Good Relationships

Social anxiety can be a difficult barrier in knowing how to build good relationships. This was a problem for Helen for much of her life. But after much reflection and work to understand God's desire for people to live and interact with other people to eternity she has found peace and confidence. -Editor.

Then the cities which the Philistines had taken from Israel were restored to Israel, from Ekron to Gath; and Israel recovered its territory from the hands of the Philistines. Also there was peace between Israel and the Amorites. 1 Samuel 7:14

In my mind, the recovery by the Israelites of territory that the Philistines had taken represents the Lord restoring to the spiritual mind much of the natural mind that had turned away from it, all the way toward the outermost parts which have to do with our knowledge of how to live. The land the Israelites held was more interior, while the land of the Philistines was further west all the way to the ocean. The Writings say a sea represents knowledges (Secrets of Heaven 2761:2).

The difficulties the Philistines caused the Israelites reminds me of my difficulties with other people. In my life I have suffered very much from anxiety in relationships. Of the varying facets making my particular distress, one of the worst was a real inability to know how to resolve problems when they occurred. At times I felt a retardation in this area. If I imagined that another person was upset with me about something, real or not, I worried and worried to the point where I became full of fear and would do anything to please the other person and make the anxiety stop. Other times the fear paralyzed me and made me never want to see the person again. Needless to say I enjoyed my times alone more than with people, and was well into my adulthood before realizing not everyone had this disabling response in situations. At times when I had to function, I’d put on a bravado that I didn’t care very much about what other people thought about me, or, if they were angry with me. In the decades when I was younger it was fine because it was much easier to not care then. But some part of me cared, very, very, very much. And as the years wore on, it became more difficult to not care. It seemed like I was put into this world by an unseeing and uncaring God. And I felt stuck here on the earth, not knowing how to function in it, and at times I suffered very much.

I already mentioned that my main failing was not knowing how to resolve problems brought on by relationships. I could care for others in less important ways, like wishing them well when they had a problem, but the more important ways of me interacting with them, well, I felt like a loser. In this I’ve underlined the word ‘know’ two times to show that I came to realize my failing had to do with a lack of knowledge, the kind of knowledge that the inner parts could use to bring about good resolutions to differences between others and me—the knowledge represented by the land closer to the ocean that was held by the Philistines.

The evil represented by the Philistines is that of faith alone, or knowing truths but being unwilling to use them in your life. This seems the opposite of my situation, which was a lack of knowledge, but somehow this passage about the Philistines has helped me. I suppose it has to do with the not caring part, because I masked my distress by not caring. Which wasn’t a solution anyway.

As I’ve gotten older, it’s become abundantly clear to me that after I leave this world, I’ll be going into a world where I will have to be with all the people who have ever lived. That’s a lot of people to be with. And it’s not only all the people who have ever lived on this earth, but it’s all the people who have ever lived on other planets, too. If Swedenborg is to be believed, then they’re in the spiritual world, too. In my distress I wondered how the Lord was ever going to get me to be happy to eternity if I have to interact with them? I could not figure out any escape except to be in hell, which wasn’t a solution. At some point I remembered that other religions have names for God, especially the Muslims, who have a devotion of saying a hundred names for God and meditating upon them. Whether I was remembering this right or not became irrelevant, because I started to realize that if the Lord wants us to live forever with other people, which He seems pretty emphatic about, then He is going to have to do something. He is the One who wants it, and He is the only One who actually knows how to get us to live together and get along. Then I realized if I were to give Him a name, it would be that He is the ‘God of Good Relationships.’ In other words, He is the only one who can accomplish this, and it is His responsibility to show me how to have good relationships. It made me feel better to get rid of the responsibility. The humor in it uplifted me, but didn’t bring an immediate resolution to my difficulties. I have capitalized the ‘h’ in ‘He’ to emphasize there is a vast the difference between what the Divine can do and what I could do.

I worked on my distress by talking with my friends about things like I’ve just told you; and they would laugh knowingly and agree that relationships are a real problem. During that time I realized neither I nor they were responsible for the ‘good’ that was in good relationships. Since the Lord is the source of everything good, it REALLY is only ‘He’ who can provide them, and none of the good comes from ‘we’ human beings.

Realizing this deeper truth really did take the weight of responsibility off of me and the other person, and put it on the Lord. At some point in all this I had a dream in which I was in the neighborhood in the city where I grew up. The light got a bit dimmer, but I adjusted and could see fine. I met a woman who lived in a house along the row of houses I had lived in. She showed me around, and I was amazed at how livable the house still was. During this time I was aware of a lot of noise coming from the back of the house and other houses along that row. It was the sound of many people socializing noisily, talking, barbecuing, chatting, kids playing and running this way and that. I never saw them, but was aware of them. And though I didn’t see the yards, I knew they were much larger than when I was growing up. With no fences between them.

I was brought back to when I was young and we lived so much of our lives in the front of our houses and in the street. During the summer, neighbors sat on the steps outside in the evenings enjoying the slightly cooler air, chatting and talking while we children played ball and ran back & forth. I was most aware of how easy the relationships were with other people then, happy with a sincere kind of innocence within them. And the people in my dream in the yards of the row of houses were enjoying that same kind of relating and knowing one another. I woke up and the feelings from my dream held on. Slowly I became conscious that the woman in my dream was sharing a kind of inner emotional truth with me. In her wordless way she was telling me I can have happy relationships with others. They were being provided for me by the Lord; all I had to do was accept the good things the Lord was giving me and not turn away from them. Most importantly, I had nothing to do with providing these good things myself. I must not take a bite out of the apple in the Garden of Eden, but rather wait for the cool of the evening when the Lord will come and we will walk together.

Since the dream I have felt springy and joyful about relationships with people. The fear and distress that was my constant companion have gone away. And now I am happy that one of the promises about heaven is that I will be with people to all eternity. I do believe parts of my natural affections that were held captive by the Philistines have been reclaimed by the Lord and given back to my spirit. And the Amorites, who represent evils in general (Secrets of Heaven 1867:3), no longer threaten at the gate. It says in the Word, “Also there was peace between Israel and the Amorites” (1 Samuel 7:14). This doesn’t mean that difficulties don’t ever bother me, and in the last few months I had another reminder that the Amorites are restless, but that in the end I must trust because the Lord is the God of Good Relationships.

Helen Kennedy

Helen has been writing for many years, and, after going through a long spell of writer’s block, has finally returned to the writing she loves. Currently, essays have been her main focus, and she finds the material in Swedenborg’s Writings packed with unique, interesting, and ponderable concepts. They make living forever a joyful prospect.