Lent: A time for laying down our defenses

This Wednesday (March 5), Christians around the world will celebrate Ash Wednesday.  This day begins the 40-day journey of Lent to prepare ourselves for the events of Holy Week – Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday.  

The preparatory season of Lent is a time when we can reflect on, and ask God to deepen, our own commitment to God and God’s kingdom.  During Lent, we are invited to reflect on our own lives - in as honest a way as possible.  During Lent, we engage in the kind of practice that 12-step movements call a “searching and fearless moral inventory."

Our Lenten self-inventory is “searching” because we want to examine every part of our lives.  We want to look into the shadows of our lives, looking under all the rocks and hidden places inside of us, looking for all the places where we try to hide from God and God’s call on our lives. 

Our Lenten self-inventory is “fearless” because we can engage in this self-examination without any fear that we are going to find something that will make us unlovable to God.  There is nothing that can make God reject us.  Absolutely nothing can separate us from God (cf. Romans 8:38-39), not even the unsavory and unattractive parts of our lives.  God does not reject us, only accepts us.  We are profoundly and completely accepted by God, as we are.  God accepts, and is ready to heal, every part of us - even those parts of ourselves that we are ashamed of.  When we are willing to turn over to God those parts of our lives that we are afraid of, or ashamed of, God sets us free.

The sharp point of the Lenten invitation is that we are invited to lay down all the ways that we defend and protect ourselves.  Over the course of every day, in a whole variety of ways, we can guard and protect ourselves from other people, from events in the world, and from God.  From the time we are small children, we are taught to protect and defend ourselves.  “Keep your guard up.”  “Watch your back.”  “Eyes open, at all times.”  “Boys don’t cry.” “Don’t let others get mad at you.”  “It’s best to do everything yourself; that way, you can make sure nobody messes it up.”

These words of advice may serve us well if our primary life-goal is to 'stay safe' or 'be popular' or 'always be in control.'  But when we live by these and similar codes, we will be (1) reluctant to trust others (including God), (2) hesitant to share ourselves with others (including God), (3) inclined to avoid sharing our gifts with the world, and (4) tempted to see other people as threats rather than neighbors.

The Christian life is a journey of learning to live for the world, rather than living in fear of the world.  It is a journey of living with the world - in all of its pain and complexity and messiness - rather than trying to stay safe from the world.  We are invited this Lenten season to lay down some of our self-defenses, which may have helped to keep us safe in the past, but which have also bound us and held us back from a life of freedom and abundant love.

What is one way that you protect yourself from the world?  (If you’re like me, you may have a whole repertoire of ways to keep yourself safe!)  What is one way that you defend yourself against being vulnerable, guard yourself from being exposed to the thoughts and opinions of others?  Please do not beat yourself up about this, but simply begin to notice the times during the day when you go into “self-protection” mode.  When are you most likely to feel the need to self-protect?  What goes through your mind when you feel like this?  Can you notice some negative repercussions of this self-protective behavior?  What does it cost you, or take away from you?

As we become aware of these ways we protect and defend ourselves, we can ask God in prayer to help us lay them down.  We can ask God to help us let go of these defenses, so that our hands can be more open to share life with the world, instead of clutching on for our personal safety.  As we lay our fearful defenses down, we will walk into our lives with greater freedom, no matter what may come our way.

No punishment

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love." -- 1 John 4:18

The verse above is an enormously important text for taking the measure of our spiritual growth.  We may ask, "How is it going with my spiritual life?" We can re-phrase this question by asking, "How often am I afraid?  How large a presence does fear play in my daily life?  Am I afraid of other people?  Am I afraid of God?  Am I afraid of the future?  Am I afraid of taking chances?  Am I afraid of messing up?  Am I afraid of what other people might think?  Am I afraid of what will happen if I really speak my mind?  Does fear drive any of my actions?"  If you're anything like me, the answer to at least some of these questions - and sometimes a lot of them! - is "Yes."  The amount of fear in our lives can be a gentle signal of how much growth we have yet to do in our spiritual lives.  (It can also be an enticement to continue on the spiritual journey, to imagine how much more abundant our lives will be as we live with less fear.)

