Goals, Values...and the Spirit of God

Hey, bored of TV, check this out:

http://www.ysmarko.com/?p=3953

It is usually fun to see what a bunch of people we don't know anything about thinking about stuff we also think about. Actually, it was a little fun just to write that sentence. Anyway, I think the thing that rings true for me in this domain is that while goals can (and should?) have a base in values, values can (and should?) have a base in the Holy Spirit. I find that even my values, or perhaps my expression of them, change (or develop?) over time. In other words, what is dearer to me today is not the same thing that was dear to me 20 years ago. I don't think that's a sloppy thing (though it could be, I suppose), rather a thing that is rooted and guided by the Spirit of God. He shows me and teaches me what to value. From that dynamic value-system, I orient my life in my understanding of who I am and in what I do...and plan to do (goals).

People and organizations have rotated on values and planning many times and, I suspect, will continue to do so. I find that the 'life' in values, though, is something that needs to be regularly fueled (energized, guided, updated, debunked, etc.) by the Spirit. Otherwise, even values become wooden and doctrinal-statement-ish.

Anxious?

And which of you by being anxious can add a cubit to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?

-- Luke 12:25-26

Be Patient with All that is Unresolved in Your Heart...

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart.
And try to love the questions themselves.
Do not see the answers that cannot be given you
Because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,
Live along some distant day into the answer.

-- Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, 1929

Suffering: Does it Lead to Freedom?

It is impossible for a person not to be puffed up by his good works unless he has first been deflated and destroyed by suffering and evil to the point that he knows that he is worthless and that his works are not his but God’s.

-- Martin Luther

The Power of Freedom

Several times now I have said that our real hope lies in that no matter how oppressed we may be, we always retain some spark of capacity to choose. We can use the ember of freedom to choose to risk ourselves to the goodness of God or to continue to strive for our own autonomy or give in to the powers that oppress us. I am convinced that nothing whatsoever determines the choices we make at this primal level. Here, finally, the choices are totally up to us; we really are free. 

Ironically, freedom becomes most pure when our addictions have so confused and defeated us that we sense no choice left at all. Here, where we feel absolutely powerless, we have the most real power. Nothing is left in us to force us to choose one way or another. Our choice then, is a true act of faith. We may put our faith in ourselves or in our attachments (our addictions) or in God. It is that simple. 

-- Gerald May, Addiction and Grace

Rest. Rest. Rest in the Goodness of God's love.

There is something comforting about time after all, even as it seems to hasten us on into oblivion at times. The chance to reflect and revisit a prior time reminds me that all is well in the soul that yearns for God and that the march of time is a bringing-us-closer to something, rather than a taking-us-away. As I reflect today on the significance of things, this first day of a new year, I am reminded of a writing I wrote exactly one year ago. And, as I re-read that writing, I noticed a call to a kind of rest that has slowly deepened within me over the last year. A quote from the mystic, Madame Guyon, captures it well:

Rest. Rest. Rest in God's love. The only work you are required now to do is to give your most intense attention to His still, small voice within.

-- Madame Jeanne Guyon

As best I know, at this point in time anyway, this rest is a growing awareness and confidence in the goodness of God towards mankind, towards me. Perhaps the threat we feel from the oblivion we so often dread is really based in sense of loss in the goodness of things we have experienced as we age – goodness defined on our terms, base on our own personal histories. And the voice of this loss chagrins us into brokering our sense of goodness from within ourselves and through what we experience. This, though, is really a false voice. A voice not of the peace of God, but a voice from one trying to distort peace by basing it on our own ability to manage things, to secure the goodnesses we seek. This distortion of goodness changes the game from something we desire, to something we think we deserve. And, when we operate from a sense of things we deserve, we miss the very nature of goodness. The very nature of God himself.

One of my conclusions over the last year is that God is the ultimate author of goodness. And, because this is true, my attempts to manage it based on my very limited perspective of what goodness should look like are really just sad and pitiful, at best. The fact is, I really don’t know how to write a story about goodness. But that is not my job, my role in life. My life is to be about participating in the goodness that God designs for life. Goodness that extends itself to me, and not simply to me. And the way I participate in it is largely by being willing to wait for it, rather than by trying to make it happen. And the way I wait for it is largely due to my willingness to rest (rather than work hard) and listen for God’s voice.

This is something I think I was recognizing a year ago today and something that I believe more and more in now. I don’t control goodness. I receive it. It is gift. It is something I can be a part of…something because of the nature of it, to offer to others…to give away.