Someone Else's Wisdom

This is today's Henri Nouwen meditation. Love it!

The Virtue of Flexibility

Trees look strong compared with the wild reeds in the field. But when the storm comes the trees are uprooted, whereas the wild reeds, while moved back and forth by the wind, remain rooted and are standing up again when the storm has calmed down.

Flexibility is a great virtue. When we cling to our own positions and are not willing to let our hearts be moved back and forth a little by the ideas or actions of others, we may easily be broken. Being like wild reeds does not mean being wishy-washy. It means moving a little with the winds of the time while remaining solidly anchored in the ground. A humorless, intense, opinionated rigidity about current issues might cause these issues to break our spirits and make us bitter people. Let's be flexible while being deeply rooted.

Hoping is Believing

Today, I share a few choice thoughts on hope from Thomas Merton. These are from "Sentences on Hope," No Man Is an Island:

But the pride of those who live as if they believed they were better than anyone else is rooted in a secret failure to believe in their own goodness.

Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair.

The faith that tells me God wills all men to be saved must be completed by the hope that God wills me to be saved, and by the love that responds to His desire and seals my hope with conviction. Thus hope offers the substance of all theology to the individual soul. By hope all the truths that are presented to the whole world in an abstract and impersonal way become for me a matter of personal and intimate conviction.

God bless Thomas Merton. These thoughts on hope express well the thoughts I sometimes have when I observe university students wrestling with the question of the existence of God. I especially think that this is provocative: "A life without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair."

Is that overly dramatic of Merton to say? I don't think so. So many people--and I'm mainly thinking of the students--have not experienced a suffering that has caused them to seek radical mercy. At the University of Michigan, there is, on the whole, a lack of certain types of experiential, deeply personal suffering. Students are educated, bright, capable, responsible, diligent, and many of them have monetary wealth. They're young and in great physical condition. What does the path to belief look like for one who is in possession of all this? Even us who are Christians constantly face the temptation of being in rather than of the world when we come into possession of some of the aforementioned things and so we, at the encouragement of Christ, forsake them.

The cost of having all of these things can oftentimes be a temptation to self-reliance and a belief that one can live their life without Him. Merton expresses this well in the first quote I gave: "The pride of those who live as if they believed they were better than anyone else is rooted in a secret failure to believe in their own goodness." What defines one's "goodness" if intelligence, health, money, and talents do not?

In dictionary.com, "goodness" is defined as:

-moral excellence, virtue

-kindness, generosity

-excellent of quality

-the best part of anything, essence, strength

So, to the world, being "good" means being moral, generous, excellent at things one does, being strong, and being the best. But here's the thing: only God fully embodies all of these qualities: He alone is Virtue, Kindness Itself, and Generous, Excellent, the Best, and Strength. I think that sometimes, we can misunderstand the heart of what God says about our identity. Our egos are so easily offended when we are forced to admit that we are not the source of our own goodness. Of course we are all of these things that the dictionary lists; we were created in His image and likeness.

God is our Father, and so we've inherited and reflect His goodness. What child with blonde hair would make this claim: "I am fully responsible for the blonde-ness of my hair, I and I alone. I pat myself on the back because I have blonde hair, and I like it." This would be absurdity. It was a matter of genes; the child inherited her blonde hair from someone. The same is true for our good spiritual qualities: they are a matter of spiritual genes. To deny this is to deny the relationship we have with our Father. This is the primary offense: we deny that God's love for us created us and placed us in relationship with Him.

Suffering and moments of self-realization of our shortcomings force us to question how those have come to happen. Thus some people come to believe that God is actually bad, evil, manipulative, and maniacal. They see expressions of what is bad and evil in others, the world, and themselves, and they think that these things have been passed along via the genes of a bad god. The assertion that we--and the Devil, one who also denied his relationship with his Creator--might be responsible for the evils in the world is overwhelming and is our blind spot. If a driver of a car hits a pedestrian who is crossing the road and who has the right of way, who is responsible for the death of the pedestrian? The driver who has a blind spot or the pedestrian? The question of the existence of God, I think, sometimes comes down to a matter of whether we can believe that we have a blind spot, and that this blind spot causes harm. Even if we have experienced a meagre amount of personal suffering, of being sinned against by the world or others, can we admit that we are capable of hurting others? The first step is admitting that we may have harmed others and thus ourselves--and then, ultimately, God.

