Blog Archives
Our Suffering; Part of the Saving Grace of Jesus
Posted by Eileen
WOW! I think I get it. Our journey is part of His and our suffering lets us into His experience. Somehow that is a whole other dimension than Jesus suffering for us or even His being with us in our suffering. It’s a being part of His suffering for all. We are sharing the love of His willingness to let go of His power, His strength, His separation from his friends. His loss of everything of value He had. Suffering of various kinds is part of that dying to self. What do we value in ourselves? We see having it as our gift to the world, as our reason for being. Whatever it is, it is in fact not our achievement, but a gift from God. Our value isn’t limited to that. Jesus had powers/gifts that He had to let go of. It’s not about power, even the power to heal or help others. His letting go, His death was His gift of Love, not healing or winning or achieving. That is so paradoxical. It doesn’t matter how big or small our accomplishments, the letting go is the gift. I’ve sort of understood this, but disconnected it from suffering. Still kind of struggling to grasp it, so can’t communicate what I’m sensing very well yet.
Posted in a Jesus kind of love, Alzheimer's, DeathandResurrection Should be One Word., Jesus' Journey is our Journey, Love and Suffering, Richard Rohr
Tags: Dying to Self, our gift with the gift of Jesus....dying to self, suffering as letting go, the gate of accepting suffering as gift, the gift in the suffering of Jesus..
God is Found in All Things
Posted by Eileen
I am often overwhelmed with both awe and affirmation when I read Richard Rohr’s writing. He expresses experiences and understanding that I share, but find so difficult to articulate.
Richard Rohr finds the foundation for his teaching that everything belongs in the crucifixion itself:
“The cross is a perfect metaphor for what we mean by “everything belongs.” The rational, calculating mind can never fully understand the mystery of the cross. These insights can only be discovered through contemplative seeing: God is to be found in all things, even and most especially in the painful, tragic, and sinful things, exactly where we do not want to look for God. The crucifixion of the God-Human is at the same moment the worst and best thing in human history.
Human existence is neither perfectly consistent, nor is it incoherent chaos. Instead, life has a cruciform pattern. All of life is a “coincidence of opposites” (St. Bonaventure), a collision of cross-purposes. We are all filled with contradictions needing to be reconciled. This is the precise burden and tug of all human existence.
The price that we pay for holding together these opposites is invariably some form of “crucifixion.” Jesus himself was archetypally hung between a good thief and a bad thief, between heaven and earth, holding together both his humanity and his divinity, a male body with a feminine soul. He was a Jewish believer who forgave and loved everyone else. He “reconciled all things in himself” (Ephesians 2:14–16). Jesus really is an icon of what Carl Jung called the holy and whole-making spirit. [1]
The demand for the perfect is the enemy of the possible good. Be peace and do justice, but let’s not expect perfection in ourselves or the world. Perfectionism contributes to intolerance and judgmentalism and makes ordinary love largely impossible. Jesus was an absolute realist, patient with the ordinary, the broken, the weak, and those who failed. Following him is not a “salvation scheme” or a means of creating some ideal social order as much as it is a vocation to share the fate of God for the life of the world, and to love the way that God loves—which we cannot do by ourselves.
The doctrine, folly, and image of the cross is the great clarifier and truth-speaker for all human history. We can rightly speak of being “saved” by it. Jesus crucified and resurrected is the whole pattern revealed, named, effected, and promised. Jesus did not come to found a separate or new religion as much as he came to present a universal message of vulnerability and foundational unity that is necessary for all religions, the human soul, and history itself to survive. Thus, Christians can rightly call Jesus “the savior of the world” (John 4:42), but no longer in the competitive and imperialistic way that they have usually presented him. By very definition, vulnerability and unity do not compete or dominate. The cosmic Christ is no threat to anything but separateness, illusion, domination, and the imperial ego.”
I am always frustrated by my limited ability to articulate how I see Jesus as both the fullness of our unfinished humanity and our potential through the Spirit of God within us to grow toward being light and love, truth and wholeness, Spirit and vulnerability. Again, I see it as growing from need to love. And though the prototype is Jesus, together we are tiny parts of the Body of Christ on earth. Union makes us vulnerable so we both desire it and fear it, because that union includes those we judge and fear. And we can only experience that union when we die to self. I’m struggling at eighty-six to even recognize what is my current challenge to grow toward that, perhaps because everything in me fears it.
