I need to write a couple of posts to test out the FeedBlitz delivery system for those who would like to receive blogposts by email--like newsletters.
So forgive my using this space for a test. I will be back soon with some real content!!!
Sometimes I'm aware that being fully who I am is the most spiritual thing I can be.
But this is only true if I'm aware of that false part of me, that pretend part of me, that not-real-me part of me and moving away from that and toward the truest me.
Sin separates me from my true inner heart and my true inner life. I separate myself from these things as I put on my mask, cover my real feelings with stuff, wear my personnas, and otherwise try to be more or different than I who truly am.
Jesus reconciles me and brings me back into full relationship with Himself; and He also brings me back into full and right relationship with who I truly am: my made-in-the-image-of-Christ self. Me. Just me. Raw me. Wholly me. Alive me. Passionate me. No-pretense me. Full-of-all-kinds-of-feelings me. Simple me. True me.
Does this make any sense? I don't leave myself to become spiritual. I do die to the false parts of myself but this brings me into the freedom to live out of and be my true self. Fully myself.
Brennan Manning says it this way:
"Sanctity lies in discovering my true self, moving toward it, and living out of it... While the impostor draws his identity from past achievements, and the adulation of others, the true self claims its identity in its belovedness. We give glory to God simply by being ourselves."
I get so weary when I try to live out of the "impostor." Even worse than the "imposter" is the "spiritual imposter." How draining and hypocritical. How foolish to think that I have to be more than I am in order to be alive, free, or precious to God. How I need to remind myself that God gave His life so that I would live-- and simply be the true person that He created. It is my truest self that is His beloved, not the other false parts of me that I put on. It is the "real me" being "fully me" that is the object of God's infinite affections. He longs for me as I really and thoroughly am--add nothing.
It is being fully me that He thoroughly delights in! Who I am is thoroughly enough!
Today I want to give glory to God by adding nothing to who I am. I'm such a simple person. A simple desire to be a lover of God and a lover of others. No rank, no status, no position, no role. Just an alive-to-the-world person and, by His grace, an alive-to-God person. I'm nobody, yet I'm magnificent (in His image). I'm nothing, yet I'm the beloved of the Creator. I'm unique, and it's just, simply, plainly, who I am that brings glory to God. Amazing!
God's will is not usually an immediate experience of insight and clarity. Rather it unfolds. It often takes longer than I want it to. I want every step laid out now. He leads a step at a time, when it is time, and not before.
His love, parenthetically, is ever-present, constant, and immediately accessible at all times. It is gentle, healing, powerful, and often tangible.
His will unfolding, on the other hand, requires more patience than I often want to give it. I want to see many upcoming steps at once with clarity and immediacy. Normally, however, I have to wait longer than I want to and there is often much letting go involved in this process.
Thus I so often find myself running ahead of his will and implementing my own plan, my own strategies, and my own devices. "Let's just move this project right along... it will probably fit into God's plan down the road anyway, so I will just get a jump start on it now and be ready when God finally wakes up!" This has led to so many bunny trails in my life that I cannot begin to count them. Not always a bad thing, but very often a significant waste of time and emotional energy.
He has a plan that is so much more complete than mine. It takes into account a bigger perspective and a greater awareness of my own life and limitations. It is born out of his overwhelming and constant love for me. His plan is worth waiting on and learning to enjoy the process of seeing it unfold moment by moment and day by day. I can rest more and strive less. I can be childlike more and over-responsible less. I can experience relationships and intimacy with him and others more while spending less energy in the "doing" mode. His will always unfolds as I am willing to wait, watch, and be the child-of-God I am meant to be.
From today's Sacred Space meditation:
If we are to encounter God truthfully in prayer, we must be real to ourselves. We need to be aware of what we are feeling. A mother will see her son come in from school, and know from his face and body-language that he is depressed, or resentful, or anxious, or whatever. If she asks him how he is, he is likely to say Fine. Most mothers will have the intuition and wit to lead him gently to put words on what he is feeling, and then to trace the happenings that led him to this state, such as a failure in school, a quarrel with a friend or worry about an exam. I remember a girl in school startling me – when I was a teacher – by asking Why are you angry today? She was right, but up to that point I had not realised that I was angry.
