Giving thought to my last couple of posts – It seems that I am addicted to self-sabotage, based firmly in PTSD and religious indoctrination that reinforced the belief that I have to fight – to hide – my own very being-ness, because it is a danger to me.
As I was pondering this, a Sunday School chorus quietly came to mind from my childhood and filled me with sadness as I realized how very differently I perceived it when I was a child.
“This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine …”
The second verse says “Hide it under a bushel – NO! I’m gonna let it shine” … and I always wanted to protect the candle…
When you yell “no” and yank the “bushel” away, the very motion of moving the bushel would suck the flame away from the wick and it wouldn’t shine anymore. But then I also feared the light would set fire to the bushel protecting it.
😢
I love the idea of people being lights and that light being let to shine. Children should shine and not have their brightness snuffed out.
I always wanted to sing the song softly and much more slowly. To cherish the light.
I never liked the verse about Satan blowing it out – it didn’t make sense to me.
Pulling the bushel away from the light would blow it out though. That was the sad thing. (Autistically, I took it very literally and it wasn’t a scientifically solid concept, so I dismissed it. Although now I imagine some might say Satan blew it out when I was raped).
I wanted to protect the light. If I was the light, I wanted to protect me. I have hauled that “bushel” around with me everywhere to protect the little light of mine.
It made me think of the little firefly that once hid under the straw hat in my room when I was a little girl …
This little light of mine.
I’m gonna let it shine.
The song always made me feel so sad. So protective, and so sad.
There’s so much more stuff loaded in this song, but this was my reaction to the first two verses when I was a kid. And part of how it plays into my sense of hiding myself.
Just to be safe.
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