A very long time ago I heard this used as a text for a sermon on Matthew 16.24. “If anyone would be my disciple let him take up his cross and follow me.” The preacher began with the tale of the child who, after listening intently to the Rector’s sermon queried her mother about the Rector’s poor teddy-bear called Gladly who was cross-eyed.
More recently I re-read a Jungian writer, Lawrence Jaffe, writing on spirituality and Jungian psychology. In his view, “To be mortal means to be limited. Our inability to overcome the reality of our incompleteness is what crucifies us.” And I remembered Gladly. What a great name for the aspects of me that are a burden to carry! I am certain that to be mature, to be a self-defining adult, means accepting, owning, loving even, the versions of me I would rather not be.
We all have skewed perception, limited by our self- regard, our inability sometimes to get out of our own way, or our fear of ‘getting into trouble’ and most of all, especially for women, the demand to ‘get it right’. All sorts of dips, cracks, voice tones or facial grimaces can set off, unconsciously, in us a reaction from long ago of which we are totally unaware. Along with this rag-bag there is our hereditary bias towards negative, an attribute that was designed to keep us from harm but too frequently runs amok. There is so much, in any given day, if we stay aware, that reminds us of our limitations, making our responses to others, especially those we love, seriously cross-eyed and out of perspective. That’s why Gladly is so useful. One cannot take a cross-eyed bear too seriously, but one has to love it, give it a bit of a hug and maybe if one is feeling really bad, cuddle it to sleep.
I am entirely convinced that we advance further in the life of the spirit if we are able to treat our shortcomings as Gladly, rather than getting hooked on our sinfulness as self-identity, an attitude which can serve to drive us further from ourselves and from a proper and holy acceptance of our incompleteness. The language of sin, the constant iteration of our sinfulness that has been such a mark of Christian worship, is absolute language. Seen from the standpoint of perfection any failure in love is sin but labelling our daily imperfections and limitations in such absolute language makes self-forgiveness harder, and without self-forgiveness our perceptions remain skewed and situations go unredeemed.
We can get so screwed up about forgiveness. We have this agenda about ‘letting off the hook’; either by thinking that if I forgive myself, I won’t bother to correct myself or what’s worse, if I forgive the person who wounded me, who isn’t even sorry, I am letting them off the hook and they will never even know how I suffered.
Once, long ago, when the words were first written, taking up one’s cross could be and often was a physical and painful reality; abuse, vilification, martyrdom were the price of following Christ. Now in much of the world, even our neighbours don’t care what we believe. As with so much of the sacred text, in today’s world, this injunction to take up one’s cross becomes a source of growth and meaning when we internalise the message and allow it to infuse our thinking and determine our choices, especially when we choose to do it Gladly.