The following reflection arises from a discussion about confidentiality that I had with some friends who work in ministries of therapy, healing and spiritual accompaniment. I offer these thoughts too to all who are in friendship and express it in a sharing of their deepest selves.
“Sssh! Let me tell you a secret… .”
Some of us share secrets with our closest family members and friends. Others disclose these to counsellors or spiritual directors, even as they share their toughest psycho-spiritual struggles and deepest holy desires.
At other times, we may be the ones whom others confide their secrets in.
Whether we speak or listen, secrets cry out to be heard. We need to utter them because humankind was not created for loneliness. A secret, pregnant with good, demands to be celebrated. A secret, dark and deep, yearns for a consoling ear. A secret concealed, however, only entombs one in a deafening silence that finally severs his bonds with that cacophony called life.
We need to share because we are human. We confess to another a secret or two, especially those that burden us with guilt, suffering or anxiety, because we need to preserve our sanity, if not our humanity. We do so in the hope that she will understand and accept, guide and accompany. To bring to light a secret that gnaws away at the core of what I am, destroying all semblance of who I really am, is nothing less than an act of courage. At the same time, this is the much needed first step for restoration, and with it, the promised peace and happiness every one of us is entitled to on earth.
Whatever we share, however, we do so confident that the one we trust will keep the secret shared safe.
Yet, don’t we sometimes blab out another’s secret, accidentally or otherwise? When the curious and preying nudge us, don’t we find ourselves saying just a little bit more than we should? And who among us hasn’t traded in gossip, now and again?
In these actions, who gets hurt?
There is another dimension to sharing secrets. It is one that challenges. Aren’t we each invited with every secret confided in us to embrace more wholeheartedly that remarkable gift of true friendship? Indeed, we cannot celebrate it unless we are humbled enough to recognize my friend as he honestly is when he voices a secret from his once guarded, silent lips—all of him that I know, and more so, now, the dark and hidden that looms before me.
If sharing secrets is a gifting of oneself to another, then, I who listen am called to keep the faith the other has in me. Keeping another’s secret is never easy; it is a heavy responsibility. But it is a sacred calling: to keep this faith is to promise another new life. Amidst the tempestuous waters of life that rage around my friend, I am called to provide a sheltered harbour where he can moor the bark of his whole being and find succour behind the safe embrace of the breakwater friendship is.
To do this for a friend—indeed, for anyone who comes asking for help, burdened by secrets—is to bless him with a profound experience of the love of God. To be Christian is to be one like Christ. In Christ, we see a model of one whom others trusted and confided in. They came to Jesus weighed down by secrets, often shameful and hurting, because in him they knew they could bare themselves naked and still be accepted as friend.
Jesus did not listen to them with reproach or dismay, or bewilderment at the beginning. He only listened with a heart filled with great compassion. Then, he spoke. He would admonish and reprimand the sinful act but he always loved the person. And then, by touching and embracing them, he made visible the love of an invisible God.
It is this love that reminds us of the infinite compassion of a God we all can turn to with our deepest darkest secret and still find favour as his beloved. We need only think of the sinful woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and anointed him with ointment, to recall how we, who are so encumbered with secrets that disfigure, can find solace in the love of God that transfigures. Like this woman, we can come to Jesus and let him remove the darkness in our lives so as to clothe us in his wonderful light.
What can we glean from Jesus as friend for you and I who will have family and friends coming again and again to confide their secrets in? Keeping someone else’s secret, no matter how heavy it may weigh on our shoulders, is in fact grace. God invites us when we listen to another speaking in trust her deepest hurts or her wildest dreams to participate in the compassionate ministry of Jesus—being there for another and loving him.
Now, isn’t this a secret worth sharing?
photo: sitting on the bench by boxman
“Sssh! Let me tell you a secret… .”Some of us share secrets with our closest family members and friends. Others disclose these to counsellors or spiritual directors, even as they share their toughest psycho-spiritual struggles and deepest holy desires.
At other times, we may be the ones whom others confide their secrets in.
Whether we speak or listen, secrets cry out to be heard. We need to utter them because humankind was not created for loneliness. A secret, pregnant with good, demands to be celebrated. A secret, dark and deep, yearns for a consoling ear. A secret concealed, however, only entombs one in a deafening silence that finally severs his bonds with that cacophony called life.
We need to share because we are human. We confess to another a secret or two, especially those that burden us with guilt, suffering or anxiety, because we need to preserve our sanity, if not our humanity. We do so in the hope that she will understand and accept, guide and accompany. To bring to light a secret that gnaws away at the core of what I am, destroying all semblance of who I really am, is nothing less than an act of courage. At the same time, this is the much needed first step for restoration, and with it, the promised peace and happiness every one of us is entitled to on earth.
Whatever we share, however, we do so confident that the one we trust will keep the secret shared safe.
Yet, don’t we sometimes blab out another’s secret, accidentally or otherwise? When the curious and preying nudge us, don’t we find ourselves saying just a little bit more than we should? And who among us hasn’t traded in gossip, now and again?
In these actions, who gets hurt?
There is another dimension to sharing secrets. It is one that challenges. Aren’t we each invited with every secret confided in us to embrace more wholeheartedly that remarkable gift of true friendship? Indeed, we cannot celebrate it unless we are humbled enough to recognize my friend as he honestly is when he voices a secret from his once guarded, silent lips—all of him that I know, and more so, now, the dark and hidden that looms before me.
If sharing secrets is a gifting of oneself to another, then, I who listen am called to keep the faith the other has in me. Keeping another’s secret is never easy; it is a heavy responsibility. But it is a sacred calling: to keep this faith is to promise another new life. Amidst the tempestuous waters of life that rage around my friend, I am called to provide a sheltered harbour where he can moor the bark of his whole being and find succour behind the safe embrace of the breakwater friendship is.
To do this for a friend—indeed, for anyone who comes asking for help, burdened by secrets—is to bless him with a profound experience of the love of God. To be Christian is to be one like Christ. In Christ, we see a model of one whom others trusted and confided in. They came to Jesus weighed down by secrets, often shameful and hurting, because in him they knew they could bare themselves naked and still be accepted as friend.
Jesus did not listen to them with reproach or dismay, or bewilderment at the beginning. He only listened with a heart filled with great compassion. Then, he spoke. He would admonish and reprimand the sinful act but he always loved the person. And then, by touching and embracing them, he made visible the love of an invisible God.
It is this love that reminds us of the infinite compassion of a God we all can turn to with our deepest darkest secret and still find favour as his beloved. We need only think of the sinful woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and anointed him with ointment, to recall how we, who are so encumbered with secrets that disfigure, can find solace in the love of God that transfigures. Like this woman, we can come to Jesus and let him remove the darkness in our lives so as to clothe us in his wonderful light.
What can we glean from Jesus as friend for you and I who will have family and friends coming again and again to confide their secrets in? Keeping someone else’s secret, no matter how heavy it may weigh on our shoulders, is in fact grace. God invites us when we listen to another speaking in trust her deepest hurts or her wildest dreams to participate in the compassionate ministry of Jesus—being there for another and loving him.
Now, isn’t this a secret worth sharing?
photo: sitting on the bench by boxman
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