"Onward, Christian Soldiers"

I might just be numbing myself to the language after a whole group of these songs, but this one also seemed not so horrible, stirring with its martial tune, even. Unless you consider the rather telling title. Ugh. I've never thought people with guns talking about the glory of God to be a selling point. The songbook will be over soon.

Hoorah for the mini-ra-rahs! That would be the technical term for my own personal inner cheering squad. When I was a deeply cynical and sarcastic teenager, prone to oh-so-many angst driven bouts of low self esteem, even then, I had the ra-rahs. They felt smaller then, and their voice was very quiet, but I made what felt like a radical decision to let them speak, to let myself know that there was love somewhere for me. I was worthy of love, somewhere, and life was worth living. I chose the path of the inner ra-rahs.

The other day I was having a fairly difficult day, not just tired, but hungry and headachy and entirely out of sorts, and there was a part of me that recognized that I was in the land of potentially very bad decision making. I'm not sure that it was the same ra-rahs that helped me out here, that original squad has morphed into something else, I think, but maybe they're cousins to these folks. Because I felt the tiny voice again, this time saying 'ra! ra! yes! you managed to not make a bad decision right there! ok, you didn't make a good decision, but nothing is better than the bad here, oh yes! ra! ra! ok, can you do it again, make a very small good decision--yes! yes! that was tiny beyond belief, but it was good! good and tiny! ra! ra!'.

There is something to be said for peopling our inner landscape with good things, specialized little parts of ourselves to take over very important things. Then, the big step is still that choice to listen, to know that the right action is often not the easiest, but that we can still be our own best friend on the path our souls guide us most clearly towards.