I close with brief reflection on the third Merton quote: "The faith that tells me that God wills all men to be saved must be completed by the hope that God wills me to be saved..." Faith is incomplete when we only see the needs of others. To believe that only those without food or clothes are in real need is insufficient faith. We all suffer from spiritual poverty, a poverty of the heart. As Merton says, the first person's needs we need to see is our own, our own heart poverty. We need to see our own need for God, and that will change the way we see everything.

For we are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not hope. For what a man seeth, why doth he hope for?

-Romans 8: 24

Growing into God's Apron

Tonight, I baked white chocolate chip dried cranberry walnut cookies, and they weren't for any UCO event. I started building a house out of Legos. I read Calvin and Hobbes. I finally feel like I'm taking a Sabbath, and I've been trying to do so for five days! Writing here every day is a part of this extended Sabbath experience, and I am grateful.

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Growth. How does it happen in the spiritual life? God's shown me a bit about growth through some fun things, like a book called Ella Takes the Cake, a children's book in which a little girl elephant is asked to run errands for her mother elephant who owns a bakery. The child Ella is asked to deliver a really fancy cake, and she has some troubles in trying to deliver the cake. But at the end of the book, the mother comforts and encourages Ella and then asks Ella if she would help her bake in the kitchen. Ella is stunned. The mother elephant gives her an apron, but Ella tells her mother that the apron is too big for her. The mother wisely says, "It may be too big for you now, but you'll grow into it."

God has told me many times in the past several years, "The apron I'm giving you now is too big, but I'm giving it to you so that you can grow into it." Sometimes, I am overwhelmed by God's call on my life, which is made concrete through various challenges in various areas of my life.

The apron metaphor reveals something of God's vision for us. He sees not just who we have been or who presently are but also who we will become. Because in Him there is no past, present, or future, He looks at us, works in us and through our construct of time and space and sees who we will become and wisely gives us aprons which are yet too big. And what if we make a mistake? What if we make a big mistake? It's okay. He's the One who gave us the apron and the tasks that go with it in the first place. He's not looking for perfection but a willingness to be confident and to begin being person who was made to fill out His too-big apron.

So, if we find the Lord giving us something--a task, challenge, blessing, etc.--that is clearly beyond our current capability to manage or steward, we need not worry. This is the apron that is clearly too big for us but that we will grow into. We can take it as a compliment from Him. David was a shepherd boy a field. Mary was a teenage girl. Peter was a fisherman.

Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.

-Luke 12: 27, NIV

Let's grow in holiness as the lilies do--without labor or spinning. Let's allow the Lord to dress us in the splendor of His blessings, His crosses which are always blessing, and His love.

Coming to the End of Myself

Well, I am trying to retreat and rest, but it's been difficult. I did my taxes today because you know, that's so relaxing and retreat-esque. Actually, doing taxes did relieve some stress!

But, overall, I am, as some have put it for me, "Coming to the end of myself."

Thus, I've prescribed myself to consider rest, burnout, and the like this week. During these past few days, I read a book entitled Watch Out for Burnout: A Look at Its Signs, Prevention, and Cure. This quote caught my eye:

Multiple causes account for dropout, but studies show acute fatigue one significant dynamic. The current duration-of-service norm for inner-city social workers and inner-city lawyers turns out to be only two years. One stateside psychiatrist says 50 percent of his clients are missionaries. A long-time missionary comments that a typical overseas worker lasts five to six years.

I found this very striking: half of a psychiatrist's clients were missionaries!

The book overall was not incredibly helpful, but I'd gotten it as a freebie about a year ago and hadn't read it straight through. Even reading an entire book on the subject of burnout was really helpful.

Perhaps the most fun and interesting chapter in the book was "The Healing Power of Humor." The author posits that having a sense of humor is a preventative and a healer of burnout, which is true, but I love that humor gets its own chapter! Here we go. This is good for me to read:

Humor allows us to live with the contradictions of life. The man who must always act rationally kills himself with intensity. He will embarrass himself by his own contradictory behavior. People laugh at his over-seriousness, but he cannot laugh at himself. To laugh at one's inconsistency reveals the deepest consistency...Humor allows us to live comfortably with ourselves...Perfectionism is the worst kind of seriousness, a poison that brings death to liberty and rigor mortis to the spirit. Humor is the antibiotic that heals the terribly perfect...