At One with all that Glory
Posted by Eileen
One night many years ago in a world cloaked in a comforter of snow, I walked alone to the crest of a hill. As I stood there lost in the perfect silence, the sky was bursting with stars I’d never seen. Suddenly, I felt my self shrinking into insignificance in that overwhelming spectacle of space. But softly, I melted into the universe no longer limited by my borders, at one with all that Glory.
God, Jesus, and Buddha
Posted by Eileen
“If we are willing to give up hope that insecurity and pain can be exterminated, then we can have the courage to relax with the groundlessness of our situation.” I have experienced this, so I believe it. It’s from a book called “When Things Fall Apart” by Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun.
But she also says, ” Without GIVING UP HOPE–that there’s someWHERE better to be, that there’s someONE better to be, we will never relax with where we are or who we are.” I struggle with this some, but I think it’s another paradox. When I have realized that some of my failures to love come out of insecurity about who I am, it starts a process that after a gap of time frees me to accept the imperfect me , which then helps me to become more loving of other imperfect people.
I believe that my courage to do this this comes through having accepted the unconditional Love of God expressed in Jesus with both my heart and intellect, so I can face, forgive, and love both my imperfect self and others’. I explore my experiences of discomfort through journaling and sometimes dreams and pray for awareness and grace to grow more loving. But there’s always a gap where I have to accept living with awareness of that unloving part of myself before I finally recognize that I have been healed and freed in that particular area. And as nice as that is, knowing that more encounters with unpleasant realities will have to happen again, pretty much prevents pride in my part of the process. Once again, one of my strongest beliefs from years of experiencing this is: I am loved unconditionally at my worst and I am still unfinished at my best. But with the grace of being fully known and loved, I will be able to continue growing, though some times much more slowly than others.
This life is a journey along a path filled with uncomfortable challenges all along the way. And the love of God is the grace we need to carry us through. But also, some of the insights of the Buddhists are helpful tools in recognizing and accepting the hard parts of this life long process. And with healing through the grace of the Love of God expressed in Jesus, we can continue becoming new and a little more free to love each time.
Posted in a Jesus kind of love, Forgiveness, Healing, Jesus, Judging, Love, Paradox, rebirth, Suffering
Tags: Buddha, Dying to Self, encountering our shadow, freedom to be imperfect, getting real, inner healing, inner journey, journaling, self-awareness, self-understanding, the rhythm of life, transitions
The Last Season
Posted by Eileen
The last season of life
is not meant for pleasure
but for letting go of everything
of getting freed for joy
letting go of delusions
of importance
of great success
even perfect love
letting go of illusions
about life’s purpose
and rewards
letting go of dreams
of angels close at hand
of reaching
the promised land
until all that’s left
is the present moment
and no matter how hard
it may seem
to forget self and focus on others
not as an achievement
just a choice
accepting that love
is full of pain
no happy endings
promised
no jeweled crowns
or streets of gold
long awaited as
just rewards
for persevering
through suffering
all this lost for the bliss
of finally seeing
The Glory of God – perfect love.
Darkness before Dawn
Posted by Eileen
If this quote is too obscure, read on down to my translation.
When you get hooked into emotional reactivity, an opportunity has come to cleanse your perception.
From the perspective of wholeness, triggers are a special form of grace. Not the sort of grace that is sweet, peaceful, and calming, but the kind that is wrathful, fierce, and reorganizing.
When it gets tight, claustrophobic, and you are burning for relief, the invitation is laid before you. To lay down a new pathway. To turn into the disturbing energy and flood it with presence. To infuse the vulnerability underneath the storyline with warm, empathic attunement.
And with the earth as your witness, to commit to the radical path of non-abandonment.
These triggers are not obstacles to your path, but are the very path itself. While they may disturb you, they are eruptions of creativity and aliveness, and guardians at the threshold. In this way, they are worthy of your honor, your care, and your holding.
While it may appear otherwise, they are only love in disguise, appearing in infinite forms to guide you home.
