101 A Story about Receiving Love

Dec 5, 2022

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Summary: In this episode, Dr. Peter brings together what we have been learning about receiving love in the story of Susanna
Lead-in: There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.” Catholic Novelist Flannery O'Connor
Intro.
1. I have been doing a lot of podcast lecturing. Dense programming, lots of information. Like Episode 99. Not a bad thing. But I want you to really take in what I'm offering at a bones level. To possess it at the felt level, to be that familiar with it. Not just head knowledge. Whole self knowledge.
2. So I am going back to another way of learning, one I haven't emphasized enough. Stories. Today, I am going to tell you a story. A story about receiving different kinds of love. Why?
3. Here's why. In the words of Edward Miller tells us. “Stories are our primary tools of learning and teaching, the repositories of our lore and legends. They bring order into our confusing world."
  1. Our primary tools for teaching and learning. And it's true. We teach our children in their earliest years through stories and experiences. Not through lectures.
5. I am Peter Malinoski, clinical psychologist, passionate Catholic, co-founder and president of Souls and Hearts and soulsandhearts.com, and I am very pleased to with you as your host and guide in this Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, episode 101 to be your storyteller, to tell you a story. This episode is titled A Story about Receiving Different Kinds of Love -- a story we can all related to.
Prepping for the Story
1. Ways to Listen
  1. Listen to the Story
2. 1. Listening to yourself as you listen to the Story.
    1. What is going on inside
    2. Listen to your own parts
      1. Can pause the audio
    3. 1. Reflective space
    4. 1. What are your noticing
    5. 1. What are you resonating with in the story, what is impacting you.?
    6. 1. What are you rejecting
3. 1. Parts -- Episode 71 A new and better way of understanding myself and others.
4. 1. Needs
    1. Primary Conditions for Secure Attachment
      1. Felt sense of safety and protection -- have to go through the valley of shame, fear, anger, grief
    2. 1. Feeling seen, heard, known and understood -- have to tolerating being in relationship, being present.
    3. 1. Feeling comforted, soothed and reassured
    4. 1. Feeling cherished, treasured, delighted in
    5. 1. Feeling the other has your best interests at heart
  2. 1. Integrity Needs
      1. My need to exist and survive
    2. 1. My need to matter
    3. 1. My need to have agency
    4. 1. My need to be good
    5. 1. My need for mission and purpose in life
5. 1. Resistance to Being Loved from IIC 99
    1. Limited vision and lack of imagination, leading to a refusal to be transformed by God
    2. We don't understand God's love
    3. The Costs of Being Loved by God
    4. Poor God images
    5. Poor Self images -- Shame
    6. Refusal to be vulnerable, to be exposed, to be revealed to God.
    7. Lack of courage.
    8. Anger at God -- rebellion
1. Cautions -- could be evocative for you -- parts of you may really connect in various ways. I want you to take care of your self and your parts as you listen to the story. If you need a break, take a break.
The Story -- Hero's Journey outline
1. The Ordinary World
  1. Susanna -- 40 year old married mother of three --
    1. Brown hair, warm brown eyes, and easy smile, she laughs at your jokes -- the kind of person that you immediately felt comfortable with. Open and engaging with other people, was well read, and could talk about your interests. Socially adept, she coordinated making meals for local women who had babies. Had a sense that she had suffered in her life and understood something about suffering. And that was true
2. 1. Life wasn't always easy for Susanna
    1. Grew up in Culpeper, VA, 75 miles west of Washington DC, oldest of four children, all girls. Named Susan.
  2. 1. Mother -- quiet, introverted - an interior designer turned homemaker.
    2. Father -- extroverted, warm, gregarious high school teacher - taught algebra, geometry and trigonometry at Culpeper County High School -- great sense of humor, gratifying, and a pretty easy grader, students loved him and he really liked being a popular teacher.
      1. Strong sense that father had favorites among the daughters, and she wasn't one of them
    3. When Susan was age 16, her mother divorced her father -- his affairs, excessive drinking
      1. Mother devastated. Really wanted her daughter to understand. Susanna was cold.
    4. 1. Read the divorce decree "Irreconcilable differences" And she was so angry
    5. 1. At an emotional level, Susan repudiated both Mom and Dad. Not understanding, not wanting to understand.
    6. 1. Decided to go by "Susanna" -- three reasons
        
        Devoted to the Chronicles of Narnia -- The last book of the series, The Last Battle. Aslan says "Susan is no longer a friend of Narnia." Given to nylons, lipstick, and party invitations -- she didn't seem serious any more.
      2. Susan was her given name -- she wanted different name, but not too different
      3. In the Bible, in Daniel chapter 13, Susanna was the beautiful, faithful wife of Joakim. She refused to be blackmailed into adultery by two respectable men of high stature in the community, two judges, who just happened to have also be voyeurs, peeping-Toms. Susanna preferred death by denunciation rather than compromise her moral principles, and was saved by a young boy, Daniel, whose clever cross-examination of the accusers revealed them to be liars. Susanna was a real heroine in her eyes, someone to be emulated.
    8. Shuttling back and forth between parents, who were drifting from the Faith.
      1. Mom pursued an annulment got it, and remarried the summer after Susanna's graduation from high school. Susanna refused to be in the bridal party, refused to go to the wedding.
    9. Like many teenagers in this position, Susan rebelled. But not by using alcohol, drugs or sex. Susan rebelled by becoming more Catholic --
    10. Went to Christendom college, it was close, it w...