It is only when we are in touch with what is going on inside us that we can come before the Lord. Then I can experience the real me connecting with the real God. I t is not a case of apologising for my emotions. They are as pre-moral and innocent as feeling cold or shivery. When I bring those feelings to consciousness, as the Psalmist does with his anger and despair, then prayer become authentic.
From Thomas Dubay's Fire Within:
"Christic contemplation is nothing less than a deep love communion with the triune God. By depth here we mean a knowing loving that we cannot produce but only receive. It is not merely a mentally expressed "I love you". It is a wordless awareness and love that we of ourselves cannot initiate or prolong…
"God is love, and the person who loves abides in god, and God abides in him. For Teresa this indwelling presence is the focal point of prayer: wherever God is, there is heaven, a fullness of glory. We are to find Him deep within ourselves, just as Augustine did. We need no wings, only a place of silence where we can be alone and center our gaze on the Guests within. We should note that this type of entering within is just the opposite of introspection, for we are turning away from an egocentrism and turning toward the supreme Other...
"The greatest of all the commandments is before all else a prayer commandment. To have one's whole heart, soul and mind filled to overflowing with the love of God is to be filled with the highest prayer. The core and essence of the transforming union are nothing other than a complete identification with God in love. When one walks lovesick for God, as St John of the Cross puts it, he is at the heights of prayer life, and he is fulfilling the greatest commandment to perfection… This love, says St. Paul, is poured into our hearts by the Holy spirit Who is given to us. Love poured out is, of course, infused love--the two words mean the same thing. The psalmist who declares that he delights in nothing else on earth but his Lord further proclaims that his flesh and his heart are pining with love, that his joy is to be near God. So advanced a love could not be anything but the burning infusions of which Teresa and John speak." Dubay p. 57, 58, 67
In the midst of the morning I had the thought that it's "time" to pray. Interesting how sometimes pryaer can start to feel mechanical.
But then I turned to that "Sacred Space" site and here is what it says:
Rain waters the earth, making it bring forth and sprout…. The whole creation is groaning in travail… A sower went out to sow. We are reminded that prayer is not a lifestyle option, or a mechanical technique, but something natural to all creatures, like breathing out and breathing in, like metabolising our food, like the process of growth which we achieve without knowing how we do it.
Prayer is natural... like breathing. That's exactly what I needed to hear today. I don't want something mechanical or forced. I just want to breathe God in... and live my life with him.
Prayer is natural... I realize that this can be an excuse to subtly turn my heart toward other things, this morning, and just get busy with the day. I don't want to do that either. So, I wait...
Prayer is natural... I remind myself that real prayer is not something I do. I still usually think of prayer that way. It's me doing it. It's an activity that I engage in. The reality is that real prayer-- real breathing God's life in and communing with Him is NOT something I can just do. At most, I can create space in my life for it. It's a divine activity that He sparks. I don't do it, I receive the grace of communion with God-Creator-Life-Spirit-Crucified One. At best I can open myself. The flood of life and communion that follows (if I have indeed opened myself to HIm) is in me by His graciousness, power, and desire for me.
Prayer is natural... "I remind myself that there are things God has to teach me yet, and ask for the grace to hear them and let them change me (another quote from Sacred Space)." Being open to God also involves being open to how He wants to change and lead me... This willingness causes me to work in harmony with His "natural" power that is working and flowing in me.
Prayer is natural... and it's Person to person... no longer mechanical this morning. It's simple, powerful communing with the real Person of Jesus. At least, I've made the transition for the moment.
Children hurt and they cry. They feel the pain and let it out.
I don't do that. When I hurt I cover the pain with a hardness. I pick up anger to protect myself. I find ways to distract myself from the hurt. I do many things that keep me from vulnerably feeling what hurts inside.
It takes me a process to become a child, to soften my heart, connect with my Father's heart, and let the hurt out.
Sometimes I have to walk in my anger until I'm ready to let it go. I may have to consciously forgive others or myself before I'm ready to do this.
Sometimes I lose myself in work or activity and I have to be willing to let go of this external coping before I can deal with the hurt.
Solitude beckons me back into honesty with myself and vulnerable relationship with God where the real work of surrender, heart-softening, and hurt-healing can take place. Solitude is where I can begin to feel safe enough to again let my heart become like a child's heart, let go of my defenses, and know that God's embrace for me is real. Only in that place of solitude can I find the courage to let the healing begin.
