Called to Go Beyond Our Limits

I have done ALL of these things, multiple times, and lived with these "yes, but....s."  I am posting this one on my wall! (I was especially struck by the last sentence, emphasis added)

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Called to Go Beyond Our Limits

Gregg Levoy

It makes perfect sense that we should be called to go beyond our limits, because the One that calls us is beyond all limits. I suspect that all the energy we have bound up in resisting our own potential is more energy than we'll need to reach it. It takes as much energy to fail as it does to succeed. The strategies are legion:

• Hiding behind the tasks of discernment. By analyzing a call to death and picking apart all its varying implications and by poring over calculations that would put an actuary into a coma, we lose all the heat from the heart through the head, as if we had been in the bitter cold without a hat.
• Waiting for the Perfect Moment. Waiting for just the right combination of time, money, energy, education, freedom and the ideal alignment of the planets....
• Telling ourselves lies. For instance, "I can't afford it...." [when] the truth was, "I won't afford it." I won't reprioritize my life, won't make sacrifices....
• Choosing a path parallel to the one we feel called to. One that's close enough to keep an eye on it but not so close we're tempted to jump tracks. We become an art critic rather than an artist, a school teacher rather than a parent, a reporter rather than a novelist.
• Attempting to replace one calling with another. Because we don't like it, our parents don't like it, it doesn't earn enough money or prestige.
• Immediately turning a call into a Big Project. Thereby intimidating ourselves into paralysis.
• Self-sabotage. We feel called to go to art or medical school but are so afraid of finding out we don't have what it takes that we "forget" to mail the application until after its deadline has passed.
• Distracting ourselves with other activities. We suddenly become inspired to finish old projects we haven't thought about in ages.
• Playing "sour grapes." We believe we won't succeed ... or will suffer unduly, so we try to convince ourselves we don't want it anyway.
• Trying to make ourselves unworthy of a calling. Hoping that God will decide we're not the person for the job and take it back.

The degree of resistance is probably proportionate to the amount of power waiting to be unleashed and the satisfaction to be experienced once the "no" breaks through to "yes" and the call is followed.

 

 

Source: Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life

"What if?" or Trusting God

For many years one of the clearest themes of my spiritual journey has been learning to trust God:  to guide me, to provide for me, to protect me (especially from myself).  Trust in anyone is not easy, since as a child my trust was betrayed in so many ways.  I struggle with trusting myself, too, because I have so many memories of my addictive coping strategies (devised in desperation to avoid the pain of betrayals and unmet needs) creating chaos and distracting me from knowing what I want.  I struggle with not feeling safe in a world where I see so many acts of violence (physical, spiritual, emotional, systemic).

One of the ways I have come to recognize when I am not trusting God is that my anxieties take the form of endless "what ifs"?  "What if I get sick (without insurance?"  What if I run completely out of money (and am homeless and unable to take care of myself)?"  "What if my car breaks down?"  I could go on ad infinitum, but I'm learning  to recognize and let go of the endless "what ifs" because they are never happening in the moment--and learning to live in the moment is a practice dating back to when I was using the 12 Steps of the Anonymous groups (over 25 years ago) to heal my wounded life.  At first I was learning to stay in each moment when I was obsessed with various addictive opportunities, to "make a decision [in each moment] to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God." (Step 3) Since I started practicing this, what it means to "turn over to the care of God" keeps evolving.

It's not about making God responsible for my behaviors or addictions; it's also not about not knowing what my will is; I am coming to understand more and more that I can trust the desires of my heart (and every other part of me) to point toward who God is creating me to be, in God's image.  (I once heard a quote that I have never been able to source:  "God works within us through the deep desires of our hearts.") Sometimes knowing what I desire means taking action (in the moment); sometimes it means recognizing and accepting THAT I want--to write, to do spiritual direction, to live in health, order and beauty, to love and be loved--and letting go of obstacles, old attitudes, rules, and expectations that are getting in the way.  As I let go of these obstacles, I am learning to pay attention to the steps I need to take (in each moment) toward being and doing what I say I want to be and do.

This triggers a lot of anxiety and "what ifs," because the old rules say "what I want doesn't matter"; "whatever I want is wrong" (especially if anyone "in my mind" doesn't want it); "there's no way I can have what I want, so don't bother wanting."  The "what ifs" are sometimes incredibly vivid (and sometimes ridiculous), and I am learning to say "that is not happening right now, I let it go."  I am also more and more aware that "what ifs" mean I am not trusting God with my hopes and dreams and desires in the moment: I cannot trust God AND focus on "what if?";  I cannot trust God and pay more attention to the rules and expectations of the world around me than to where God is active (in the moment) in my life;  I cannot trust God when I am constantly trying to figure out what is going to happen, how a certain sequence of events is going to turn out.  Trusting God is hard (impossible) when I am constantly projecting my certainty about "if this happens, then that will happen."

