Self-Compassion: The Missing Piece in Sacred Self-Care
Every year without fail, I encounter this Leonard Cohen lyric:
"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."
I'll be honest—I usually hear these words in mostly white progressive spaces, and I have to suppress an eye roll. They've always struck me as cliché, a glib commentary on a world that's literally on fire: "Things are messed up. People are suffering. But that's how the light gets in!" It feels overly simplistic.
But lately, I've been trying to hold these words with curiosity. I've learned that indigenous artists sometimes intentionally create imperfections in their work. Weavers might introduce a thread that disrupts an otherwise symmetrical pattern, or leave a thread loose. Some say this allows the spirit to escape from the object, as if an over-identification with the created object would be harmful. Others say introducing imperfection reminds us that the Creator is the only one who is perfect—that imperfection is a natural part of the human condition and the beauty of the world.
With this perspective, I've been rethinking Cohen's lines, seeing in them a kind of rugged beauty that might offer wisdom for our sacred self-care journey.
The Power of Words We Speak to Ourselves
In James 3:1-12, the author takes self-control in speech as his main topic. James appears more pessimistic about humanity's ability to use speech righteously than many moralists of his time. He warns religious teachers that because they use language and have influence, they're subject to temptations like flattery, deceit, arrogance, and frustration at being contradicted.
For James, self-control in language is a sign of maturity, but he acknowledges this maturity is extremely difficult to obtain. He compares the tongue to a bit in a horse's mouth or a ship's rudder—something very small that controls so much. "The tongue is a fire," he says, something that can contaminate and ruin the course of life. James gives the tongue almost cosmic powers to spread evil.
But today, I want us to consider not how we use words toward others, but how we use words toward ourselves. How do we talk about ourselves to ourselves? How do we talk about ourselves in the cracks of life? How do your words about yourself support or detract from your self-care? How skilled are you at self-compassion?
If you're a person who seeks justice and beauty and the common good, if you're following the radical and prophetic Christ in this world, your critics will only multiply. So how are you becoming your own best ally?
Our Inner Critics
I struggle to talk about myself kindly. I struggle not to shrink myself, which is ironic because I'm a pastor and preacher. My temptation is to apologize for everything—every single crack. It's automatic. I apologize for missteps, for all the things I could have done, for all the things I don't know, for anything with even a whiff of taking up too much space.
Yet I realize that in our current political crisis, over-apologizing won't help me or anyone else.
When we read James's warning to be careful with our tongues, we might take it in stride when thinking about how we speak to others. But when his warnings turn from external talk to internal talk, we're in a whole different ballgame of difficulty. Many of us talk to ourselves in ways we would never, ever talk to anybody else. Sometimes that self-talk sounds like somebody from our past. We allow our self-talk to create worlds in our heads which distort the truth about who God has named us and what God wants for us.
As Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes puts it in her book: "If we were to treat other people as we treat ourselves, that might look less like kindness and more like keeping constant judgment and criticism upon them, burdening them with excessive responsibility, using demeaning language toward them, and demanding that they neglect their health."
For me, not being self-controlled in my internal language usually comes in one of two forms:
- My inner critic pops up and I obsessively analyze past actions
- My "should monster" pops up, and I hyper-focus on all the present and future things I should be doing
In both cases, I use language toward myself that props up the idea that there should be no cracks in life, none. Instead of attempting to become sinfully subhuman, which all the Christian teachers of my past warned me against, I attempt to become sinfully superhuman, which far too few ever named as a temptation. Instead of remembering that I am created both from God and from earth, I try to dust the dust of existence off my shoulders to become more heavenly.
The Cost of Self-Criticism
In her book "Radical Friendship," Buddhist teacher Kate Johnson tells a story about naming her inner critic "Jabba the Hutt" (because it was always "jabbing" her). She realized she needed to confront and befriend her inner critic during a silent meditation retreat.
