It's All About You

This morning I’ve been reflecting on my last blog post and especially the wisdom from Mother Teresa:  “In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”

So often we are consumed – at least I am – with thinking about what others do or say or think. We compare ourselves to others, what they have achieved or where they have failed -- in our opinions. We judge others, usually without benefit of full knowledge of them and their circumstances. We measure our worth by how we think the world views us.  We imagine slights and offense where none may have been intended, and then we react unkindly – toward ourselves and them.  How many times, in just the last few weeks, have I been incredibly judgmental of myself because of how I thought someone else was disrespecting me! So much of how I view myself is based on outside influences and how I react to them. 

But ultimately, it is how kindly and lovingly we view ourselves and the world that matters.  It is not the number of people who love me or are kind to me, respect me or appreciate me, not how many people invite me to their parties, or pick me for their team, or even how many people will show up at my funeral when I die: these are artificial measurements that only make our egos feel better. Truth lies in understanding and accepting that what other people do and how they treat me and others has nothing to do with me and everything to do with them.  My perceptions and resulting self-talk are the only things that I can control. 

The true measure of my lovability – my ability to love – is how well I love others, the kindness, respect and appreciation I have for them, regardless of the way they treat me. What they do is their business, not mine. It is not my place to punish or change or train them. How I respond to things in my life over which I have no control shows my true depth of spirituality, my willingness to love and accept that I am worthy of love. It is me making the right, loving choices for me, irrespective of the choices others make. It is learning to withhold judgment, learning to let go of little things that feel hurtful, loving people anyway and doing what I am meant to do with my life – that will make me authentic and whole and help me fulfill my purpose.

I create my own Hell on earth by judging myself and allowing others’ judgments of me – real or perceived – to break my heart. That is what brings me pain and estrangement – from others and from God. And Hell is the ultimate estrangement from God.  I think it’s something we all do to ourselves; it is not God casting us into a fiery pit of despair: we cast ourselves there.

It’s okay to have feelings, to be a little angry or a little hurt or sad.  Jesus got angry at people. He was, after all, human, and subject to all human emotions. There are many places in the Gospels where he got frustrated and vexed, was sad or disappointed in people, even those he loved most.  But he didn’t stop loving them because they let him down. He never gave up on them, never stopped trying to help them understand what he was all about and how much they were loved by a God consumed with love, not anger, not retribution. 

We don’t have to earn love – it is always there for us. We can choose to accept that love and appreciate it, or we can question and doubt our worthiness.  God loves me in spite of my own occasional bouts of self-doubt or even self-loathing. But I think those sadden God.  Have you ever loved someone who just can’t see the good in themselves and, consequently make self-destructive choices? It’s so frustrating!

So the second Valentine’s gift I am giving myself this month is the acceptance that I am loved regardless of stories I tell myself. Every time I look in the mirror for the rest of this month I will remind myself: No one knows you as well as God knows you. You are beloved and worthy of great love because you are the object of the greatest love there is, you are desired deeply because of who you are – a daughter of God. You are exactly who and what God made you to be, and that is sufficient.

Love Them Anyway

Well, the saying No Good Deed Goes Unpunished hit home this weekend. Trying to be nice, I ended up getting a metaphorical slap in the face.  When you do nice things for someone who takes way more than you offered, it makes you wonder why you bother trying to be a decent person. At least to some people. At my core I am a kind, compassionate, loving person. Even when people have hurt me over and over with betrayal, sometimes it's hard for me to just give up on them.

Much of yesterday I wrestled with my hurt and anger about this one person. But in that process I shared my pain with three other friends who were loving, kind, compassionate and supportive to me.  That reminds me to focus on those many positive people in my life and let go of the few who drag me down consistently. It is not my job to get everyone I know to appreciate me or love me, no matter how much I want them to. I don't have the ability to force people to see the good in me if they are blind to it.

A friend posted on her blog (http://ahalifedesign.com/) a suggestion for Valentines Day:

VALENTINE CHALLENGE: Each day for the next two weeks be Your Own Valentine. Do something special for yourself, something that is an expression of self-love in one way or another. This something can be big, or it can be very small. Enjoy!