I take it that the key goal of our lives is to move towards "perfection in love" - complete love for God, complete love for other people, complete love for the whole creation, complete love for ourselves.  One of the things that can block us from this life of greater, deeper love is fear of punishment.  This can even (and perhaps, especially) be the case when it comes to religion.  Fear can drive a lot of "religious" behavior.

People can go to worship, not to praise and adore God with their whole hearts, but because they think that might make God less likely to punish them if they've been to church.  People may be scared of God, rather than filled with love for God.  People can also do a lot of religious and service activities, not with love and generosity, but with fear.  They can engage in these activities as a way of demonstrating to the world that they are good religious people, and as such, they deserve to be rewarded, and not punished.  Their activities, then, do not flow with love and joy, but are done with a kind of tightness and rigidity.

We may say what others want us to say, even though we don't agree with them, because we don't want them to punish us by rejecting us.  We can keep our mouths shut when someone is telling a racist, sexist, or homophobic joke, because we don't want them to punish us with ostracism.  We can spend a lot of money on clothes or cars because we want to fit in with the crowd, and because we don't want the crowd to punish us by making fun of us.  Large parts of our lives can be lived in fear.

Whenever we are acting out of fear, we are not living in Love.  We are not allowing Love to guide us.

Let me say it as clearly as I can: There is no punishment.  I truly believe this.  God may judge us, but God does not punish.  Love may judge us and hold us accountable, but Love does not punish.  Now this does not mean that there are no consequences for our actions.  Along the way, we will make mistakes, even horrible mistakes.  We will commit sins and offenses.  And there will be consequences for those mistakes.  If we break a precious vase, it will still break, and we may still need to pay for it.  But we need not experience that as cosmic punishment.  If we lose our head and yell at a loved one, the relationship may still be damaged, and we may need to engage in the difficult process of saying we're sorry, making amends, and working for reconciliation.  It may be difficult, but we need not experience it as cosmic punishment.  We are still, and always, held by Love.

Love will hold us accountable, but Love will do that without punishment or cruel scorn.  So we need not be afraid of being held accountable.  We can live in Love, always.

Dance Like No One's Watching

In my last post, I talked about the work of Brene Brown on shame and vulnerability.  As I said there, Brown's work is exciting, funny, and very challenging.  One way that I would summarize some of her work is that we have a choice in our lives: we can allow our shame and embarrassment to keep us from living wholehearted lives, or we can live wholeheartedly in the face of our shame and fear and vulnerability.

When I was a child, I looked around at all of the grown-ups in my life and I thought, 'These folks have it all together.  I can't wait until I'm like that."

What I now realize is that grown-ups sometimes do a good job of pretending to have it all together.  But shame, embarrassment, and the desire to 'fit in' and 'be cool' are enormously powerful influences in the lives of grown-ups, too.  Adults can be just as afraid of being called a "loser" or a "moron" or a "dork" as any teenager.

The last section of her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, is entitled, "Cultivating Laughter, Song, and Dance: Letting Go of Being Cool and 'Always in Control.'"  Brown observes that, for many of us, dancing in public can raise HUGE anxiety.  If we do get out on the dance floor, we may be inhibited and stiff, or we may concentrate really, really hard on trying to impress other people with our moves.  What we may have a really hard time being, is free on the dance floor.  Free, in the way that young children are free when they dance, at least until the older people in their lives convince them to try to 'be cool.'

Brown writes, "For many of us, there is no form of self-expression that makes us feel more vulnerable than dancing.  It's literally full-body vulnerability.  The only other full-body vulnerability that I can think of is being naked, and I don't have to tell you how vulnerable that makes most of us feel" (Gifts of Imperfection, 119).

Too often, we can hold ourselves back, out of fear of being exposed.  We may sit on the sidelines, rather than stepping out onto the dance floor.  We may say, "I'm just going to enjoy watching everyone else dance," when what we mean is, "I am scared to death of dancing in front of other people."  We can withhold ourselves from others and we deprive the world of the gift of who we are, all because we are worried that our dance moves aren't ready for prime-time, and afraid that the 'haters' will make fun of us.  We give the haters way too much influence over our lives.

