Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

“You don’t have to be sorry for being yourself. So start loving your sarcasm, your awkwardness, your weirdness, your unique sense of humor, your everything. It will make your life so much easier to simply be yourself.”

The kissing cousin to compassion is self-acceptance. We figure out how to respect ourselves just the way we are because of our inherent worth, not because life is perfect. This does not mean that we just sit back and smoke cigars on the porch. No indeed.

Self-acceptance and compassion are the early companions of transformation. Once we accept where we are, we can choose, if we want to, to begin wrestling with where we might want to go.

One of my spiritual friends has asked for some specific support as she continues her spiritual journey. I asked her to tell me what her horizon looks like. “Huh? What did you say?” she replied.

“Your horizon. Where are you heading?”

“Oh. I hope Bermuda once this pandemic lifts.”

“Not where you are going or what you are doing,” I clarified. “I want to know your WHY for being. I want to know how you want to “BE” and “BECOME” in the future.”

She is scratching her head over the question; I look forward to seeing her response. In the meantime, how about you? Who do you want to be when you grow up?

Day 23: The Realities of God's Love

We continue on our 40 day sprint toward the celebration of the birth of Christ. Holding to long standing traditions, this time offers us the challenge of self-reflection. It’s a way to prepare for the party. One way that helps us do so is to practice various spiritual disciplines intended to increase our self-awareness. In particular, we maintain mindfulness about God’s steady disposition and inclination of love toward us. Otherwise, we will struggle to make some progress in the journey of transformation. Adam and Eve forgot this about God and ended up hiding behind fig leaves. This is not a good look. We must be prepared to wrestle with the reality of God’s love. Our own ambivalence about ourselves can sometimes cause us to project these harsh self-judgments onto God. This does NOT promote transformational work. Unlike Santa, God doesn’t just love us only when we’re nice. He loves us when we’re naughty too. Jesus loves the whole of us.

We wrestle long and hard in our community with what it means to live a holy life. Once in a while, someone will start thinking that holiness means that we should all strive to be SuperHuman – capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound – for the sake of Christ, of course. When that happens, fingers start wagging.

One Sunday when we were still gathering in person, someone fell asleep in church. This offended his accountability team, and they got up in his face, demanding that he make restitution for falling asleep in church. His behavior, according to his cohorts, made the whole team look bad. I won’t go into all the details, but let’s just say that the good news is, all this piety did not lead to any punches being thrown…a near miss.

No one asked me to weigh in on the subject, but if they had, this is what I would have said. “You know what? He was here. He wasn’t on the streets. He wasn’t in a crack house. He was sitting in church, with a group of people who have nodded off in odd places countless times. That’s what happens when people are homeless and go days without food (and use a lot of crack). He was here, in the community. He showed up. That’s a good day.”

I’m much more impressed that he showed up than concerned about whether he stayed awake. I don’t consider falling asleep in church offensive. I tend to think it is a natural response for a guy who has been fed a good meal, is sitting in a heat-filled room surrounded by folks that he is pretty confident aren’t going to beat him up or steal from him. We are privileged and yes, responsible to love the whole self of others, not just the ones who can stay awake through the sermon!

Day 23: The Realities of God's Love

We continue on our 40 day sprint toward the celebration of the birth of Christ. Holding to long standing traditions, this time offers us the challenge of self-reflection. It’s a way to prepare for the party. One way that helps us do so is to practice various spiritual disciplines intended to increase our self-awareness. In particular, we maintain mindfulness about God’s steady disposition and inclination of love toward us. Otherwise, we will struggle to make some progress in the journey of transformation. Adam and Eve forgot this about God and ended up hiding behind fig leaves. This is not a good look. We must be prepared to wrestle with the reality of God’s love. Our own ambivalence about ourselves can sometimes cause us to project these harsh self-judgments onto God. This does NOT promote transformational work. Unlike Santa, God doesn’t just love us only when we’re nice. He loves us when we’re naughty too. Jesus loves the whole of us.

We wrestle long and hard in our community with what it means to live a holy life. Once in a while, someone will start thinking that holiness means that we should all strive to be SuperHuman – capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound – for the sake of Christ, of course. When that happens, fingers start wagging.