 

I think today's gift to myself will be letting this person go who has been in my life in various ways  -- loving as well as very hurtful and hard -- for more than seven years. The hurtful thing he did to me this weekend was pretty minor in comparison to some of the things that I've put up with during our years of on-again, off-again friendship, but it was the tipping point. So today I give myself permission to let him go and accept that we will never really be friends.  And accept that I have done everything possible to save this friendship but he has done next to nothing.  So someone I wanted to be a friend but who never really was is now merely an acquaintance. Today I will appreciate and be grateful for the 99 percent of people who love me, think highly of me and are good to me, who truly are my friends, and ignore the 1 percent who just use me, who don't appreciate the person I am, only what I can do for them.  

 

I have been thinking about Mother Teresa's quote below, which may be a restatement  of Kent Keith's Paradoxical Commandments -- it's not clear who came up with this first. But based on the content, I doubt either would expect credit.  Perhaps they, too, subscribed to the understanding that all expectations are disappointments waiting to happen. Better to just do what is the right thing for me to do, be true and authentic to myself, and not hold out hope for any kind of outcome or recognition, beyond what I give myself. I especially like that last line:

 

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered.  Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.  Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies.  Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you.  Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight.  Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous.  Be happy anyway.

The good you do today, will often be forgotten.  Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough.  Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God.  It was never between you and them anyway.

A Valentine's Message: You Are Loved and Lovable

On Friday I visited a Portland-area book club to talk about my book, “42 States of Grace.” These are older women who have been meeting together for a number of years and have become a community for each other. Many of them are widows themselves.  The book elicited remembrances of journeys these women had taken with their husbands and families in years past. It is rewarding for me to see how my book touches people in different walks of life and to hear some of their stories. We all have stories and, at least those of us over 50, have all accumulated some wisdom. 

One of the women is a Franciscan nun and a spiritual director who has ministered in Guatemala and Africa to the poorest of the poor. I have taken several classes from and with her and she has contributed greatly to my own spiritual journey. Sr. Mary is a darling Irish woman with a lovely, lilting accent. I love her spirit and her spirituality.

I am so touched and gratified when people like Mary and some of my other deeply spiritual friends who have taught me so much by their own lives speak glowingly about the book and the spiritual messages it contains. Several long-time spiritual directors who have read the book have recommended it to others. I was pleasantly surprised at the conference I attended last month to hear Richard Rohr, Edwina Gateley and Ronald Rolhesier make statements mirroring things I wrote in the book or have written in my blog posts.

During our discussion Friday, an intriguing question surfaced. Sr. Mary works with a transitional housing facility for chronically homeless women. Many of these women have lived in abusive families and/or abusive relationships.  She is leading a book discussion group there made up of these women who are also currently reading and discussing my book.  In the course of their most recent conversation, mostly – at this point – regarding the quotes I had selected to begin each chapter, one woman asked: Is everyone lovable?  This apparently led to quite a discussion from women who had experienced monstrous people, cruel and cold.  How could there possibly be anything to love in these people.  I will be meeting with these women next month so am hoping to find some kind of reassuring, comforting, compassionate answer that goes beyond platitudes.

I thought about this question as some of the women on Friday made their attempts to answer it. One woman mentioned that no matter how monstrous, if God loves them, we should be able to. Another suggested that once they were innocent children too, and lovable.  I pointed out that many people become monsters because they were treated in unimaginable ways as children. Another woman suggested many of these people may have undiagnosed mental illnesses.

Last night this was in the back of my mind as I was reading Awakenings by Thomas Keating before going to sleep.   Keating’s reflections on Christmas spoke to this question, at least for me. Through the Incarnation, he writes, “God has become one of us and is breathing our air. In Jesus, God’s heart is beating; his eyes are seeing; his hands are touching; his ears are hearing. . . . By becoming a human being, he is in the heart of all creation and in every part of it. . . .Every human person, by virtue of the Incarnation, is Christ.” 

Based on this understanding of God-made-man and God-in-us, yes, every human being, at their very core, is lovable and valued.  Often the things we humans do are distinctly NOT lovable. This is because our free will allows us to tune out that part of us that should be connecting to God. And I think sometimes this is because of our own deep woundedness and need that we have no idea how to fill.

