure. If the divine wants me in the trenches, I am quite certain I can find a designer uniform and a pair of practical stilettos that will do just fine.

The reflection that inspired my message spoke about how spiritual systems often create insiders and outsiders—layers of worthiness and belonging that separate people rather than unite them. Yet the stories about Jesus consistently show someone uninterested in protecting those kinds of systems. Again and again, he moved toward the people who had been excluded by them, disrupting customs and rules that placed ritual, status, or purity codes above compassion. Much of what is written about him is essentially the story of someone challenging closed systems that elevated rules over human beings.

Another reflection this morning spoke about the value of stepping away from the noise of the world. My spiritual director has been encouraging me to incorporate periods of hermitage into my life—four days at a minimum where I turn off all electronics, step away from the world entirely, and simply empty myself of earthly burdens so that the inner container can refill again with something deeper and more soulful. As Thomas Merton once wrote: “Practically no reading all day – spent a lot of time ‘empty’ and it was a happy solitary day – a gift from God.”Another teaching I read today spoke about the importance of spiritual practice itself. “How can you say to yourself that you have truly entered a spiritual path unless you can look back on years of daily practice and take comfort in the momentum that it has given you?”

That reflection was followed by another passage describing how the voices of the world can become a “cacophony of chaos,” constantly pulling us this way and that. The suggestion was simple: take breaks from the noise of the world, find stillness, and listen for the quieter voice within. The passage concluded with the familiar words: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” That line is one I know by heart. I sang it many, many times growing up—in church, in Sunday school, at Bible camp, and at youth group. Yet I find far more meaning in those words now than I ever did during those years when my life was filled with trauma, pain, confusion, and anxiety. Back then I prayed daily for salvation from the chaos of my upbringing, which later manifested as addictions, especially my lifelong battle with severe eating disorders.

Through what I can only describe as the mercy of the divine—and through what still feels to me like a miracle—I experienced a moment of healing that defies explanation. After a posthumous visit from my father in spirit, in which he offered the validation he could not give me while he was alive, I went to bed one night carrying nearly forty-eight years of bulimia and disordered eating in my body. Eight hours later I woke up, opened my eyes, and knew with absolute certainty that it was the first day of my adult life free from those disorders.

I went to sleep with bulimia and woke up eight hours later, without it.

Because of that moment, and because of what I know about the divine—however small that knowledge may be in the vastness of the infinite universe—I cannot help but believe that something greater than us exists, regardless of the name it is given or the interpretations people attach to it. Something that witnesses every micro-moment of existence: every breath, every heartbeat, every blink of an eye, every sigh, every word we think or speak, and every feeling we experience. That is why the TAOist teaching about “practice” resonates so deeply with me. A spiritual path is not a casual hobby that appears only when life is easy. It requires devotion. It asks for consistency when we are tired, when we are unhappy, when we are hurting, and when we would much rather sleep an extra couple of hours.

Without even realizing it, I have been on that path since I was eleven years old. Even then I sensed that my life would somehow involve teaching the unlovable how to love themselves so that the love they discover within can ripple outward into the collective. If enough individuals begin shining that inner light, perhaps together those lights can illuminate the dark corners of humanity where hate, bigotry, and cowardice hide behind systems of superiority that divide human beings from one another.

And I am reminded of another song from my childhood that has taken on far deeper meaning for me now than it ever did back then: “This little light of mine, I’m going to make it shine.” Maybe that is all any of us are really here to do. And perhaps the real question isn’t whether the world is dark or broken or divided.

Perhaps the real question is simply this:

Where, in the vast trenches of the human condition, is your light asking to shine?