“Hi, I’m Dan and I’m powerless over the Lie”.
I say those words at each Q faith community meeting.
I then continue to reflect aloud about the issues of my life, as honest as I am ready to be. For the first few meetings, although I found great meaning in that statement, I used this introduction because I witnessed others who introduced themselves in this way. It was the custom. Now, as I’ve become more at home in these intimate online gatherings, I continue to experience the profound and challenging wisdom in these few words.
I am powerless over the Lie.
Or I can also say it this way: I do not have control over the false projection of myself, the self-deceptive avoidance, nor the old patterns of thinking and acting that no longer serve me or those I love.
In these disciplined and quiet circles, I am uncovering even more layers of half-truths and justifications. I am sensing how the radical truth sheds light on the shadow areas of my life.
In all this discovery, I experience the accompaniment of the Spirit in the friendship of this small group of wounded healers. I find safety in the 12 Step process of recovery and honest revelations. Although this small ego who goes by the public name ‘Dan’ is quite powerless, the paradox is that the authentic self is infused and surrounded with loving power, joy and purpose.
I continue to sense how some of areas of this shadowy Lie are personal; some are societal. They are often confused, yet I find it helpful to try to separate the responsibility and source. The personal Lie involves the ways I protect myself. It is how I attempt to relieve my suffering in numbing myself, in addiction and illusion.
The societal Lie continues to show up in how I was socialized: raised to be a white settler male and as an evangelical Christian; how those old maps have become useless for me, as I learn how to travel off the map and to trust some deeper instincts of navigation.
The sacrament of meeting with a wise process of truth-telling reveals a means of grace in my life. It is why I continue to keep showing up at Q meetings.
And it’s why I am so willing and excited to assist a new Q faith community in Kamloops, where I live and work. Please be in touch with me if this new emerging community in Kamloops is of interest to you (dan@danhines.ca) You can learn more about Q faith communities here:
I see the subtle guidance of the Spirit in how a potential group of people are beginning to come together in this city: a group longing for an authentic, honest, and courageous spiritual community. I have been yearning for this for so many years, yet I didn’t seem to have the full green light to move ahead. Nor, before my experience of Q, did I have the kind of quiet gentle-yet-fierce approach- you could call this ‘the container’- that offered the practices of integrity and compassion that I was longing to find. So, it continues to activate a growing awareness in me that I want to do what I can do to help realize a Q expression here in Kamloops.
I don’t pretend to have a clear vision! I don’t know how it will happen; there are no details to any plan at this point. What is there? There is trust, a holy impulse, and some clear light on a few next steps.
That is more than enough for me.
In love, Dan (still powerless over the Lie)