Accepting that we are all lovable is one of our greatest tasks, and I think once we even can grasp that truth, we begin transformation. 

Two more wonderful quotes to consider:

"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." – Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

"It is intriguing to speculate that Jesus’ fundamental saving act may have been not dying on the cross but rather accepting God’s love as much as it is humanly possible to do. Then the following of Christ might mean not so much doing heroic deeds, or even wanting to love as Jesus loves, but much more fundamentally desiring to let oneself be loved as much as Jesus was and is loved. Perhaps the world will be saved when there is a critical mass of people who deeply believe and experience how much God loves them."  --  William Barry, SJ

Reflect on these and accept that you and all humans, along with all of creation, are inherently lovable because that is how God made us.

Rainbows Still Promise Reconciliation

Of course, this wasn't this morning's rainbow; I don't walk near Niagara Falls!

It is a spring-like day in Portland, fairly warm with sun breaks and rain showers. When Charlie and I left this morning to drive to the park we sometimes walk in, there was a large patch of blue sky overhead surrounded by dark clouds. I thought we might get a walk in before the rain hit. But as we arrived at the park, it was sprinkling a little. I put my hood up and Charlie and I headed out. It could have gotten very wet, given the clouds, but it was just a light drizzle.

We often encounter a number of people on this walk, many with dogs. Today we met a couple with an Airedale and an elderly beagle just leaving, and at one point two young women jogged past us. Otherwise we had the park to ourselves so I let Charlie run off-leash.

Before we finished the first loop of our walk, the sun was back out, shining through the light rain. I glanced off towards the dark clouds in the north and saw a large, brilliant rainbow shining in the gloom.   This felt like a positive sign, reconciliation and forgiveness, a gift of promise after a tough weekend dealing with some emotional pain. That often happens before I make a breakthrough to a new level in my spiritual journey. 

I have been toying with the idea of doing some training to become certified as a spiritual director. I’m pretty sure I am going to do this, at least see where it takes me. Perhaps that discernment was in the back of my mind as I was struggling with some other things Saturday night and most of Sunday. I won’t take you into the depths of the Hell I had descended into; I wouldn’t want to invite friends to such an ugly place.  But part of this, I think, was a reluctance to believe I could help anyone else in their spiritual journey or that I have anything useful or valuable to share with the world. This is some of that sin I talked about in the last post: an unwillingness to accept that God could possibly love me. Oh how I limit God!!

Then last night I read a reflection on Jesus’ invitation to Matthew to come follow him. Matthew, a tax collector who hung out with all manner of disreputable characters, was considered a sinful man. But he was willing to believe that Jesus saw something worthy in him, and he immediately threw in his lot with this teacher.  This was an important reminder to me that God calls all of us, at different times, in different ways, and it takes courage and faith to trust and follow that call. 

The rainbow this morning reminded me that we all have storms and dark days in our lives.  But they end; no one has only good days or only bad days. The rainbow is a kind of bridge between the rain and the sun, creating beauty that can take our breath away.  I’ve commented before about sunsets: the last rays of the sun reflecting on disorder – pollution, dust, smoke – in the evening sky often brings amazing sunsets.  God can create great beauty out of the least likely things; and so God can also use the least likely of people as instruments if they are willing. 

It also occurred to me, as Charlie and I finished our walk in the sunshine and saw a number of other walkers arriving at the parking lot, that because we had been willing to brave the rain, the stormy weather, we had been blessed to see a rainbow that others might have missed because they waited until after the rain quit.  So I’m hoping that my willingness to wrestle with my hard times, my loneliness, my feelings of failure will be similarly rewarded.  I trust God will forgive my frustration and anger and my unwillingness to believe God knows what God is doing in loving me and wanting me.  I take that rainbow as a sign of forgiveness and a celebration of moving past the storm and back into the sunlight.

Oh Sinner Woman, Where You Gonna Run to?