And another:

Work comes easier after side-splitting humor. Machinery moves more smoothly. Hope makes its reentry quickly, quietly, almost unawares. Possibilities grow luminous. Artifice and therefore stress disappear. When wheels squeak, apply the grease of humor.

So, yes, burnout. While I didn't find the book altogether that earth-shattering, I really liked the topics which were chosen for chapters:

God's Healing
The Healing Power of Humor
Genuine Spirituality
Stress and Distress
The Therapy of Creativity
God's Gift of Self-Esteem
Physical Fitness
Time
Family
Facing Fear
Converting Anger
Dealing with Guilt

What I liked about the table of contents is that the list is, I think a very creative, insightful and also Christian. But the book, on the whole, was a bit too psychologically-based; there was a particular emphasis on Jungian psychology. I would have liked to have seen the book more firmly and closely tied to Christian teaching and then been given practical suggestions on how to make changes in my life...

...Because here's the thing: knowing oneself, the basis of Jungian psychology, really only goes so far, but goes a decent distance, I think, in being the solution to caring for oneself and being a disciple. It's not self-knowledge that brings lasting freedom but that knowledge put into action, in real choices, and in Christ. If I simply know Lynne better, will I not burn out? That's part of it, sure.

But more fundamentally, I can trust that God knows me better than I could ever know myself, and my life is safe in His hands. Even when things look bad and I am at 'the end of myself,' He is there. Even when I don't understand something in my life or a reaction I have or an emotion I feel, He is there, and He alone is unchanging. Even when He is asking me to do something that "I" normally wouldn't do, He is there, still asking, still meaning to love me and others. For example, someone this year told me they thought I was quite the extrovert. And my reaction was "Huh? Heck no!" But through the Holy Spirit and over the past several years, I've been able to increase the amount of time and energy I can be around people and at some level, deny myself the luxury of only living out of who I am and what my preferences are, even if and especially if I know them. The essence of Polonius's stupid yet wise remark "To thine own self be true!" is and is not the answer to dealing with suffering and burnout.

Anyways. So the book wasn't stellar, but it provided good food for thought; it got some balls rolling in my head --not bad for a free book!

Link to "Pink" Piece

Here is the link to the newest version of the "Pink" post, as promised:

http://www.swordofthespirit.net/bulwark/march10p4.htm

Kicking Crutches

It has been a lively week for this UCO staff worker! I had a sense, about 1-2 weeks ago, that the Lord wanted to give the Ann Arbor UCO Summer Household ladies a home before UofM's spring break. Why is this significant? Because it can be a jungle of a process to find the right kind of housing for Women's SHH. I won't bore or stress you with the details of that process! But I can say that I believe God gave me extra zeal and wisdom so that I could help Him fulfill this word. Yesterday was the final day before UofM's spring break and, lo and behold, our faithful God did secure a house for us; a deposit was paid and a form was signed. There is at least one household of six women (that is, six women have committed 100 percent) at this point, praise God!

Throughout these past two weeks, the Lord's been speaking to me via this housing search about confidence and humility. First, confidence: God seeks a faithful yet decisive servant. He wants the kind of servant who, while the Master is away, goes ahead and takes risks in order to double the amount of talents originally given to him by the Master. This kind of servant knows his Master that well, that His Master is demanding. (Matthew 25:20)

Mary at Bethany: she poured out the oil and wiped Jesus's feet with it and her hair. Did he say to her, "Mary, take this oil, pour it out on my feet, and wipe my feet with your hair"? No. She took the initiative. She didn't have to ask Him or need Him to ask her to do this specifically. She knew Him. (John 12: 1-8)

There are other examples. In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the father needs to make it explicit to the older son that the older son had always been welcome to have a celebration with friends. Clearly, the older son has not taken the kind of initiative that the tennant and Mary do. There is still something lacking in the older son's understanding of his father's love and nature. Similarly, the father needs to put the robe on the younger son's shoulders and encourage this son to feel welcome as a son rather than a slave. The younger son still has more to learn about his father's love. (Luke 15: 11-32)

As I have already said, I think the Lord has been revealing more about confidence and humility to me through my SHH housing search in ways similar to those in these Scriptural examples. Okay: what is humility not? It does not consist of focusing on weakness or defects; that too, is an expression of pride, this kind of self-deprecation. This self-decprecation is sinful because it consists of a focus on the self rather than God.