I am still learning, and probably always will be.  Trusting God is very countercultural.  I am trying to trust "for surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.  Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you.  When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord..." (Jeremiah 29:11-14a)  I am seeking with all my heart, Lord!

Reflections on Time and Work and Justice

I've been thinking a lot lately about why I "spend" time the way I do and what "work" means (as I seek to find paying work).  I want to make changes, and, as always, I have to take time to get clear about what I want (and don't want).

My friend Tripp Hudgins posted the first two articles yesterday, and they seem to go together with the third quote as I ponder these matters.  I'm not sure where this will lead me, so for today I'm going to let these be my post.  I'd love to hear any of your reflections.

Religious Hopes for 2013 (author: Carol Howard Merritt)

Religion can be a tool for oppression or a force for good. As we greet 2013, I hope that we can all work for a more compassionate faith.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-howard-merritt/religious-hopes-for-2013_b_2392880.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email+Notifications&utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=1078426,b=facebook

Less, Please (author:  Gary Gutting) (much more philosophical, worth chewing on, though)

[The Skidelskys] make the utopian (ultimately Platonic) mistake of thinking that we can transform our world by legislating values from above. Rather, the transformation must come from below, forged by the very people it is meant to benefit.

http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/less-please

Living Seriously (author:  Thomas Merton)

Nothing is so cheap as the evasion purchased by just enough good conduct to make one pass as a 'serious person.' And when you come to look more deeply into our present condition you find that many forms of 'seriousness' and 'achievement' come to this in the end. In our society, a society of business rooted in puritanism, based on a pseudo-ethic of industriousness and thrift, to be rewarded by comfort, pleasure, and a good bank account, the myth of work is thought to justify an existence that is essentially meaningless and futile.

There is, then, a great deal of busy-ness as people invent things to do when in fact there is very little to be done. Yet we are overwhelmed with jobs, duties, tasks, assignments, "missions" of every kind. At every moment we are sent north, south, east and west by the angels of business and art, poetry and politics, science and war, to the four corners of the universe to decide something, to sign something, to buy and sell. We fly in all directions to sell ourselves, thus justifying the absolute nothingness of our lives.

Some make it their business to cover their own emptiness by pointing out the fraudulency of others, but always the emphasis is on the fact that others have nevertheless done something, even though it was a matter of perpetrating a fraud. They have perpetrated something. And so the myth prospers. No matter how empty our lives become, we are always at least convinced that something is happening because, indeed, as we so often complain, too much is happening. There is so much to be done that we do not have time to live.

But it is precisely this idea that a serious life demands 'time to live' that is the root of our trifling. In reality, what we want is time in which to trifle and vegetate without feeling guilty about it. But because we do not dare try it, we precipitate ourselves into another kind of trifling: that which is not idle, but dissimulated as action.

Source: Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Crawling Out from Under a Rock or...

Getting out of my head?  I've spent far too much of my life in my head.  I understand a lot of the why (because I've spent so much time thinking about it).  I'm done...sort of...I hope.  Ruminating, processing, trying to understand, letting my mind wander where it will, being fascinated with what goes on in my head: these are SO much "safer" than living with all of me which risks taking a lot of risks, letting others know who I am, wanting with more than just the part of me above my neck.

I've been chewing for several weeks on something from Matthew Fox's Original Blessing.  "The fall/redemption tradition is profoundly introspective, and introspection does not lead to cosmic relating or cosmic caring or cosmic celebration....For Augustine and the introspective tradition he launched in the West, ecstasy itself is interior only and is cut off from the cosmos.  God becomes excessively interiorized....The fall/redemption tradition considers the soul to be an interior dimension to our bodies, held in check by the cage that our bodies are." (pp. 76-77)  My initial reaction was "HEY, THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH INTROSPECTION."  And I've certainly learned a lot from these many years of trying to understand, especially why it's so hard for me to get out of my head (which is another way of staying IN my head, of course).  But lately this has me examining what I am doing when I introspect ad infinitum: much of it started as part of the process of healing from wounds of being used for the gratification of others (particularly by my father). 