Before the retreat, she had "quietly decided that she would do the retreat the hard way, which meant acting on a subtle belief that being mentally brutal with herself was the best way to swiftly spur herself toward enlightenment." After one particularly uncompromising day of following the schedule to the minute and cramming in extra meditation sessions during mealtimes, she was crossing from the meditation room to the hallway when she heard an inner voice comment, "Not good enough."
In the short walk to her dormitory, that voice chimed in at least half a dozen times: "Walking, not slow enough. Stopping on the way to my room to get some tea, not focused enough." Every action she took provoked harsh inner commentary: "Putting honey into the tea, not hardcore enough."
She realized these internal criticisms had been present for quite some time, but were so subtle and familiar she didn't notice them. "I heard them," she writes, "but they appeared in my mind as if they were simply truth. Each comment only hurt a bit, like a pinprick. But at the end of the day, being pricked every few minutes, I was aching and full of holes."
Aching and full of holes. That aptly describes how our inner monologues leave us, even when we're doing our very best in pursuit of God and justice.
Self-Compassion as the Antidote
James reminds us that both our external talk and internal talk are connected to our spiritual maturity. Both affect the course of our lives. Researchers are now learning that self-compassion is the antidote to self-criticism.
Self-compassion is simply recognizing your suffering—the pain points in your life—and attempting to alleviate them just as you would for someone else you care about: kind gestures, loving words, touch. Showing these things to yourself.
Dr. Kristen Neff points out that self-compassion is not the same as high self-esteem, which often relies on doing well and crumbles when you're not. Self-compassion is also not the same as never feeling guilty about anything. We do need to sometimes be critical of behavior, but that's different from being critical of who we are.
To practice self-compassion is to root ourselves in the reality that we are human, that we fail, that there will be cracks. And it is to take the hopeful posture that such things make way for light and real life.
Why is self-compassion critical to self-care? As Dr. Laurie Santos (who hosts The Happiness Lab podcast) puts it, "Self-flagellation is self-defeating." Everything social science knows about self-compassion refutes what is a common idea for many of us: that we need to be self-critical to stay motivated. That's actually not true. There's no evidence that supports it.
We don't get better by beating ourselves up. We get better by becoming our own best ally because then we're more likely to learn from our mistakes. At a time when the world is absolutely on fire, we need to remember that we must take care of ourselves in the days ahead in order to learn, grow, and for all of us to survive together.
What Is That In Your Hand?
Lately, I've been reading through Exodus and thinking about the wilderness we're clearly in now. One thing that has landed deeply in my heart is a simple question God asked Moses.
As God invited Moses into the work of liberating the Hebrew people from slavery, Moses protested that he wasn't good enough. His speech disability disqualified him, he thought. I wonder what Moses' self-talk had been like for all those years in the wilderness. How had he been talking to himself about himself?
Yet God asks him a simple question that cuts through his false perceptions: "What is that in your hand?" What's in his hand turns out to be an old staff that he's always carried with him. And yet it's that old staff that plays a role in nearly every miracle God worked through Moses.
This is a moment when God is asking us, "What is in your hands?" What are those everyday skills, talents, gifts, and things that we carry that can play a role in the liberation God wants to work in our world in this wilderness season? Will our self-talk help us recognize the good things we uniquely carry in this moment? Or will it lead us to shrink back, to waste time objecting to God's call?
James is right. The language we use can and indeed does affect the course of our lives and the course of our world.
We started this sermon series because so many of us were and are moving through stages of grief. During moments of grief, the tendency is to neglect ourselves. We started it because there will be plenty of moments for the holy work of protests and organizing ahead. But those will not be sustained for very long without sacred self-care.
As we approach Palm Sunday and consider the cross, don't forget that we follow a God who was most revealed in weakness, in a moment of incredible vulnerability. Because of that, we can do what Leonard Cohen suggests: we can forget our perfect offering. If God could let the light in in that most subversive of ways and moments, through vulnerability and weakness, so can we.