True humility exists when our eyes are fixed on Him alone, when our hearts are fixed on the state of His rather than the state of our own, however 'good' or 'bad' that state might be. In times of blessing, all he asks is that we thank Him. In times of distress, all He asks is that we turn to Him. True humility says "I need the Lord" not only because we "know" by faith and by the Bible that we "need" Him. No; even more profoundly, true humility says "I need Him because I love Him." Our love for Him becomes so strong that we can say it is a matter of need. An example: when a man or woman says that they "need" another man or woman, what they mean to express is really love.

God makes it very clear throughout Scripture, in such examples as I have already given, that He does not "need" a slave. He is God: He does not "need" anything or anyone. He wants and desires to lavish love on sons and daughters. He wants the older son to come inside, the younger son to feel comfortable dressed in fine things, to give His children the Kingdom. He wants the Samaritan woman to not just have water but Himself.

Perhaps a more radical example is Job. So often times, I wonder if we say "Poor Job!" too quickly. I wonder whether we can say, "Blessed Job!" The Lord does not want Job to just have good or bad things. God is after the full capacity of Job's heart to love. God cares more about the heart of Job than He cares about the earthly concerns Job has. God's unrelenting and perfect love for Job drove Him to purify Job's heart, even if that meant suffering and ridicule for Job. And then He lavished on Job and gave back to him tenfold all the more because that is the good nature of our God!

God's love for His children is truly relentless and pure. How could we ever hope to imiate such love in our response to Him if He didn't so strongly encourage us to sacrifice all for Him? He knows our condition, our weakness, so He made His loving encouragement Law. And when we failed to keep that, to fully receive His love through perfect obedience to the Law, He sent His own Son, Jesus Christ, that we might be assured all the more that He understands our Fallen condition and so that ultimately, we might be saved from our condition.

Yet His Law and His Son remain the keys to understanding our Father's heart. His Law is not to be discounted. It is an instruction manual to God's heart; we learn much about how He loves and His Nature when we study and keep His Commandments. If it seems as though God has unreasonably high expectations of us, if the Commandments seem too strict, this is only because of our woundedness not His unreasonableness.

And yet we have a Divine Physician, Jesus Christ, who heals us through His death and resurrection! The title of this post is "Kicking Crutches." God has, as I've said in various ways throughout this post, been encouraging me to kick the crutches of fear and self. God has been showing me that although I am a sinner, with His grace, I can really be confident and run. We can kick crutches and run on His strength and grace. We can seek and expect to find the unexpected. We can find a housing situation in downtown Ann Arbor for two months before the end of February. We can walk on water as long as we don't look down and look up at Him. We can trust the grain of wheat to grow even if we can't always see it growing from beneath the ground.

We really can, do, and love "through Jesus Christ who strengthens us" (Philippians 4:13).

The Goodness of Having Roots

A Disclaimer: At points, this is a more "Catholic" (ie, I use language specific to Catholicism) post than this writer would normally post, but since this blog is this blogger's personal blog and contains reflections on her personal expression of faith and experience of God, but also since she is a great advocate of ecumenism, she is writing with reference to aspects of Catholicism and also giving a disclaimer. This is post about how I've experienced the love of God in my life, and that happens to be through particular aspects of Catholicism. So, I hope this does not offend but inspire!

You know what? I love writing. I cannot explain to you, even in words, even in words and with the grace of the Holy Spirit, explain to you how much I love writing. It is with a supernatural, Godly love that I love writing. Thank you, God, for calling me to such a vocation.

This afternoon, I've been cleaning up, editing, adding, subtracting, shaping, and praying into the most recent blog post. I'll post a link to this new version of the "My New Favorite Color: Pink" post once it is re-published.

Working this post into a new-ish piece has led me to think more about my dear friend whom the post mentions. She must be praying for me these days, or God wants me to pray for her, or both, because I've been reminded of her in small ways often in the past week and a half, beginning with being asked to edit the "Pink" post. Some examples: I met someone with name last week, and the next day, saw a truck with her last name on it pass me on the road. More small things like these have led me to pray for and think of her and her wonderful family.

