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Questions About Acceptance

2/17/2013

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There should be a basic acceptance of whatever is actually happening before we decide what to do with it. Our first reflex is to want to change reality or at least to control it. 

‒Father Thomas Keating 

This statement that makes so much sense to me also leads me to ask myself: Am I letting the idea of acceptance lead me to fatalistic passivity? I can imagine that I am accepting "whatever is actually happening" when in reality I am putting my head in the sand. For instance, to live my questions, without jumping to conclusions creates a lot of tension. Similarly, bearing my own and other people's weaknesses without sugar coating or condemning them. Acceptance that still sees clearly is extremely rare and difficult.

So what is it like to pull my head out of the proverbial sand and fully face into reality, all the pain and confusion and unanswerable questions? Sometimes it feels overwhelming, I find that I can only do it for short periods of time. Which suggests that much of the time I am looking away, living in illusion. What does my acceptance amount to then, when I make myself invulnerable to life? (The grace and beauty that life promises is not fully available to us unless we are also exposed to its difficulty, they are one, intermingled creation. Think of Yellowstone, with beauty comes heat and cold, bugs and bears. Driving through in an air-conditioned car is not that same experience.) 

The poet David Whyte speaks of exposing as much of our surface area as possible. It's a picture of being fully alive, undefended, every sense organ highly sensitized, both physical and emotional. It is only in this sort of vulnerable engagement that we discover creative solutions. When we stand aloof, protected, we are left with tired, conventional answers. Rules rather than inspiration. Or worse, habitual reactions.

Biblical wisdom suggests that we watch and wait for God's salvation. Which rarely takes the form of answers or relief of tension. How many examples of 40 days or 40 years or even 400 years before the chosen ones experienced the Lord's deliverance? 

Nothing changes without contact. Insulation leads to isolation. We must know our neighbor to love our neighbor. We must hold unanswerable questions if we are to respond creatively. We must be willing to weep if we are to truly rejoice. We must accept our limitations if we want to experience God's strength in our weakness. But every one of these experiences makes us uncomfortable and so, quite naturally, we resist them. The question that I am trying to live is how do I open to these transforming experiences? How do I grow to tolerate the discomfort? I really want to know. There are probably a lot of answers to this rarely asked question. 

The one thing I can say from my experience is that I need to slow down. I believe that hurry should be added to the list of deadly sins. Especially in our time when almost everything conspires to hurry us up to insensate speed. But as long as I am doing the next thing, including making plans for the future, and doing it slowly, mindfully, and in God's presence, I can tolerate uncertainty, fear, and other difficult emotions, they can even become a source of wisdom.


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Being Known

2/15/2013

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"What matters supremely, therefore, is not, in the last analysis, the fact that I know God, but the larger fact which underlies it — the fact that He knows me. I am graven on the palms of His hands. I am never out of His mind. All my knowledge of Him depends on His sustained initiative in knowing me."

 ‒J.I. Packer

In my reading I keep running into the idea of being known as being more significant than knowing. Considering the modern, scientific emphasis on the power of knowledge and the exercise of human mastery it's not surprising that we would over look the importance of being known.

I awoke one morning with the following thought: When you encounter something immature and willful in your soul, you can try to control it through a similar kind of willfulness or by rejection, or, you can invite God to know this dis-integrated part of you.

The abstract, theological description of God as "all knowing" may not mean exactly what we think it means. God is a respecter of our freedom. There are many ways in which God waits for an invitation from us. Perhaps our strategies and efforts at self control are not as effective as a simple, humble openness to being known by God. Transformation is about proximity not strategy.

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Let it Be

2/12/2013

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"It is popular now a days to speak of letting go of negative emotional states. But no one can force a letting go process. Forcing only makes letting go less likely. Letting be is what allows letting go to happen."
 
--Miriam Greenspan
 
 
This is such a simple statement. I almost wanted to dismiss it because "Let it Be" couldn't possibly be as profound as we thought it was when we first heard the Beatles sing it. But like a lot of clichés, the truth is there for the mining.
 
Many of us are experiencing the loosening that comes with the "second half" of life. We realize that there's a lot more unlearning than learning going on and that we are being invited to hold everything with open hands. But when it comes right down to it things don't really change very much and certainly not very quickly. As a consequence we find ourselves letting go of the same things over and over again.
 
This is why there's no letting go without letting be. It's only when we can allow reality to be the disappointing and incomprehensible mess that it is that we can begin to let go. The good news–and I really believe this is THE good news–is that God is compassionately present and redemptively active in the mess. The more I embrace this wisdom the more I see God and willingly consent to what God is doing.
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Suffering

2/11/2013

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We are in some sense better off not having satisfying answers to vexing questions about why suffering, evil, and pain exist in the world. If we can say, "Oh, there's a clear reason for this," we can remain aloof, safe in the cool and lofty realm of impersonal logic in relation to human suffering.  We can explain instead of empathize, theorize instead of pray, and answer instead of act. But in the absence of a satisfying logical explanation for human suffering, we must descend from our brains into our hearts and respond to the suffering of others with tears and action, not just words and more words.

​So, we practice compassion and intercession not because we have fully satisfying answers to explain the suffering of others, but because we do not.
 
--Brian D. Mclaren

I can't think of anything worth adding.
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Desire Itself

2/10/2013

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God does not always come to us in the pleasant way we might expect, and so we repress our desire for God.