But along the way, I have also focused a lot on "why am I so bad?" (or in theological language, sinful).  I equated feeling broken with BEING BAD.  And that kind of introspection cuts me off from my body (which I'm beginning to suspect was part of what Augustine may have been trying to achieve for himself...but that's for another post), and from grace, and from receiving unconditional love from God or anyone else, and from being part of creation.  I once said to a directee, "what are you looking at when you focus on your sinfulness?"  Not God, not love, not even forgiveness of the sinfulness, just how utterly awful I am.  What if I am good, even perfect (in the sense of complete, whole), because I am created in God's image?

I'm a long way from "done" with working through (yes, I see the irony...) what it would mean to live from acceptance of myself as I am, in each moment, as gift from God.  But I see the possibility of living from the wholeness of God's gift rather than from just the eight or so inches above my neck, as both risk and liberation in this life from the "cage of my body."  For today, that means getting this post written and published, and doing what my body and my home need to feel cared for.

A New Year, New Freedoms

2012 was an interesting year, much of it filled with learning about taking care of myself instead of taking care of others.  It's not that I can't be present with and for others, it's just (!) that I have spent so much of my life looking for where others NEEEEED me (whether they know it or not, or want my opinion or not) that it has been very hard for me to know what I want.  And I have realized that I can either keep looking at the world through the lens of "I've got the answer, I know what you need to do, listen to me", OR I can do what I've been saying for so long that I do want to do:  writing, being present with others in spiritual direction, and theologizing.  I can't do both.

So 2012 turned out to be a year of letting go (sometimes painfully) of seeking love through a codependent approach to being with people, of seeking validation through trying to be what other people want (I imagine) me to be.  And a year of learning to let myself want, to listen deeply for what gives me joy and allow myself to enjoy, savor, feel the pleasures of so many simple and ordinary things that I have often missed because I was attending to what others want instead of what I want.

One of the joys that  has become clearest is expressing my creativity through words.  I now have THREE (at least) ideas for books and have started one.  I have discovered joy in sharing Good News through writing that becomes preaching.  I have noticed recently that I'm relating differently to other people's words:  rather than looking for others to articulate what is in my heart, I'm reading more with an ear for how words and stories are put together.  A very recent (and rather startling) development is that I suddenly stopped journaling on December 19 (and I have been journaling for over 44 years, so this is a shock).  I'm sure I will journal again, but I notice that I am feeling impatient about piling up words that no one will see--which means it's time to set my words loose and trust the process.  So I'm starting 2013 with this blog post.  It's not a New Year's resolution (I don't believe those are helpful except to bully and shame myself into being what I am not in this present moment), but the beginning of my New Year's practice.

I also used to write poetry, and seeing the world with the ears of a poet is slowly coming back to life.  This is an old poem that fits today (poetry is funny like that, it often speaks truth in ways that I will only hear much later):

Insanity

I was crazy once,
And the world was upside down.
I had been crazy a long time,
And I didn’t know it.

The world began to tilt.

I was so afraid until
I learned this was right-side-up,
And it didn’t hurt so much.

I begin to learn the Center

So deep and still,
No place to hide,
And that is scary, too.

The Center begins to feel like home,

Where I can live deeply,
Trust, grow and love.
Now even the tilting world
Begins to feel safe.

AFTER we pray with and for Newtown

I've seen many posts since yesterday full of grief, shock, and horror at the tragedy in Newtown.  I've also seen quite a few that:  advocate for changes in gun control; advocate for massive improvements in our mental health system; and shout that we must not politicize this tragedy.

I know we must deal first with the pain, sorrow, and fear that the massacre in Newtown brings to all of us.  But I also know that gun control and our inadequate mental health system have already been politicized, and they are not working.

On the first issue, gun lobbies and activists fight to preserve "Second Amendment Rights," while resisting legislation to ensure regulation of arms that will help keep better track of who has weapons and for what purposes.  My friends who own guns may disagree with me, but for a long time now, access has been far too easy to weapons that are not primarily designed for personal protection or sport shooting, nor are these consistent with the Second Amendment wording.

