Our Deepest Fear

Part of this poem was quoted in a movie I saw yesterday. Unfortunately, they left out the words that give it true meaning, the words about our identity as children of God. I thought I'd share the whole thing with you here.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." ~Marianne Williamson

This is harder than I'm willing to admit

uugh, convicted. I hate that; well kind of, because then I realize I'm screwed up, but kind of not because then, hopefully, I can fix it. In Brennan Manning's re-released book entitled The Importance of Being Foolish he quotes Thomas Merton saying

One dimension of this convenient spirituality is our total insistence on ideals and intentions, in complete divorce from reality, from actions, and from social commitment. Whatever we interiorly desire, whatever we dream, whatever we imagine: that is the beautiful, the godly and the true. Pretty thoughts are enough. They substitute for everything else including charity, including life itself.

How many times do I imagine my own spirituality to be far deeper, far more authentic and powerful than it really is? Then I contently polish and display those false snapshots of my spiritual life meanwhile destroying any hope of experiencing the real thing. "The great mark of a Christian is what no other characteristic can replace, namely the example of a life which can only be explained in terms of God" (Emmanuel Suhard). We seem so content with a salvation that secures our eternal destiny. Only an American evangelical would deal in such absolutes. We're saved from far more than eternal damnation, we're saved from this living hell, life without God. It's always been about life. "I've come that they might have life, and have it to the full!" But rather than "walking in newness of life" I'm content drinking to the pleasures of this world while proudly boasting in my fictitious photographs of spirituality. How I long for a life that can only be explained in terms of God, yet I'm the only one holding me back.

Confessions

Accompanying my recent thoughts on sin has been my reading through St. Augustine's Confessions. The following passage is an excellent commentary on Romans 7. I know it's long and it'll take some wading through the olde rhetoric but it's so intense, it's worth the trouble. And just so you know, he writes in prayers so 'you' refers to God.

"The enemy held my will in his power and from it he had made a chain and shackled me. For my will was perverse and lust had grown from it, and when I gave in to lust, habit was born, and when I did not resist the habit it became a necessity. These were the links which together formed what I have called my chain, and it held me fast in the duress of servitude. But the new will which had come to life in me and made me wish to serve you freely and enjoy you, my God, who are our only certain joy, was not yet strong enough to overcome the old, hardened as it was by the passage of time. So these two wills within me, one old, one new, one the servant of the flesh, the other of the spirit, were in conflict and between them they tore my soul apart....

"Instead of fearing, as I ought, to be held back by all that encumbered me, I was frightened to be free of it. In fact I bore the burden of the world as contentedly as one sometimes bears a heavy load of sleep. My thoughts, as I meditated upon you, were like the efforts of a man who tries to wake but cannot and sinks back into the depths of slumber. No one wants to sleep forever, for everyone rightly agrees that it is better to be awake. Yet a man often staves off the effort to rouse himself when his body is leaden with inertia. He is glad to settle down once more, although it is against his better judgement and it is already time he were up and about. In the same way I was quite sure that it was better for me to give myself up to your love than to surrender to my own lust. But while I wanted to follow the first course and was convinced that it was right, I was still a slave to the pleasures of the second....

"For the rule of sin is the force of habit, by which the mind is swept along and held fast even against its will, yet deservedly, because it fell into the habit of its own accord. 'Pitiable creature that I was, who was to set me free from a nature thus doomed to death? Nothing else than the grace of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord.'"

We never keep to the present.

"We never keep to the present. We . . . anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us and do not think of the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is . . . [We] think of how we are going to arrange things over which we have no control for a time we can never be sure of reaching . . . Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so." ~Blaise Pascal

I've quite enjoyed meditating on that quote recently and don't have much commentary that could add to it, so I'll just let it speak for itself.

Confessions of a Sporatic Blogger

I have a confession to make.  I must say I haven't made a real post in quite some time simply because of my superfluous desire (used a thesaurus for that one, cool word huh) to sound good (case and point with the thesaurus).  See, what I write here shapes your perception of me.  How I act, how I look, all those things shape others' perceptions of me.  So I never write much because I don't have something super spiritual sounding to say and therefore would effect your perception of me.  Even this post I've been laboring over trying to figure out how to communicate what I want to say.  Well today I discovered it in a most unexpected place, in the book of Song of Solomon and a sermon from the 3rd century.

In his First Homily, Origen relates the first 12 verses of chapter 1 of the book of Song of Solomon to Christ's relationship with the church.  In verse 6 the Beloved declares she's become dark skinned because her brothers made her work in the vineyards all day.  She's ashamed because she was caring so much for the other vineyards that she couldn't care for the vineyard of her own body.  Origen's point being that God loves us no matter how we look on the outside, but I think we as the church have it backwards.  We're so busy caring for how spiritual we look outside that we neglect the true relationship.  It's been said before in many ways, the church has come to look an awful lot like Pharisees.  But these messages that have been preached to me so many times before, that I've repeated to others, are beginning to take deeper root in my soul.  Rather than trying to deceive myself into believing that I'm more spiritual than I really am - and that even if I were, that would make God accept me any more or less - I need to count myself in the ranks of the lost, only drawn close to the Father because of the gospel of grace.

Brennan Manning writes, "As a sinner who has been redeemed, I can acknowledge that I am often unloving, irritable, angry, and resentful with those closest to me.  When I go to church I can leave my white hat at home and admit I have failed.  God not only loves me as I am, but also knows me as I am.  Because of this I don't need to apply spiritual cosmetics to make myself presentable to Him.  I can accept ownership of my poverty and powerlessness and neediness."

Ok, this post is getting long enough (thanks to those persistent few who have endured).  And if these thoughts seem redundant for you, continue to read them and continue to listen, because maybe not this time, or the next, but one of these times, like me, it'll start to sink in.  Then it'll be the sweetest thing you've ever known and you'll never hear enough.  Thanks for stickin with.  Peace.