Spooning the Heart

It felt they needed to be deeply held. Spooned. Quietly and gently known into a place where soul talk would emerge.

To spoon
Is to make room
For the other
To quietly be known

It doesn’t have to be physical
It’s actually quite spiritual
Holding the words and tears
Hearing the immeasurable

It’s opening the self
To let others stretch and uncurl
Finding a sacred path
For the way home

Everyone has hiding places. Closest’s where they hide some of their deepest, darkest secrets.

But in those closed spaces, the secrets don’t stay silent. They murmur amongst themselves; they whisper to each other, and then sometimes they create such a ruckus that the sounds burst out the door.

There needs to be someone to hear them.

The sounds might make their presence known as tears. They could fuel a dark depression. It could be a soul fatigue where nothing is left for living.

My friend was mumbling a few words. I was gently curious. I desperately wanted to know more, but I held back. They needed that. They needed the space to breathe.

To Spoon

I recently saw this piece of art by German artist Laura aus dem Siepen

In this image, a couple is shown spooning.

It’s beautiful.

It captures that sense of being held by someone and of silence. Of letting the one being held having the time to unfold themselves into the other.

A feeling of being safe to speak. Silence having its place to welcome words of depth.

Tears, sighs, longings, stories. All patiently heard and taken in.

It’s ok
I hear you
I will not leave
I will continue to listen no matter what you say.

It’s that little heart balloon floating above the conversation.

Spooning. That perfect symmetrical fitting into together with another’s body.

Sometimes you just want to be held and let the tears flow without questions asked, advice given, or reprimands spoken.

You want to be held in the quiet.

Spooning is the gift of one to the other. It’s a gift of patience and quiet.

Spooning the heart

It’s a beautiful picture, isn’t it?

It’s possibly also a picture that might trigger mixed feelings for some. Perhaps a grief that one doesn’t have that kind of intimacy, even in a committed relationship.

Perhaps it’s a loss of closeness once had. Possibly you’ve never had this level of being physically known and held.

I think that this depth of closeness might be found in only a tiny number of relationships. It’s where both have been willing to be vulnerable enough to risk opening themselves to the other.

But I have also known this intimacy in non-physical ways. It’s when people open themselves up for me to share the shape of them. Where they are at all their confusion, doubt, and inner-disturbance.

It’s the quiet that provides unhurried space for them to be.

That’s what I might call Soul Spooning.

Taking the risk

Can I spoon you?

There is always a risk when asking your heart’s love if this would be ok. They might say ‘yes’, they might say ‘no’.

Acceptance, rejection, or possibly complaint ambivalence.

Can I listen?

No matter who you are with, there is always the invitation to listen in such a way that the spoon of your shape presents itself in such a way that the other feels safe to be held and known.

Good listeners often say very little at all. It’s the openness of their embrace and welcome that stimulates the words to come tumbling out.

Between the words is white space

If you look around the ‘ink’ of what you are reading, you will see white space. In fact, most of this document is white with the ‘ink’ of the words layered upon it, as such.

When we listen deep, we note the white space, the silences, the voids, and we accept that this is normal to hear the ‘ink’ of what the other is saying.

It requires unhurried patience. This might take years before a murmur is heard.

We kiss the time with patience and presence.

This is the way that I find God works so often with our inner world.

God knows it all, sees it all, yet doesn’t run.

God may well quietly let what’s deepest in us to slowly emerge as we spoon with their threefold dance.

It’s an embrace where we are welcomed in.

Are you bound up?

So many of us are bound up in self-protective fetal positions of the soul. We’ve been wounded and now it’s like we’re a snail, curled up, tight in a shell.

But we were never meant to be so constrained and have this called ‘life’.

There is a desire in God for us all to uncurl, to stretch out the limbs, to strengthen out bound-up tightness.

To allow the shape of God to spoon us.

 

Questions? 
Comments?
Email me 🙂📨
barry@turningthepage.co.nz

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Quotes to consider

• ‘An embrace involves always a double movement of opening and closing.
  I open my arms to create space in myself for the other.
  The open arms are a sign of discontent at being myself only and of desire to include the other.
  They are an invitation to the others to come in and feel at home with me, to belong to me.
  In an embrace I also close my arms around the others – not tightly, so as to crush and assimilate them forcefully into myself, for that would not be an embrace but a concealed power-act of exclusion; but gently, so as to tell them that I do not want to be without them in their otherness.
  I want them in their openness.
  I want them to remain independent and true to their genuine selves, to maintain their identity and as such become part of me so that they can enrich me with what they have and I do not’. Judith M Gundry-Volf, Miroslav Volf.

Questions to answer

1. Would it be scary to be known in such a deep and intimate way?
2. What feelings emerged as you thought about spooning?
3. Look at the picture. What interesting little features has the artist has woven into the story?

Formation exercise

• Create a story about the picture. What are the couple saying or not saying? What happened before they spooned and what will happen after? Who are these two people? Give them names, backgrounds, hopes, dreams, fears, longings.

Further reading

Please. No Fixing, Advising, Saving or Straightening Out

Words that heal

Risking a Sacred Conversation

Barry Pearman

Image by  Laura aus dem Siepen