David Henson has written a powerful blog about the first issue.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davidhenson/2012/12/when-the-second-amendment-enables-terrorism-why-killing-children-isnt-a-well-regulated-militia/

I want to address the second issue from my own experience of the inadequate mental health system in the United States.  I have dealt for many years with depression, eating disorder, and PTSD related to clergy incest.  I was fortunate to have insurance when insurers had far less control over the goals and process of seeking health.  I was fortunate to find many different kinds of resources to aid in my healing, although it often took a lot of energy for the financial and logistical tasks that made that process possible.  I was motivated by a deep conviction that it had to be possible to get to the point where I was not only able to function at work, but where the pain of the past did not color every aspect of my life. And most of the time, that is now the case:  the pain of the past has less and less power over how I live in the present and look to the future.  But as I look back over the past 30+ years, I can see how my issues and behaviors negatively affected my ability to work, to communicate with others, to take care of myself.  I can see moments in my past when it would not have taken much to make me violent.  I can also see how the healing I have experienced makes me more able to be present with others, to work, and to live into my gifts and joys with freedom that I never could have envisioned.

Access to quality, affordable care for mental illness is far too restricted to those who have health insurance, flexibility to attend appointments, and time to do the inner work that effective therapy requires.  There is not enough help available for those who don't have insurance, whose jobs don't leave any time (or energy) for dealing with the issues that are keeping them from living in best and healthiest way they can.  In poor homes and communities, survival is often the only goal for which people have energy.  It can also be very difficult for people with insurance to get authorization for enough therapy to address their issues in a way that does more than ensure that they become functional enough to carry out their responsibilities with minimum damage to others or themselves.  Healing is a slow process, and cannot be mandated to occur in 4, 10, 20 sessions.  It is worth every effort, however.  It

Here is a stark picture of the state of the mental health system in our country:

http://www.nami.org/gtsTemplate09.cfm?Section=Findings&Template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=75174

There is also so much stigma around admitting that we have issues that are getting in the way, that we need help, that we can't make the pain go away without support and guidance.  There is so much denia (internal and external)l that anything is wrong, even when every day is a struggle to live with the pain, keep it at bay, or numb it with addictive substances or behaviors.  There are so many attitudes that say, "it's not my problem, 'those people are just nuts and I/we can't do anything about it."  There are many ways that keeping people trapped in their issues serves the economic powers-that-be.

I challenge us to recognize that it is a problem for every one of us, not just when someone "snaps" or meticulously plans a devastating crime or chews off the face of a homeless person.  As a nation, these are symptoms of our own ill health, and all of us bear responsibility for contributing to the process of becoming whole and healthy and loving.  That includes those of us who don't or no longer have issues that prevent us from being our best selves.  Recognizing this as a national problem and working together toward effective reform is very necessary.  I challenge us to hold a vision for all individuals and our nation of individual, local, regional, and national wholeness that is emotional, spiritual and achievable.

Prayer has been crucial to my own healing process, and I believe it is an important component for our becoming whole and authentic to become all that God is creating us to be.  But my prayers for us as we deal with the aftermath of the tragedy at Newtown are stirring me to act and to call for action.  I don't know yet what that will look like in the days to come, but today I am acting by writing this blog.

Naken Before God Sermon, 10/14/12

Naked Before God

Nancy Waldo

Ginter Park Baptist Church

Richmond, Virginia

October 14, 2012

Here is our Gospel passage for this morning:

Mark 10:17-31
10:17 As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

10:18 Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.

10:19 You know the commandments: 'You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.'"

10:20 He said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth."

10:21 Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."

10:22 When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.

10:23 Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!"

10:24 And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!

10:25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."

10:26 They were greatly astounded and said to one another, "Then who can be saved?"

10:27 Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible."

10:28 Peter began to say to him, "Look, we have left everything and followed you."

10:29 Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news,

10:30 who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age--houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions--and in the age to come eternal life.

10:31 But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first."

 When I first read the lectionary readings for today, several weeks ago, a theme jumped out at me, which became the title for this sermon.  Please, be comfortable, we are all going to keep our clothes on here.  But I saw this Gospel passage in a new way, when I read it in company with Psalm 22 and several other texts.  I’m not going to include all of the texts, but the one which became the lens for this sermon was from Hebrews 4:13:  “And before God no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.” 

In this Gospel passage, the rich man, one who has kept all the commandments since his youth, kneels before the “Good Teacher.”  Jesus does not accept the label “Good Teacher,” for “no one is good but God alone.”  So there is a challenge right at the beginning of this story.  Jesus, whom we believe came directly from God to be human with us, does not accept this title bestowed on him.  It is a shock to us that not even Jesus, our example of what it means to be God’s child, can be called good.  Or maybe his objection is not so much about being evaluated by others as being good, but about what it means about one’s identity when someone other than God attaches a label to us?

