Masterpieces of Inherent Value

You are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress. Simultaneously.

I’m told by people who study such things that each of us has a tendency to either focus on the past, the present or the future. I suppose that the ideal scenario is when we can manage to juggle all three. We remember the past to inspire us to change, remind us of God’s gifts, guide our decisions. We live in the present because that is all we have and we should work hard to show up for it without distraction. We look to the future, we see the horizon, we march toward it with dreams and determination.

When we get stuck in only one of the three relationships to time, we miss perspective.

We are masterpieces because of our inherent value - created by God to work with God on bringing his kingdom to earth - fully human in the best possible sense of the word. We are works in progress because we are simultaneously ONLY human. We are fragile, we make mistakes.

Today, consider your orientation to time. Are you distracted by the past? Perhaps it is holding you back from both your present and future. Are you too focused on the present? Do you lose sight of the lessons the past has to offer or the call to the future that inspires hope for change? Do you waste precious moments in the here and how because you eagerly stand on tip toe looking into the future? The future is not real - today is real.

May we all find a way to expand our time continuum, so that we do the work we need to do without losing sight of the masterpiece we already are!

Finding Our Value

The mistake we make is to turn upon our past with angry wholesale negation… The way of wisdom is to treat it airily, lightly, wantonly, and in a spirit of poetry; and above all to use its symbols, which are its spiritual essence, giving them a new connotation, a fresh meaning.

John Cowper Powys

There is this tipping point that we come to when it becomes more painful to ignore our past than the fear we feel when we think of facing it. When I was waking up from my eating-disordered ways I needed support to help me learn how to eat again. This was way back in the 70’s and these issues were not being addressed particularly effectively back then. I had to take principles from one “ism” and apply it to my own.

Part of that work involved self-reflection and surrender to wisdom beyond my brain’s capacity to understand. I learned what experts said was a healthy weight for my age and height and I chose to believe them instead of my screaming brain that demanded that I weigh less each day.

One “symbol” that helped me tremendously was an insight that I was granted early on in the process. I “saw” how my body’s attempt to lose weight was a strategy to lose myself - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I considered all the thoughts, traumas and tragedies that taught me that less of me was more. I chose through gritted teeth to see this way of thinking as unwell. Less of me was not more! I had value. I had worth. I could be a person who took up space on planet earth without fear or condemnation.

Only as I read John Cowper Powys’ quote do I see it even more clearly today. This was the gentle whispering of a God who loves me and challenged me to respect and love myself. I had made a mistake believing that my presence was a bother, or too much, or defective. I needed to not only retrace my steps and denounce this error I had to learn to walk in the world in such a way that I was not apologizing for the depth of my footprint on the surface of the planet.