One Sunday when we were still gathering in person, someone fell asleep in church. This offended his accountability team, and they got up in his face, demanding that he make restitution for falling asleep in church. His behavior, according to his cohorts, made the whole team look bad. I won’t go into all the details, but let’s just say that the good news is, all this piety did not lead to any punches being thrown…a near miss.

No one asked me to weigh in on the subject, but if they had, this is what I would have said. “You know what? He was here. He wasn’t on the streets. He wasn’t in a crack house. He was sitting in church, with a group of people who have nodded off in odd places countless times. That’s what happens when people are homeless and go days without food (and use a lot of crack). He was here, in the community. He showed up. That’s a good day.”

I’m much more impressed that he showed up than concerned about whether he stayed awake. I don’t consider falling asleep in church offensive. I tend to think it is a natural response for a guy who has been fed a good meal, is sitting in a heat-filled room surrounded by folks that he is pretty confident aren’t going to beat him up or steal from him. We are privileged and yes, responsible to love the whole self of others, not just the ones who can stay awake through the sermon!

Day 26: Patiently Waiting...

Presence – the ability to be fully present and attend to the whole of a person.

How in the world do we practice presence from six feet apart and wearing masks? Please do not misunderstand; I do not happen to be a person who thinks this is an unreasonable request. I just think it is hard for a variety of reasons, including our capacity to practice presence.

For example, I may be thrilled about the possibility of transformation in another person, unmindful that they really aren’t that interested in being transformed themselves. Sometimes people aren’t as ready for change as we are eager to see them transform. We must be wise and willing to allow people to have their own journey – and if we rush them, we are harming ourselves and disrespecting them. They will resent us, and perhaps rightfully so. Our willingness to practice presence is more valuable than any tips we can suggest for change.

Oftentimes the person not ready to to change is….us. Bummer. But that’s ok too. While we lean into our ambivalence there will be plenty of opportunities to notice if our decision to stay the same is more painful than the effort it will take to cooperate with change. If we can seek out people who can practice presence with us, we may find comfort as we try to decide our next right step.

During Advent we wait. After Advent we will wait. In the spiritual life there is a lot of waiting. I guess that’s why patience is a fruit of the Spirit. We are rounding the corner in anticipation of not only Advent, but a new year. I assume it will have its highs and lows like this one did. I pray 2021 is gentler than 2020 was - but who knows?

I pray that you will be patient with yourself, and those you love. God may be working in the silent, unseen spaces. It’s ok to take your time. God’s still at work.

Grief and Loss

But then one regrets the loss even of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one’s personality.

- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray[4]

People who study the art of change say that within us lies a lot of ambivalence, even about things we desperately desire to change. This ambivalence is housed in our brain and it makes total sense that our brain would hate change.

The human brain is an amazingly complex organ, but it has one thing in common with my grandfather Bill Murdock. It loves to sit on the porch and smoke a good cigar. The brain loves patterns. It does not much care if its understanding of patterns is actually accurate. It loves to find patterns so that it can take more smoke breaks.

Patterns give the brain the opportunity to go on auto-pilot and catch its breath. My husband, who works from home, sometimes ends up at the gym instead of a scheduled afternoon meeting because he is in the habit of going to the gym in the afternoon as a work break.

If I come home late after a rough day, my brain wants a spoon and a jar of peanut butter because my brain believes that eating peanut butter out of a jar is a wonderful way to deal with stress. It’s paired stress and eating peanut butter and believes it is a pattern my whole being should embrace. But my healthy eating intentions do NOT embrace eating a jar of peanut butter as an after dinner snack. Who wins?

If it is easy and convenient and within reach, the peanut butter wins. My brain is ambivalent about making changes. It liked the old way of dealing with stress it does NOT want to learn new things.

But my brain does not get the final say! Understanding that change is hard and my brain will fight my good intentions at every turn, the peanut butter had to go. Peanut butter is not a bad thing. In fact, it is quite yummy. But I am having to break a bad habit for a good reason.

My brain and I regret the banishment of my little friend peanut butter, but he had to go for a higher purpose.

What do you need to let go of in order to set yourself for transformation? Although we humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings and all that heavy lifting is on him, we still have a part to play in the work of change! What’s yours?