I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.
-- Mother Teresa, "The Simple Path"
Have you found this to be true as well?
If this is true...and how often have we been willing to test it...I wonder how fear again trys to win in lying to us by only telling us about the death of pain...rather than the truth about the life that comes from pain.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Humility vs Entitlement - My Ageless War
Learn to humble yourself, you are but earth and clay.
-- Thomas à Kempis
I fear that humility has escaped me again. How and why does it get away so regularly? There are certain areas of my life that affect my ability to lose perspective on nearly every other area of my life. And when those areas are being hammered on, I go down and stay down. And the quote above reveals to me today…that humility has left my building again. Or, perhaps something else has entered my building and is trying to re-establish residency. I don’t know exactly what that is, but it seems to have something to do with the feeling that I deserve something that I’m not getting at a relational level. Let’s call it entitlement for now. I think Entitlement sneaks in through an open window somewhere in my life…perhaps the window that is opened whenever I am put in a situation where an unusual and prolonged amount of effort feels required of me.
I think, in simple terms, that I just want some help…or perhaps I just want someone to be with me. I think that is pretty close to the kind of help I think I want. But Entitlement seizes the opportunity and pours in through the opening at unexpected rates and starts setting up shop in my mind. It creates walls with substantial and shining plaques on it. One that I recognize is called Justified. The plaque reads, “You on justified in your need for help…after all, look at all that you’re doing!” And, on the back of the plaque, in some strange way that defies the fact that you should only be able to see it from the back, are the words that eek through, “You Deserve It.”
The simple reality is that when such things occur in my life, something really is being lost…even though I don’t often recognize it or know what it is. And, because this is the case, something normal is to be grieved. But grief is un-handy, it is un-tidy, it is vulnerable, it is exposing…it requires (in a healthy way) something from someone else…and therefore creates a wider imposition. It is not self-contained. We want things to be self-contained and therefore we don’t want to grieve. Entitlement knows this and rushes through an opening whenever it can, like an arrogant salesman that shoves grief to the background. Its promotional display is attractive and compelling; hard even to resist because of the utility it offers in heading off the kind of vulnerable and slow dependency that grief leads toward with God. Grief leads me to God in perceived uncomfortable ways. It doesn’t appear to offer me Relief. Entitlement offers me relief of a different flavor, an independent one, and urgent one.
In reality, Entitlement attempts to hide God as the offerer of true relief through dependence. It says I can get what I want another way. It lies about this, because I can’t get it another way. But it knows what it is doing and uses arrogance and pride and independence and righteous justification to lead me away from God – to hide Grief.
Humility doesn’t do this. And, it is willing to wait until the barf of Entitlement is in full stench. Humility says the truth, “You really can’t do this on your own. You really do need help. The help you need isn’t in the cooperation you seek from others. It is in the dependence you have on God, which allows you to give up on the keeping-on-going of things in your life.” You see there are things in my life that I don’t want to give up. And, many of these things are good things. And, it appears for a while that I can keep all the things that I like being and doing. But things change in time and circumstances and these are controlled by God, not by me. Humility whispers these things to me…. But I often don’t hear them when I am trying as hard and as loudly as I am to keep going, to not have to grieve, to not have to acknowledge that God may be changing things for me, for someone else. Entitlement says, “You do know what is best, keep going. You can get what you want if you try hard and long enough. …but don’t bring God back into it.” Humility says, “You don’t know…what is best, but you can trust God who does. Allow Him to be in it.”
So, in very simply form, I need to acknowledge what I am made of – clay…dirt really. And the only way life can be experienced from such a starting point is by acknowledging in very practical terms (like what I want right now) that God is the breather of life into dirt. Otherwise, dirt is dirt and nothing more. Only God can do such a thing, I cannot do it…in spite of what Entitlement says. I have to be willing to wait for His breath…and to receive as joyfully as only any dirt could when it happens. This is humility and how I learn it...again and again.
-- Thomas à Kempis
I fear that humility has escaped me again. How and why does it get away so regularly? There are certain areas of my life that affect my ability to lose perspective on nearly every other area of my life. And when those areas are being hammered on, I go down and stay down. And the quote above reveals to me today…that humility has left my building again. Or, perhaps something else has entered my building and is trying to re-establish residency. I don’t know exactly what that is, but it seems to have something to do with the feeling that I deserve something that I’m not getting at a relational level. Let’s call it entitlement for now. I think Entitlement sneaks in through an open window somewhere in my life…perhaps the window that is opened whenever I am put in a situation where an unusual and prolonged amount of effort feels required of me.
I think, in simple terms, that I just want some help…or perhaps I just want someone to be with me. I think that is pretty close to the kind of help I think I want. But Entitlement seizes the opportunity and pours in through the opening at unexpected rates and starts setting up shop in my mind. It creates walls with substantial and shining plaques on it. One that I recognize is called Justified. The plaque reads, “You on justified in your need for help…after all, look at all that you’re doing!” And, on the back of the plaque, in some strange way that defies the fact that you should only be able to see it from the back, are the words that eek through, “You Deserve It.”
The simple reality is that when such things occur in my life, something really is being lost…even though I don’t often recognize it or know what it is. And, because this is the case, something normal is to be grieved. But grief is un-handy, it is un-tidy, it is vulnerable, it is exposing…it requires (in a healthy way) something from someone else…and therefore creates a wider imposition. It is not self-contained. We want things to be self-contained and therefore we don’t want to grieve. Entitlement knows this and rushes through an opening whenever it can, like an arrogant salesman that shoves grief to the background. Its promotional display is attractive and compelling; hard even to resist because of the utility it offers in heading off the kind of vulnerable and slow dependency that grief leads toward with God. Grief leads me to God in perceived uncomfortable ways. It doesn’t appear to offer me Relief. Entitlement offers me relief of a different flavor, an independent one, and urgent one.
In reality, Entitlement attempts to hide God as the offerer of true relief through dependence. It says I can get what I want another way. It lies about this, because I can’t get it another way. But it knows what it is doing and uses arrogance and pride and independence and righteous justification to lead me away from God – to hide Grief.
Humility doesn’t do this. And, it is willing to wait until the barf of Entitlement is in full stench. Humility says the truth, “You really can’t do this on your own. You really do need help. The help you need isn’t in the cooperation you seek from others. It is in the dependence you have on God, which allows you to give up on the keeping-on-going of things in your life.” You see there are things in my life that I don’t want to give up. And, many of these things are good things. And, it appears for a while that I can keep all the things that I like being and doing. But things change in time and circumstances and these are controlled by God, not by me. Humility whispers these things to me…. But I often don’t hear them when I am trying as hard and as loudly as I am to keep going, to not have to grieve, to not have to acknowledge that God may be changing things for me, for someone else. Entitlement says, “You do know what is best, keep going. You can get what you want if you try hard and long enough. …but don’t bring God back into it.” Humility says, “You don’t know…what is best, but you can trust God who does. Allow Him to be in it.”
So, in very simply form, I need to acknowledge what I am made of – clay…dirt really. And the only way life can be experienced from such a starting point is by acknowledging in very practical terms (like what I want right now) that God is the breather of life into dirt. Otherwise, dirt is dirt and nothing more. Only God can do such a thing, I cannot do it…in spite of what Entitlement says. I have to be willing to wait for His breath…and to receive as joyfully as only any dirt could when it happens. This is humility and how I learn it...again and again.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Money
One of money's evils is its beckoning to isolation.
-- dana williamson
...before I explain, what is your initial reaction to this simple statement?
...before I explain, what is your initial reaction to this simple statement?
Friday, February 06, 2009
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