Last night before turning out my light I was reading from one of my many spiritual books, “Awakenings” by Thomas Keating, considered by many to be the father of modern centering or contemplative prayer. He was reflecting on Luke 7:36-50, the story of the “sinful woman” who bathed Jesus’ feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.  Jesus explained to his Pharisee host, who had provided none of the customary courtesies, that he or she who sins greatly and is forgiven is more appreciative than one who thinks they sin little. One who is forgiven much has greater love for the one who forgives them.  It was a way of reminding the Pharisee that even though he considered himself upright, righteous, correct and pretty much free from sin, there were dark places he refused to go into and so would never find healing and forgiveness.

As I drifted off to sleep I thought about myself in my 20s, 30s, and 40s when I believed I was a good and righteous person who never broke any of the rules and always lived what I considered to be within the laws and bounds of being a good Christian. I was one of the upright people who looked down my nose at people who couldn’t seem to get their act together. I imagined others looked up to me. I was a Martha, to be sure, the older brother of the prodigal son, the workers who put in a full day and complained when the people who only worked an hour got the same wage. Yeah, I still go there sometimes.

Now at 60 I realize how much I had fooled myself then. Or maybe I’ve just gotten “badder” since then. Now, with greater wisdom, I can accept and acknowledge that I have many dark places,  many sinful thoughts that often lead to sinful actions. I am filled with sin; it sometimes oozes out my pores. I’m not talking about morality issues here – which is where our minds automatically seem to go when we speak of sin. I have never killed anyone, or stolen anything, told any outrageous lies; I am not a particularly “loose” woman (I rarely have the chance to be, more’s the pity!).  But my understanding of sin and darkness have changed significantly since I was young, in that first half of life when I thought I had everything figured out.

Thankfully I can also accept that I am human, very beloved not in spite of my humanness and failures but precisely because of them. Sin is part and parcel of being human, of having free will, and perfection is not in our gene pool. And I am in very good company: most of the saints and mystics talk about their own struggles with sin.  But thankfully being lovable and loved unconditionally, being valued is also part of our heritage.

Richard Rohr says sinners are not “moral inferiors” but rather “people who do not know who they are and Whose they are, people who have no connection to their inherent dignity and importance.”   I would add – as I’m sure he would approve of -- sinners are people who think they can save themselves by following rules.  Rohr calls sin self-erected barriers that cut us off from God and therefore from our own authentic potential:   “Fixations that prevent the energy of life, God’s love, from flowing freely.”  So do I have fixations? Oh you betcha! And I know when I’m going there and I realize how damaging that is to me, to my relationships with others and most especially with God. But I do it anyway. I can’t seem to stop myself. Well, there I go, thinking I can “save” myself; it’s those times I really must – and usually do – turn to God for comfort and love. But I also have many wise friends I can turn to, as well.

I have toyed recently with the idea of our egos being Original Sin; it seems to be the source of so much of my own sin: my pride, envy, self-righteousness. It is our ego that insists on our moral superiority, that causes us to compare and judge to satisfy that hungry beast. Hmmm, wonder if those are the beasts Jesus sometimes referred to, lions or wolves waiting to devour us. Maybe he was talking about our own dark or shadow sides, the side that is unwilling to let go and let God. My spiritual director reminds me that our egos are part of us, an essential gift to help us through life. However, they can get out of control, overly fed perhaps and become gluttons, and it is then that we want to be gentle and kind to our ego, put it on a bit of a diet with healthier stuff, and help it not be so insecure and needy. It is then that we need to love ourselves and allow ourselves to be loved by God and others.

The journey continues and I have been thinking with all the struggles I’ve had with my own spiritual growth, getting on with my own further journey, perhaps I could someday help others negotiate the wasteland and find the oasis on the other side. (Not that I have yet, at least I don’t live there all the time, but if I were there all the time I probably wouldn’t appreciate it as much as when I return there from time to time. And I think out in the desert is where we learn and grow.) Yesterday, at the recommendation of a dear friend, I had a conference with a man who trains spiritual directors.  I am strongly inclined to do this and he was very supportive and encouraging. It was so affirming and yet I know that affirmation appeals to the very ego that so often gets me into trouble.  So there will be a little more discerning as to whether spiritual direction of others is a true path on which I am led. But right now it feels like a path on my journey that wasn’t there before.  Sometimes those new, intriguing paths are there for a very good reason.