Category Archives: spiritual growth
The Ongoing Dialogue between Faith and Knowledge
What I value most in myself and hoped to pass on to and through my children is that I have learned by experience to try always to not limit either my faith by my fallible human understanding or my understanding by my limited faith. There is a tension often between my personal development in both faith and knowledge, just as there is between any culture’s or religion’s developmental level in both.
I believe this is healthy, though often uncomfortable. When I allow my religious belief system to be challenged by life experience, new or “foreign” ideas, or even my own “twin” to doubting Apostle Thomas, I experience turmoil and insecurity. In fact, as a believer, unless some basic faith has become “bedrock” for me, I probably will not have the courage to face the challenge of growth. And on the other side, unless I have faced the humbling limits of human understanding, I will never make that first leap of faith.
When we begin to think that we have finally “gotten it” in either faith or understanding, we better beware! That may have been Adam and Eve’s downfall, wanting to think they knew it all….no longer having to live vulnerably incomplete and dependent on God.
An unquestioned faith is not faith, but superstition. But understanding that is not open to the risk of a faith that explores beyond understanding is not intelligence, but arrogance.
Often, it seems to me that different personalities tend to lean toward one or the other, so perhaps allowing faith and understanding to live in an ongoing dialogue is one of the most basic challenges of life.
Commitment to this challenge of an ongoing inner dialogue will hopefully give us the freedom to dialogue and learn from each other.
The Call to Change
I am still reading Richard Rohr’s “Jesus’ Alternative Plan …The Sermon on the Mount.” It’s not a simple or easy read. I have to stop and reflect and sometimes write about the awareness he provokes. Part of my delight is his confirmation of so much of what I’ve had to learn the hard way, from experience. But I think that is the best way because it helps facilitate actual change, not just intellectual assent. As I get farther in the book, I am challenged to face the areas in my psyche that have not been transformed yet by appropriation, that are still just intellectual assent. The journey gets harder along the way and I’ve been on it a long time. I’m obviously a slow learner!
Rohr is a theologian, so sometimes his language gets beyond my everyday understanding and makes me feel stupid. Then I have to struggle with both Google and my feelings of intimidation, so I won’t skip over those parts.
I’m in a very challenging part of my journey and I’m really struggling with it. I use various escapes often and don’t deal with issues that involve so much hard, even painful, self-honesty. I really resist being willing to die to what I like about myself. Which is what we have to do to focus on the nitty-gritty areas in order to see what needs to be let go. And then the hardest work is giving up my emotional pain relievers that I hang on to that keep me from experiencing the growing pains.
One of my escapes is depression. At an unconscious level it’s a choice. My other escape is being around other people who are also letting themselves focus on the bad things in the world outside them, rather than the things within us that need changing. There are some things we can do to try to make the world our version of better. But the biggest challenge ultimately is ourself that with honesty and grace we are called to change for the better. For most of us the “Beatitudes” are a greater challenge on the spiritual journey than the ten commandments.
Ultimately our spiritual journey is the same as Oscar, the Grouch’s: admitting it’s our own attitude that needs changing and seeking the grace to do it.
And sometimes I have needed either a Spiritual Director or a group that is also seeking the grace to grow and change. Right now I don’t have either, but I am seeing and hearing God’s call to change. So, I am focusing on that part of the journey and Rohr’s book really focuses on that challenge. God is in the timing!
Our Delusion that This Life is Supposed to be Heaven
Jesus healed many people, more than the Gospel stories name. But those same people eventually died. And he was not everywhere, so many were not healed. When he said “Your faith has healed you.,” it wasn’t their faith in healing, but their faith in a God that is for us and with us. But that is the same God that let Jesus die on the cross. That is the same God that let Jesus feel abandoned on the cross. But Jesus’ faith ultimately was in a God that loves and wants the best for us in eternity. The best is being like Jesus who ultimately trusts God and says, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.”
American faith often is that God should make us healthy, wealthy, and happy here on Earth. But our journey here is not heaven, it’s a school. It’s a journey from the dependency and need of a baby being transformed into the ability to love another and ultimately all others more than ourself. That takes faith not in healing, but in God’s love for us that will ultimately be grace for that journey.
Jesus had to take that same journey. In fact his journey is the map for ours.
I have experienced and witnessed healings. But my mother died by inches over fourteen miserable years with Alzheimer’s. And I was helpless to make it better no matter how hard I tried and toward the end I neglected her because I couldn’t bear it. Ultimately I was able to be with her as she died for eleven days and witnessed not healing, but some sort of peace. When my husband of almost sixty years was dying, I was able only through grace to take care of him and to not lose it myself. That part of the journey was a gift for me through giving me the grace to love him in ways I did not think I was capable of managing. And God gave me the grace to let go at he end. He died from many health issues, but not from the one we feared most. Suffering and sorrow and growing in love in and through it and ultimately like Jesus trusting in death, our own and our loved one’s, is part of the journey of the school of life. We follow in the footsteps of Jesus. The healings teach us that when we are not healed, it’s part of both the learning to trust God and growing in love and in letting go of our delusion that this life is supposed to be heaven.