~Matt Licata From the Blog: Make Believe Boutique
My translation: When life throws you down and defeats you and you are reeling in pain and railing against fate, go with the suffering. Enter it and feel it. Curl into a fetal position and weep bitterly, if you need to, but accept the grace of the pain. Don’t run from any part of it. Don’t project blame on others. Don’t use anger as an escape. Don’t sink into self pity or self justification. Don’t seek revenge. Don’t play “what if….?” Because this is a doorway to rebirth. This is a cross you die on, so that you can become a new person, with new wisdom, new strength, and a new ability to love more deeply, both others and yourself.
Posted in Death, evolving, Failure, fear, Forgiveness, Healing, Mental Health, Necessary Losses, relationships, spiritual growth, Suffering
Tags: anger, despair, Dying to Self, greater love, new life, new wisdom, pain, peace, rebirth, revenge, self-hate, suffering
We Are Not Called to Just Love Others as We Love Ourselves or to Do Unto Others as We Would Have Them Do Unto Us.
Posted by Eileen
An area I disagree with many Christians about is that Jesus’ ultimate call to love is summed up in, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself” and “Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.” I think these are fundamentally limited ways to love. I have found from experience that, one: I often don’t love myself, and two: how I am able to accept and experience being loved is quite different from a lot of other people. I think at a later time in his journey, Jesus caught on to that too. Then he said to love others as He loved us. That greater love had no one than that they lay down their life for another. He laid down his desires, his gifts and ministries, his power, his limited vision of his purpose, his followers, even ultimately His awareness of God’s presence, as he hung on the cross. He gave up his self- hood. That’s a call most of us avoid hearing. Dying to self involves letting go of pretty much all of our preconceived ideas and natural inclinations in order to get outside of our own self and become able to hear/see/ respond lovingly and appropriately to those different from us. This dying to self is very very hard to do. It was so hard for Jesus that he literally bled in his anguish and then experienced deep despair in his feeling of abandonment by God.
Today, I think we get so nervous about something sounding like we are saying Jesus isn’t God, that we miss what we can learn from his life about our own journey. His life, God or not, was human. He didn’t spring forth fully grown, fully mature, completely understanding his mission, or knowing his future. He came as a baby, vulnerable, innocent, and ignorant. There are some obvious learning events in His life story, and there are also more subtle ones we often miss. Watch him as a twelve year old learn to wait on God’s timing and to consider his parents’ feelings and guidance. Watch him get pushed out of his comfort zone by his mother’s caring about a young couple’s embarrassment on their wedding day, watch him escape from his angry neighbors in Nazareth, but three years later, fully knowing the outcome setting his face toward a hostile Jerusalem, watch as he let’s a gentile woman convince him of his call to minister outside his own religious group as he recognizes the faith of even unbelievers, watch him weep as he recognizes that his own people will not accept his love and salvation, watch him test his power on a fig tree, but then recognize his own servanthood as he washes his disciples feet, watch him struggle in the garden with his realization that he must die young, watch him accept the agony of feeling abandoned by God on the cross, and yet still move to “Thy will be done.” Consider the difference in the difficulty of the moral code of the ten “Do Nots” and the spirituality of the “Beatitudes.” There’s way more to loving than most of us want to know.
Posted in B4Peace, Death, evolving, Love, Paradox, Personality, relationships, spirituality, Suffering, Teaching/Learning Experiences, the future
Tags: Dying to Self, from Nazareth to Jerusalem, gentile woman, humanity of Jesus, Jesus learning, Jesus' journey, Jesus: Man and God, learning events in Jesus ' life, love as I have loved you, maturing, moral codes: The Do Nots vs The Beatitudes, our journey
Compassion or No One’s Playing with a Full Deck
Posted by Eileen
From when I was quite young, I stayed stressed night and day over the possibility of being scolded for anything. Unfortunately, even if a fellow student was scolded, I also hurt for them, literally. My stomach would ache. As an adult when a friend was going through a painful divorce, it seemed almost like I was going through it myself. In many ways this made me compassionate and I tried always to relieve others’ suffering in any way I could.
But, my life became controlled by an underlying need to relieve suffering of any kind, my own, my friends’, the world’s. This sounds like a good thing, and at times it undoubtedly was. But suffering is an inevitable part of life, everyone’s life. And a lot of suffering is self inflicted and perpetuated by attempts to escape it, rather than experience it and learn and grow from it. Compassion and fear of our own suffering may be two sides of the same coin.
