Sit and Listen to Your Heart

"There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready be filled. You feel it, don't you?" Rumi

I hope you can find some time to sit in silence. Feel your heartbeat. Know that your life is richer than your bank account and more meaningful than the experiences you long for in order to add some spice to life. I pray you know that you are complete as you are and a relationship is not required for you to feel complete.

You are whole.

You are not broken beyond repair.

Repair may be needed but not because you are broken. Restoration is necessary because we are human and we break. The world is often hostile to the things of God. Created in his image, we will have troubles. (There is a teaching of Jesus that specifically reminds us of this.). This trouble is not because other people hate God - so this is not a persecution thing. It is a human condition.

Sit and listen to your heart. Watch and wait for the Lord to reveal himself to you in your ordinary, everyday life. Cooperate with him. Test and see if maybe Rumi is onto something.

Day 22: Very Human

“The goal of the Christian spiritual journey is not to become less human and more divine; it is to become more fully human. Salvation is not to rescue us from our humanity; it is to redeem our humanity.”

Sacred Companions, David Benner, p.35

What if…we were willing to embrace our humanity while working out our spirituality within the context of our very human selves? Would that change how we view self and others, even God?

The purpose of salvation is to restore to wholeness that which is broken.

Creatures break stuff. God heals broken people.

If the goal of life is to avoid breaking things, then life is hopeless. But if broken things can be healed, repaired, restored, renewed and transformed….then, let the adventures begin!

Do you respond to obvious signs of the human condition as if being human is offensive? Think about this. Sit with the question. See where it leads you. We are approximately halfway through our Advent season.

Breathe.

Day 22: Very Human

“The goal of the Christian spiritual journey is not to become less human and more divine; it is to become more fully human. Salvation is not to rescue us from our humanity; it is to redeem our humanity.”

Sacred Companions, David Benner, p.35

What if…we were willing to embrace our humanity while working out our spirituality within the context of our very human selves? Would that change how we view self and others, even God?

The purpose of salvation is to restore to wholeness that which is broken.

Creatures break stuff. God heals broken people.

If the goal of life is to avoid breaking things, then life is hopeless. But if broken things can be healed, repaired, restored, renewed and transformed….then, let the adventures begin!

Do you respond to obvious signs of the human condition as if being human is offensive? Think about this. Sit with the question. See where it leads you. We are approximately halfway through our Advent season.

Breathe.

Seeking wholeness in all the wrong places

Dr. Carl Jung, a noted psychiatrist, once said that addiction is an unconscious quest for God. Restated, Jung believed that we are seeking wholeness for ourselves through artificial sources. Obviously, there are tons of ways to journey through life. Some have more side-effects than others. But Jung believed we cannot escape this primal quest for wholeness - nor should we!

Nic Sheff began his quest through an absolute commitment to drug use. His favorite was methamphetamines, but he was not too picky. Nic’s story is laid out for the world to see in the books, Beautiful Boy, written by his father David and Nic’s book Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines.

“Smoking pot for the first time felt like the first real answer that I had ever found. I kept turning to drugs to cope with everything from success to failure to shyness and everything in between. Thus, when I wasn’t using, I really developed no skills to handle what life threw at me. I kept going back to the drugs because they were the only coping mechanism that I’ve ever learned.”

If smoking pot was the answer, what was his primary question?

Long before he [God] laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.

~ Ephesians 1:3-6, The Message

The quest is a sacred pilgrimage. But in Nic’s case, and mine, my brother’s and maybe yours - we stumble upon an answer to the wrong question that does not hold up for the long haul. In recovery, we can choose to embark on a healing journey with intentionality. This will lead us into a whole new way of being. Recovery does not return us to who we were before we started using, it breaks us out of the prison of our mind, clouded by dysfunctional thinking, feeling and behaving. Maybe you think this does not apply to you. Are you sure? Is there any person, place or thing that you absolutely believe you cannot live without? You might just have a dependency!