Come, Lord Jesus, Come and Be Born in my Heart 2021
I feel new.
It’s really sort of weird and funny at eighty-four. But it feels delightful, like a wonderful blessing, though even a tad scary, since it’s a little like being in first grade again. I know the challenges to the new me will come and have to be responded to in new ways. But meanwhile, I am just dancing in my heart with happiness.
I feel more “whole” than I ever remember feeling.
Or course I still need taller people to reach high things. I still need stronger people to pull down heavy boxes. I still need my youngest, Tommy, to rescue me from the insanity of dealing with Infinity/Comcast. I still needed all five of my wonderful kids to replace my ancient computer. I’m blessed that my eldest, Chris lives near me and brings me meds when I’m sick and yummy food from his wife Molly. I still need Steve to come visit from Atlanta and listen to my life story, the good and the bad of it, and to write a list of simplified short cuts for me to use on the computer. (And sneakily pay for a new Microsoft Windows for me.) I still delight in my weekly Face Time call from my Mike and his Patrick in Cambodia. I am also grateful for daughter Julie’s wonderful notes affirming me and that she and Scott have invited me along on an eight day visit in Michigan with my great-grandchildren at Christmas. And I’m grateful to grandson Josh and his amazing Paula, who not only send me videos and photos of my three youngest great-grandchildren, but are including me in their Christmas. And thank God for granddaughter, Carmen, who checked out my tires and warned me that I needed four new ones right away. I still need my friend Rachel, who affirms me in writing, so when I lose my sense of well being, I can read and remember.
And I still need my friend Jenny who can laugh with me at our shared old lady humiliations. The list goes on and on.
But something inside me shifted and either I finally don’t feel so inadequate or I’ve simply accepted the hand I was dealt and can laugh at the recurring Three Stooges Act that I regularly play out. Whatever it is, my underlying fear of being inadequate for whatever life requires that has haunted me for most of my life, seems to have been put at bay, a least for now.
I think this is this year’s answer to my Advent prayer, “Come, Lord Jesus. Come and be born in my heart.” Another Christmas healing like my “Dirty Sock Under the Christmas Tree.” What a wonderful God we have. I highly recommend praying that prayer and then waiting and watching for the answer. Some years, I haven’t recognized it, but many years I have. Pray it. Wait for it. Watch for it.
I am praying for blessings for you who read this post during this season of celebration of God’s unconditional Love expressed in Jesus. Merry Christmas to you all.
Natural Gifts and Spiritual Gifts
The Martha and Mary story with Martha doing the work to feed everyone, while Mary sat with the men and listened to Jesus has always bothered me. Even though I definitely identify with Mary and see this as a clear indication that Jesus saw women as equal to men, it seemed rather unfair.
Going through some of my old journals, I found somethings that have helped remind me of what I have let myself forget.
There is a big difference in “natural” gifts and “spiritual” gifts. Recognizing our need to listen to God/Jesus/Holy Spirit and developing the habit of doing that is how we become able to seek the kingdom of God first and trust that our physical needs will be provided. This is so counter intuitive, that when I don’t daily seek God, I lose perspective and fall back into fear and trying to fix things myself even after all the miracles I’ve experienced. I seem to have Spiritual Alzheimer’s.
In my early days after a conversion from agnosticism to a personal relationship with Jesus as the human expression of the Love of God, I stayed immersed in the Scriptures and prayer for hours each day and my first response to challenges was prayer and then scriptures came to mind that related to what I was facing.
I’m going to begin sharing some small experiences as appetizers before I share some of the struggles at the beginning of my search for meaning and finding God in Jesus.
I Am Beginning to Learn How to Choose Joy
I’m 83 and a widow living alone. I’ve recently had some health issues and had become depressed. But then I read a post called: “Choose Joy.” So, when I looked out my window at the gray day, I focused on the gold and violet pansies hanging there, savoring their rich colors, the contrast that speaks to me of the marriage of joy and sorrow, remembering their velvet softness, valuing their resilience in cold gray weather. I looked around me in my warm bright study, at a cork board of cards with beautiful pictures of birds from caring friends, a picture of daffodils that are my sign of hope, a picture of Jesus holding a child and laughing, a favorite one of my husband laughing with that sparkle in his eyes, our wedding photo with my family, my loving sons and daughter at various stages of their lives, my brother and his spouse Rick, who treat me like a princess when I get to visit them, me smiling just five years ago in a Cathedral in France. How blessed my life has been. How blessed it still is. The quiet joy of peace surrounds me like a comforter. And a tiny bubble of joy rises within me. Yes, we can choose joy!