I often find that God leads me to write about that subject which He has more teaching for me in. (Can you really end a sentence with a preposition like that? No. It makes me cringe...but it's staying.) So this afternoon, I wrote about: my friend, radical discipleship, martyrdom, living single for the Lord, and how to love the world as Christ does. These are not new things to think about, these things I was thinking and writing about this afternoon. I was mainly doing a lot of remembering this afternoon. And so, I've been silently asking Him as I've been writing and thinking this afternoon, "What are you trying to show me?"

"Go back to your roots. Remember how much I have loved you."

This morning, the responsorial Psalm at Mass was one that I have known since kindergarten. The Communion meditation song was one I have known just as long. Singing them was going back to my roots, and this experience was a simple and sweet gift for today. In singing this Psalm and then the other song, I recalled that I am known by the Lord and that we have a history that is very special to Him. And so, this post is mainly about being rooted in the Lord, what do our roots look like, and I'm going to share a bit about some of my "roots."

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When I was a freshman in high school, my mother had to get to her job early in the morning, which meant that she had to drop me off at school very early in the morning, early enough that there wasn't anyone for me to talk to at the school when she dropped me off. In the fall of my freshman year, sometime near the beginning of the school year, I found myself at school, bored, feeling awkward and lonely, wandering the halls trying to distract myself from these observations.

Then, I hear voices. Where are they coming from? What group of people would be hear so early in the morning? I keep walking the halls, listening and following the voices I hear. Then, I see it: the school chapel, filled with a small crowd of people, lights blazing, and the sacrifice of the Mass being celebrated, just like it is on Sundays, right here, on a weekday, in my very own school.

I can't remember if I walked in that day or sometime within the next few days, but after that day, I knew what I would be doing before school every day that I could until I graduated. I would be at daily Mass. Before that day of following voices, I didn't even know that Mass was celebrated every weekday. I mean, I think I knew it, but I really didn't understand or see those people who actually go to Mass during the week and not just on Sundays.

I did go to daily Mass almost every day during my four years of high school and prayed in the school chapel when I could get to it on my lunch hour. It was such a safe, beautiful, holy place.

Well, daily Mass has become one of those "roots" of my faith. When I first came to college, I felt lost. One of the first things I decided I would do would be to try to go to daily Mass sometimes, so that I would at least be able to encounter God in some familiar, everyday way. There were a lot of uncertainties about this new city, this new schedule and lifestyle, that of a college student, but at least the Mass would be familiar, would be a foundation and compass. And so, throughout college, there were seasons during which I was able to go to daily Mass, thank the Lord.

To this day, when I face confusion, attack, or discouragement, I turn to God in the Mass, and I find in this His resting place, His comfort, and my well-worn place in His presence. Each time I go to Mass, particularly daily Mass, I am aware of my freedom in Him. I think, "I've been here before. I've been here, here in Christ's presence. I can relax." I felt that way this morning, and I was so comforted by the fact that I can still keep going to church, going to Mass and letting God cast out my fears and questions as I have for the past sixteen years.

I just love the Lord so much for giving me a history that has details, specific blessings, memories, and graces with Him. I think the prophets and Psalmists in Scripture feel similarly. They are forever recounting the deeds of the Lord, the history of God's faithfulness to the Israelites, as they turn to praise or seek the Lord in their present circumstance. I said at the beginning of this post that I couldn't find words to express how much I love writing. Same with the Lord--it's hard to express accurately and fully my love for the Lord and nature of God. One way of doing so though is to recount His deeds, concrete times and ways in which He has been at work in my life and others'. I think that oftentimes, when we say to one another, "Hey, remember when..." what we're really saying is "I enjoyed doing that with you" or "I love you." I see this happen with the children I nanny. They often say to me, to one another, or to their parents, "Remember when _____ happened? That was great!" or "Remember when we did _____?" I personally and especially love when they remember how I beat them at Go Ninja Go or made them the sandwich they wanted. :)

In conclusion, perhaps I will exhort you to recount your own "roots" in your relationship with the Lord: what are the strong ones? He's the source, He Himself, not memories, instances of grace, etc. Him and Him alone. But, as I think I've already said, He gives us roots, things to help us stayed connected to Him and to understand His nature and love for us, and so it's good and right to recount the roots and thank Him for them:

"We will not hide [the things that we have heard and known, that our fathers have told us],
but tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the LORD, and his might,
and the wonders that he has done.

-Psalm 78: 4, ESV