The rich man kneels before Jesus, and this is an important detail, because we see elsewhere in the New Testament (and in our world today) that rich people get to live by different rules than those who are not.  They don’t have to wait in line, they get the best seats, they wear the best clothes every day.  They certainly don’t have to kneel very often to ask questions. When Jesus tells him to “go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor,” he is unable to let go of the material goods that the world uses to define him, the identities that tell him who he is.  He is not free to follow Jesus because he is clinging to those identities.  Jesus loves him anyway, even as the man turns away in shock and grief, and Jesus shows his deep understanding of how hard it can be to trust and depend on God when we have other resources on which to rely.  “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!”

Jesus’ disciples found this very difficult to understand, because they knew how important it was in their time to have material resources in a world without any “safety nets.”  Not having money, not being able to earn enough to support your family and pay your taxes, meant you might have to sell yourself or your children into slavery, or for women, that you might have to sell your body to strangers, or that you might be homeless and begging by the side of the road or at the temple gate, completely dependent on the willingness of those more fortunate to share with you what you need in order to stay alive.  It meant losing the sense of security that comes with having enough money to know that you would always be able to pay your bills.  Selling all of one’s possessions to give to the poor would mean you would also become poor, that all the things that made you comfortable and defined you in the eyes of the world would be gone. 

The disciples knew about these implications of what Jesus was asking this man to do, and they wanted credit from Jesus for their own sacrifices, the things they had given up in order to follow him.  I think they also wanted assurance that they would be OK every day and forever, but following Jesus did not and does not mean that we know for sure that we will always be safe, comfortable, well-fed, medical needs taken care of, respected and seen as valuable, productive and responsible members of society.  I’m not sure how reassuring it was for them to hear Jesus say that those who leave everything, including family, for the sake of Jesus and for the sake of the good news, will receive hundredfold—but with persecutions…  He is reversing the world’s criteria for honor and respect, for rank and privilege, and all that it means to be “first.  And in the next paragraph, Jesus foretells his death and resurrection for the third time.

In Psalm 22, which Jesus quotes as he is dying on the cross, after having been shamed, flogged, spat upon, naked and his clothes the stakes in a gambling gave, in pain, thirsty, we hear the pain of not sensing the presence of God, not being able to do anything to escape from suffering, feeling abandoned even by God and desperate for relief. Being faithful to God does not include any guarantees of safety, comfort, needs met, honor from society, or even a constant sense of feeling God’s care and love.  But even in that much pain, the psalmist alternates between expressing suffering and expressing trust in God to rescue, provide and comfort. Prayer moves us from understandable focus on our situation to focus on who God is and what God does because God loves us.  When Jesus prayed this psalm, he was at the end of the journey of trusting God wherever God led—and then a new journey began, within the hearts of those who love him. 

What is the Good News for us in this passage?  How would focusing first and foremost on our identity as beloved children of God change how we live?  How we do church here at Ginter Park?  How we participate in the Body of Christ worldwide and through all time?  I am not advocating that we reject the identities and roles that we associate with being who we are as members of family, church, work, citizens.  They serve necessary purposes.  But we stay in touch with that primary identity through spiritual practices of worship, prayer, community, trust and study that can help us to live with and from the belief that you and I, and all of our brothers and sisters are God’s before we belong to anyone or anything else.  This is our solid foundation for all that we do and say, how we function in the world in ways that demonstrate that God is important to us.  We can find freedom in being faithful, in remembering always that we are first and foremost God’s beloved children, created in God’s image, for God’s purposes.

I love to imagine what might happen to New Testament people after their encounters with Jesus.  We never hear any more about this man, as we never hear about many of the people Jesus taught or cured.  In this case, I wonder if he went away, full of grief that lasted longer than the time it took him to disappear from the story, and kept thinking about what Jesus had asked of him.  Maybe he kept thinking about what drew him to kneel before Jesus, his hunger for assurance of eternal life, and about the shock he felt when Jesus told him he needed to give up everything that made him who he was in the eyes of the world.  Maybe the grief kept haunting him, changed how he felt about all that he had. 