Voting and Loving
Standing in the line to vote, I’d brought my rolling walker with a seat to use if standing long brought on pain. Three different poll workers kindly asked if I’d like to go to the front of the line. I said no, because I could sit down any time I needed to. They noticed the woman behind me with a bandaged foot and asked her the same. She also said no, there were chairs every six feet. She and I began to chat about the challenges of aging and life in general right now. She shared some difficulties, but then recounted with a light in her eyes how they had turned out to bring about some good changes in her life. I reacted with delight, recognizing grace and a faith we shared. We bonded there in a line, six feet apart, with masks. It was one of those blessed moments of connection. We parted reluctantly after voting and as I drove away I realized from other things that she had probably voted red, while I voted blue. But I also realized that she went back to her life reaching out in love to those familiar faces whom she understood and trusted, while I went back to reaching out to unfamiliar faces, with lives so different from mine. Both of us doing our best to help others and to share the faith that saw us through the hard times.
The problem with a political solution is that it doesn’t take into account that we are born with very different personalities. And though as we grow through stages of life, we can become stronger in undeveloped aspects of our personality, there’s a timing to the process that isn’t under our control.
I once wrote an article called Aliens in the Nest after recognizing how different I was from either of my parents and how different my five children were from one another and at least one of us, their parents.
It takes grace to love across these differences. It takes both time and grace to develop strengths in our weaknesses. What we can handle with the grace of faith now would not have been possible for us at an earlier stage of our personal spiritual development. God gives us grace for the moment.
We cannot force others to be where we are. I keep coming back to the importance of realizing with heart and mind that I and all others are loved completely at our worst, but are also still unfinished at our best. Legislating for others, no matter how strongly we feel and even if we ourselves would with grace be willing to sacrifice our own life for what we believe, doesn’t work. Our call is to help others find that love that frees us all to grow and risk and accept suffering and die knowing we were loved at each stage of our journey.
The Love of God 2022
The Love of God is so incredibly different and beyond compare that it challenges our ability to accept it. No matter how much we have been loved by family and friends, no matter how famous and wildly adored we may have been by the multitudes, nothing has ever been more than a barely glimpsed shadow of the Love of God. To accept the unconditional love of God with our whole mind, to experience it with an open heart until our spirit is so filled with it that we can just let it overflow to others is pure grace.
The Love of God can free us to see ourselves exactly as we are, fragile and unfinished and to accept our need for forgiveness without guilt, just a true sorrow that sets us free from fear and shame and gives us grace to grow. It begins to not only free us to forgive ourselves, but also others.
The Love of God can heal the insecurities that come from being tiny vulnerable humans in a huge unknown universe, insecurities that stunt our ability to love. The Love of God is the grace that uses our mustard seed of faith to begin freeing us to die to self and live again.
The Love of God fleshed out in Jesus is personal, unconditional, and eternal. The Love of God opens our hearts to joy.
The Love of God frees us to say, “I am yours, God. Take my life and help me become the unique person you created me to be.” There is nothing as healing, powerful, and eternal as the love of God for you.
Prejudice is Wrong, Even Prejudice FOR the Underdog
I have been writing about my experiences with prejudice in the last month. I have realized that because of being eight when WWII ended, I had seen news photos of the war at the movies and then photos and stories of the concentration camps, so I had a prejudice against Germans. Then when in the 1990’s, I traveled to areas speaking German in Switzerland, Austria, and the Czech Republic in a wheel chair and experienced prejudice against the handicapped first hand, it triggered that prejudice of mine. There were several very hurtful experiences and I came home hurt and angry and with renewed dislike for Germans. In writing and reliving it, I finally realized that most of the people we encountered during those trips were kind and friendly. My prejudice was based on just a few very mean people. I think this is often the case. I personally am vehemently anti-Trump, but I know and love and respect people who are staunch Republicans that voted for him. I admit it’s difficult for me to understand, but I know these are kind and loving people. So, like Oscar the Grouch, I am praying and working on my attitude. Pre-judging based on a small vocal group within a group is simply wrong. There are both hateful and loving people in every group, whether it’s a political, national, ethnic, racial, gender, or even a religious group. Prejudice blinds us to the good in people. In these times it is particularly important to be able to hear one another and work together to preserve our shared country and world.
To do that, we have to overcome prejudices of every kind. Even prejudice FOR the underdog. As a prejudiced person, I know what a struggle that is. But with grace, like Jesus did with the Samaritan, the unclean woman, the lepers, and even the soldier of the cruel Roman conqueror, we can see through to our shared human vulnerability and need for love and grace. Let’s pray for grace and actually work at it. It’s important.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 