From Thomas Keating:
The great gift which Christ won through his sacrificial death is intimacy and oneness with the Father. On the day of his resurrection he said triumphantly to Mary Magdalene, "Go to my brethren and say to them that I am ascending to my Father and your Father" (John 20:17). That is the great good news! The experience of intimacy with God, symbolized in Genesis by God's daily walk with Adam and Eve in the evening air (Gen. 3:8), is now available once again to the whole human family.
This is the great good news! Though I end up chasing many things, the only this that is truly beneficial and fully satisfying at a depth like nothing else is the experience of that intimacy with Him.
One thing necessary...
Abide in me...
One with me as the Father and I are one...
The Bride of Christ...
Kiss me with the kisses of your mouth...
For your love is sweeter than wine...
Christ in me...
Draw near to me...
Song of Songs Ch. 1, Vs. 3.
"For your loves (breasts) are more delightful than wine."
The revelation of God's heart, his emotions, his deep love, his whole inner Person is so powerful and inebriating that when it touches our spirit and fills our heart with it's reality it is truly a delightful experience that far transcends any experience in this world.
This love must be received and internalized. Like drinking wine, it is nothing to know about the wine, to describe the wine, to smell the wine, to know all about the process of wine-making. What impacts a person is the drinking of the wine. In the same way, God's love--His heart--must be received and internalized into the deepest part of ourselves. In fact, our healing process is taking the deep part of ourselves out of protective hiding and allowing the fire and presence of God's love to touch those places until our heart is overflowing with the realities of this love. We must drink it in. We must take it into ourselves. Then it becomes in us an experience that transforms.
Some would say that "wine" represents all the pleasures and pursuits of this world. It is true that God's love and heart internalized are far more pleasurable than anything this world can offer. Yet wine itself, literally, describes a chemical change that causes the body and emotions to experience, for a time, a sense of pleasure. In a very literal way, God's heart, when revealed to our spirit and heart, produces a chemical change in our bodies and emotions that is truly, and without later regret, truly pleasurable and enjoyable.
The mystics tell us not to pursue God solely for our own sense of pleasure. Yet they, nevertheless, describe these kinds of pleasurable experiences as normal for those who pursue God first, wanting to lay aside all other pursuits as dross compared to the gold of His presence.
Saint Teresa says it thus:
Oh, my daughters, may our Lord grant you to understand, or, rather, to taste, for in no other way can it be understood, how the soul rejoices when this happens to it. Let worldlings come with all their possessions, their riches, their delights…even if all these could be enjoyed without the trials that they bring in their train, which is impossible, they could not in a thousand years cause the happiness enjoyed in a single moment by a soul brought hither by the Lord."
I have been intending to take some time with the Song of Songs as it describes the journey of a soul toward union with its Beloved. For those interested in this mystical (and perhaps primary) interpretation of this book, I can't recommend enough "The Songs of Songs" by Juan G. Arintero.
However, it is my own thoughts I will attempt to share here from time to time starting with chapter one, verse one: "Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth..."
This is God intimately touching humankind, awakening us to His love through the new birth, and imparting Himself, the Spirit, into us. The Holy Spirit's initial touch is the foretaste of all that is to come.
This is what draws us on toward a deeper and deeper walk with God-- we want more of Him. The taste of who He is has been intimately communicated to our spirit in a way that awakens a love and longing in us unlike anything on this earth.
Ruysbroeck says the Holy Spirit is "an embrace that intimately penetrates the Father, the Son, and all the Saints in delightful union." No wonder that the slightest kiss-- the slightest taste-- can produce in us a thirst for more of God that lasts a lifetime.
The kiss produces an awakening to spiritual things generally and to the bliss of Divine love specifically.
This is merely the beginning of our spiritual development. We don't know how to respond to this love fully nor how to rest fully in the Lover-Beloved relationship… We have only been kissed so as to woo us on toward Him. There are many stages in this divine union yet to come (thus the rest of the Song of Songs).
However, this is not the kiss of lovers without serious intention. Quite the contrary. This is the kiss that seals the Bridegroom's desire and intention to fully consummate a union and to draw the bride into a relationship that is eternal and deep beyond words.
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