Over the years I learned that I could not protect my children from suffering. And after a couple of friends, that I tried to give emotional support, ended up committing suicide, I gradually accepted that I am not God and cannot control life for anyone.
Eventually, I also recognized that some people become addicted to being victims and are bottomless pits of needs and wants that no one but God can fill. I can be kind. I can share insights I’ve gained through my own struggles. I can bring a little laughter into the lives around me. But ultimately, each person’s journey is uniquely tailored to the process of making them into the people God created them to be…no more and no less. We can all only play the hand we were dealt and no one other than God can judge how well we are doing that.
Each person is born with their own set of genetic strengths and virtues. The thing we often overlook is that each strength has a corresponding area of weakness. Our pattern of growth will build on the strengths, but also will involve facing our weaknesses and allowing for them. We can develop survival skills in those areas, but they will never be our gifts.
That means we need one another. That means at times we must set aside our strengths and avail ourselves of the opposite set of gifts of other people. This is a dying to self of sorts. It involves suffering and humility. Not an easy task, but definitely part of becoming a couple, a family, a friend, a community, a nation, a world.
In other words, none of us is playing with a full deck! And we can help one another in partnerships, but not in dependency relationships that keep us from growing.
Compassion calls for not only kindness, but the capacity to accept suffering as part of our own lives and of life in general for everyone.
It comes down to the age old prayer: God help me to change what I can, accept what I can’t change and the wisdom to know the difference.
Posted in Addictions, B4Peace, Decision Making, evolving, Gifts of Age, Healing, Love, Mental Health, Parenting, Personality, Resurrection, spirituality, Suffering, Teaching/Learning Experiences
Tags: community, compassion, Dying to Self, empathy, fear, Gifts, humility, our journey, over sensitivity, partnership, patterns of growth, personality, Personality Differences, suffering, survival skills, team work, victims, virtues, weaknesses, wisdom
The Gospel of the Poor
Posted by Eileen
From Simplicity: The Art of Living by Richard Rohr
Jesus says he has come to preach the Gospel to the poor since, in fact, they’re the only ones who can hear it. They don’t have to prove or protect anything.
We always have to ask: In what sense are we ourselves rich? What do we have to defend? What principles do we have to prove? What keeps us from being open and poor?
The issue isn’t primarily material goods, but our spiritual and intellectual goods……my ego, my reputation, my self-image, my need to be right, my need to be successful, my need to have everything under my control, my need to be loved…….
The words of the Gospel never let us live in self-satisfaction. Rather they always make us empty. They always repeat the truth of Mary’s “Let it be done to me according to your word.” They allow us to keep our wounds open so we can receive Christ in us.
It seems we are quite incapable of welcoming Christ, because we are so full of ourselves. The real thing we have to let go of is our self.
Weep for Jesus
Posted by Eileen
Spirituality is personal faith based on an ongoing, growing relationship with the source of life and love.
Religion is faith shared by a group. Unless religion is based on spirituality, it becomes a country club, or worse, a desire for power over others, rather than the power to love others.
Jesus wept for his people, the Jews, because they could not hear the Good News of being loved, because they feared the cost of loving.
I think now, he weeps for those who gather in his name.
Weep for Jesus, this awesome God filled, human expression of God’s Love for all creation, who the Scripture’s tell us had to grow in truth and holiness.
Weep for Jesus, who was able to allow the lowest members of his society and even hated foreigners to challenge him to see that his mission was to share the Love of God with the whole world, not just one race, nation, religion, or economic group.
Weep for Jesus, who was able to grow into accepting that before life is over, not after, Love demands letting go of everything, our lifestyle, our image, our religious security blankets, our power, our ministry, our very self on the cross of Love.
Weep for Jesus who died to teach us how to love.
Weep for Jesus and weep for us, who claim to be his people, but do not hear, because we fear the cost of Love.
Posted in B4Peace, Gifts of Age, Love, Spiritual, Teaching/Learning Experiences
Tags: cost of loving, Dying to Self, Faith, Good News, Jesus, Jesus grew in truth and holiness, Jesus wept, power over or power for, religion, religious country club, religious security blankets, scripture, spirituality, the cost of love, the people of God
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 