The Legend of Diamond Hill
In one of my first blog posts, I introduced the sense of place that Diamond Hill holds for me in my life. (Diamond Hill) Little did you know that there is also a Legend of Diamond Hill. I have heard varying versions from the locals, but they all go something like this…
A wealthy Chicagoan who was connected to / working for the mob was spending time in Trempealeau County, Wisconsin and was courting a local woman. He took her to the top of Diamond Hill and proposed to her there. She flatly refused him and threw her ring over the top of the hill. (No, the ring hasn’t been found. And frankly, the first time I heard this story I thought it was going to have a different ending, gulp.)
Diamond Hill has been known in the area for its view and over the years many engagements and from what I have heard even a few weddings have taken place at its overlook. In spending time at our family farm going through my divorce, I loved the account that a woman had bravely refused marriage on that hilltop. Perhaps someday one of us will even find the diamond ring! One day as I contemplated the view, it came to me that for all of us the call is to “be the diamond” more than “to get the diamond.”
Don’t get me wrong. I always wanted children, my children – and I wanted to raise them within the context of a loving marriage. Marriage and parenting, in whatever forms they occur, serve as blessed vocations. I will say though, that based on what I had wanted for my life and from my marriage, the balance was off.
While I read in the gospels “love your neighbor as yourself” from a young age, I often say that the Love Commandments in the gospels get skewed in Christian and Catholic theology and practice. Sacrificial love - often to the point of loss of self – rules the day in word and deed in many Christian contexts. We can love others in ways that deny our own needs, thoughts and ways of being. In these situations, we aren’t really loving them. What if instead, as the commandment states, we trained in a love teaching grounded in honest and healthy mutuality? Put another way, can we really believe that we can’t and don’t love others unless we love ourselves? Well, I do now.
The cognitive understanding of “put on your own mask first” started to settle in more deeply for me after a conversation eight years ago with my then 12 year old son. His father had recently moved out of the house. My youngest crawled up on my bed late one night to show me a digital project he was working on for his religion class. I had my laptop with me too and I was planning an upcoming class. After we talked through his project he paused and asked me, “How do you do it, mom?” I was confused and asked him what he meant. “How do you teach? write? Have four kids? The house? All of it?” I took a deep breath and responded, “I do it for you four – you four children are the most important people in my life…” and before I could continue, he cut me right off and said firmly, “No, mommy, YOU are the most important person in your life.” (long pause, sigh) Yep, he was right. Ouch.
I’ve had to become “the one” for me. That’s what God wants for me. That’s what actually helps me love others more honestly, generously and fully. This process has taken the time and hard work of rewiring and reframing many parts of myself and my life. Updating faulty spiritual concepts and theologies might happen quickly at the intellectual level, but integrating them psychologically and emotionally so that they become embodied and flow naturally into life - that takes a lot of clearing and rebuilding. And then you have to make sure that the river doesn’t get dammed up again.
So this is one version of what it might look like to start to “be the diamond” and to discover that I am my own meaning in light of the Sacred. What’s yours?