We hear many stories about people who work very hard, even obsessively, to amass great wealth and power, and then one day they realize that they have accomplished everything they set out to do—and they feel empty, lonely, and recognize that maybe they were looking for the wrong thing.  One story in our Christian tradition is that Francis of Assisi, who grew up in a very wealthy family, and who is described as enjoying all the pleasures of his time, Italian food and wine, the music, rich friends, and fancy clothes.  But the sight of a beggar moved him to give away to a beggar all the profits of his day in the market, all that he got for selling expensive cloth on behalf of his father.  As you can imagine, his father was most definitely NOT pleased when Francis came home without any money and told him why.  Eventually, the conflict between the two of them reached the point where his father took him to court and tried to force him to abandon his inheritance, reminding Francis that even his clothing belonged to his father.  In response, Francis took off all of his clothes (in court) and threw them down in front of his father, claiming that from then on his only father would be “Our Father in Heaven.”  And no, I DON’T recommend taking off all of your clothes in court…but when God calls to your heart and you do things that people around you don’t understand or approve of, you are naked before God as Francis was before the judge and his father.

Maybe the man in our Gospel story reached the point where he recognized that following Jesus, even if it meant getting rid of all that he owned, was worth any sacrifice.  Maybe he didn’t. But I’d like to think that after he had a chance to think about it, his heart drew him to that extravagant gesture of letting go of all the identities that come with wealth.  Maybe when he heard about Jesus’ death and resurrection, or the events at Pentecost, when so many were filled with the Holy Spirit and the church was born, he thought, “maybe it’s not too late to follow that man” and his life changed forever, one step at a time.  Maybe the encounter with the love of Jesus, however long it took him to realize it, changed his heart and his understanding of who he was, and his love for God and keeping his focus on Jesus carried him through the physical and social discomforts he surely felt as he sold his house, emptied his bank accounts, and said goodbye to all that he had been until that point.  We will never know for sure, but I like to think that this encounter was the beginning of his story, not the end. 

Another man discovered that all his fame, all his successes as a professor, writer, speaker in demand all over the world, did not make him satisfied, got in the way of his spiritual life, made him cranky and depressed and unhappy.  Henri Nouwen was a Dutch priest who wrote many books, taught at Harvard and Yale, was in great demand as a speaker, and otherwise looked like a huge success, far beyond what most priests or ministers ever accomplish.  In the early 1980s, he started sensing that God was calling him in a new direction, and that led him to resign from his position at Harvard and become a caregiver for severely “differently-abled” adults, at a L’Arche community first in France and then in Canada. 

He wrote about how difficult it was to let go of his fame, the admiration, praise, and respect as he learned how to take care of Adam.  He learned from Adam and the others what it means to live as a beloved child of God when you are completely vulnerable, unable to protect or care for yourself.  But his hardest, deepest struggle was the question, “Is Jesus truly enough for you, or do you keep looking for others to give you your sense of worth?...The struggle to become a full member of a community of faith has proved to be a struggle to let go of many idols along the way and to choose again and again to follow Jesus and him alone.” In one of his prayers, he says,

Dear God, I am so afraid to open my clenched fists.  Who will I be when I have nothing left to hold on to?  Who will I be when I stand before you with empty hands?  Please help me to gradually open my hands and to discover that I am not what I own, but what you want to give me.  And what you want to give me is love, unconditional, everlasting love. Amen.

In one of the devotionals that I receive by email, this quote from Julian of Norwich, a 14^th-15^th century woman who received visions of Jesus and spent the rest of her life writing about them has touched my heart deeply.  She is quoting words that she heard Jesus saying to her:

You must learn to understand that all your deficiencies, even those that come from your past sins and vicious habits, are part of my loving providence for you, and that it is just with those deficiencies, just the way you are now, that I would love you.

Therefore you must overcome the habit of judging how you would make yourself acceptable to me. When you do this you are putting your providence, your wisdom before mine. It is my wisdom that tells you, "The way you are acceptable to me, the way I want to love you, is the way you are now, with all your defects and deficiencies. I could wipe them out in a moment if I wanted to, but then I could not love you the way I want to love you, the way you are--now."

Please pray with me.

Beloved Lord, your love is so big, so deep, so wide, and always there for us.  Help us to accept that we are your beloved children, that we don’t need to earn your love by how successful, productive, competent, or intelligent we are.  Help us to remember that you love each of us, all of us, just as we are in each moment.  Help us to know that we belong to you first, because your love teaches us to be fully human, created in your image and growing to be all that you want us to be as witnesses to your love.   Sometimes you ask us to go through things that we don’t understand, that are scary and hurtful.  Give us courage to follow you wherever you lead us, trusting you at every step of the way.  Forgive us when we fall short, and help us to accept your forgiveness and to forgive ourselves.  In the name of Jesus, the one who showed us just how much God loves us, Amen.