--Gerald May
 
​God is most often present to me as "I am that I am." My experience of this is usually felt as spaciousness. To my ordinary consciousness it feels like emptiness, a.k.a. boredom, certainly not the "pleasant way" that I prefer. Too often I grow impatient with the Divine presence as I experience it and proceed to repress my longing for God with other desires. The world provides a myriad of options.
​For decades I have been shaming myself for this proclivity. Now I'm beginning to see desire itself is a vital gift (even misguided desire--at its root); and so to repress it in the name of holiness is to work against God's purposes. Because desire and longing are indispensible, I don't think it's God's plan to remove them, even though they seem to be the source of suffering and sin.

​There has appeared to be only two ways of responding to my desires: satisfy them and reinforce harmful habits, or repress them and lose vital energy and necessary passion--not to mention the unconscious "leaking" that sometimes occurs. I don't think I was ever shown a third way until I became aware of contemplative practices.
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Spiritual Direction

2/9/2013

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As responsibilities and maturity increase in the life of faith the subtleties of temptation also increase and the urgency of having a spiritual director increases.

--Eugene Peterson


Assuming that this is an accurate assessment of the "normal Christian life," does it change your idea of what maturity is meant to look like?

On the surface there may be little difference between a maturity based on people pleasing and that which springs from surrender to the Spirit of God. The latter, however, takes one into unknown, unfamiliar territory where it can become difficult to maintain one's poise.  It is a risk to release control of one's life and consent to God's transforming presence.  When God shines light on our inner reality it can feel as if we've regressed into an earlier stage of development.

In my life with God I am finding that my freedom has increased and curiously along with it so has the possibility of error. I like to say that if you're not making mistakes you're only half alive. And perhaps the freedom to make mistakes is a part of the child-likeness that opens the gates of the Kingdom. But a child needs loving boundaries and honest mirroring. Spiritual direction is a terrific place to play, to discover and to grow.
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Ordinary Action

2/9/2013

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The extreme difficulty which I often experience in carrying out the slightest action is a favor granted to me. For thus, by ordinary actions and without attracting attention, I can cut some of the roots of the tree.

--Simone Weil

"By ordinary actions and without attracting attention," that sounds like a recipe for spiritual formation, an effective, practical formula. Work which is done in this way has the virtue of humility. I'm far less likely to be deceived by the ordinary and lonely processes of life than those that are noticed or those that seem to be infused by the supernatural.

I find in this quote the courage to embrace difficulty and re-imagine it as "a favor granted to me," by the One who longs to set me free; the One who creatively uses the ordinary circumstances of my life to invite me into the great Freedom.
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Music of the Kingdom

2/9/2013

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 "God comes to us disguised as our life."

--Paula D'Arcy
 
​Imagine yourself learning to play the piano with industrial strength ear plugs. You can pretend that you are in tempo and playing the right notes, but chances are that unless you are already an accomplished player you are not playing the tune that you hear in your head. We need to experience our mistakes and successes if we are to find our way to the melody that we were created to play. Transformation is as natural as walking with God and God is as near as life itself. I think this is why Jesus so often asked the question, "do you have eyes to see and ears to hear?"

​The hard part is saying yes to the mess--within which God is working. We all find our lives full of unwanted difficulty. But because of God's presence and activity, we can trust what
happens in our lives to open the way to our deepest desire. Everything is revelation and feedback, good and bad notes. Nothing needs to be thrown out or rejected, but rather, creatively redeemed. "In truth, pain redeemed impresses me more than pain removed," wrote Philip Yancey in What Good is God? I believe that every effort to relinquish our fears and our desire for control will enable us to increasingly hear the music of the Kingdom which is sounding all around us.

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Everything is Revelation

2/7/2013

4 Comments

 
When you don't split everything up according to what you like and what you don’t like, you leave the moment open, you let it be what it is in itself, and you let it speak to you.

--Richard Rohr
 
I've been thinking a lot about the idea that everything is revelation. The implications are enormous. For one it seems to me that in spite of our reservations about what Jesus meant when he said, "Do not judge lest you be judged," it could really be true that we don't need to judge. If everything is revelation then we only need to receive the gift of it. Of course we should notice our resistance (our judgment), but then we need not waste any time wishing we could change what already exists and move, as soon as possible, into an open, receptive position, confident in God's compassionate presence and redemptive activity. God's Kingdom is creatively at work in the very things we would like to judge as unacceptable.
4 Comments

Contemplate the Mystery

2/7/2013

4 Comments

 
 
The mysteries of the faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation.

--Simone Weil
 
"Mystery isn't something that is gradually evaporating. It grows along with knowledge."
 
--Flannery O'Connor

I have remembered these lines dozens of times over the years. With them came my first experiences of contemplation. By chewing on these quotes I came to appreciate how the contemplative stance is an active, dynamic way of seeing.
 
To affirm or negate is to stand in judgment–to come to a conclusion. To contemplate is to kneel in openness and silence before that which cannot be understood conceptually. Like an iceberg, the vast majority of God's ways are largely hidden from our perception. "Watching and waiting" without comprehending is our daily reality in relation to God. It doesn't seem too strong to say that in regards to the mystery we are either contemplatives or presumptuous fools.

We are what we eat and we become like that to which we give our attention. So it is with contemplation. It is only by maintaining a loving gaze on the Great Mystery rather than merely affirming some conceptual truth and moving on with our business, that we grow into the vastness of God.
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    David Norling

    I am the awestruckdumbpilgrim

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