Brene Brown says that the Hopi Indians say, "To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak."  If this is the case - and it seems intuitively true to me -- then I hope that you'll step out onto the dance floor the next time you have a chance.  Dance like no one is watching.  The 'haters' in the world may try to make fun of us.  But the world will be better for it.

Worthy and Beloved

Brene Brown (http://brenebrown.com/) is one of the most exciting writers working today.  If you don't already know her books -- Daring Greatly and The Gifts of Imperfection -- or her TED Talk on "The Power of Vulnerability," then you should really check them out.

Brown is a "shame-researcher."  She researches shame.  For a living.

When I first learned about this, I thought, "Hmmm.  That's a strange thing to research.  Why would someone want to research shame?  Wouldn't that be, I don't know, depressing?"

What Brown has discovered in her research is that shame gets in the way of  living an abundant, wholehearted, free life.  So if you're interested in living an abundant, wholehearted, free life, then it makes an awful lot of sense to get to know what will get in your way.  And Brown says that shame is One-of-the-Biggies that gets in the way.

According to Brown, shame is "the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging" (The Gifts of Imperfection, 39, my italics).  Shame comes at us from all over our culture.  From media messages that tell us we're not good enough, that tell us what our bodies need to look like, to religious messages that tell people that God is against them rather than being for them, to peer pressure that makes us do things we know aren't good for us, and on and on and on.

All around us are messages that we are not worthy of belonging or of being loved.  We might be able to make ourselves worthy someday, but right now, we are not worthy of being loved.  We will only be worthy IF.  We'll be worthy IF other people say so ... IF we can get a good grade ... IF we can win the conference title ... IF we can impress the boss ... IF we buy that new pair of shoes ... IF ... IF ...

But Brown says that if "we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worthy of love and belonging" (Gifts of Imperfection, 23).  Right now.  Just as we are.  With all of our imperfections and flaws.  Right now.  We are worthy.  You are worthy of love and belonging.  Right now.

Brown's claim makes deep, intuitive sense to me.  It also resonates with the deepest truths of the Christian faith.  "You are my Beloved."  "Do not fear, I am with you."  "Even while we were sinners, Christ died for us."  That last one (from Romans 5:8) is particularly telling, I think.  Even though we were still sinners, Christ found us to be worth dying for.  Even though we were sinners, even though we were imperfect, even though we hadn't yet figured it all out, we were worthy of God's love.  God loves us that much.

But it can be difficult to accept this, to really believe this.  After many years in the church, it can be tempting to only hear the rather loud religious voices crying out, "Oh no, we are NOT worthy.  We have fallen short of the glory of God.  Like Psalm 22:6 says, We are all worms.  Do not believe this business about being worthy.  We are NOT worthy."

While these voices may be pointing to the truth that we are -- all of us -- sinners and imperfect creatures, they too often distort themselves into shaming voices that can make us doubt our belovedness.  They can become so very loud that we can no longer hear God's still and small voice telling us, "I love you as you are, right now.  I'm not waiting to love you some day in the future.  I love you right now.  Even though you are imperfect, even though you are sinful, you are worthy of my love just as you are, right now.  You do not have to do anything to make me love you.  I love you just as you are, and you belong to me.  No matter what anyone else tells you."

There are two truths at work here.  At the same time, (1) we are worthy of God's love and (2) we are sinful and imperfect and broken.  Both truths are fundamental.  If we only hold onto one of them, we will have a distorted view of ourselves.  But sometimes, it seems that the world can call such loud attention to our sinfulness, that our belovedness can be overlooked or pushed to the side.

Never let that happen. You are beloved.  Right now.  Just as you are.  You are worthy of being loved.

The Art of Juggling

I don't know about you, but there are days where I feel like I am juggling different projects and responsibilities and tasks and commitments from the moment my eyes open until I go to sleep.  "Running fast just to stay in place" can seem like a distorted personal motto at certain times!  (A friend has said this is just a particular characteristic of the month of January, when people are starting the new year, catching up after the holidays, preparing for annual meetings, etc.  However, I have noticed that it can also be a particular characteristic of the month of February.  And March.  Oh, and April.  And May...)

One real question for me is whether the overwhelming nature of day-to-day life is (a) a feature of human existence, with the different demands that are placed upon us in our lives, or (b) a signal that we have allowed our lives to get out of control, and we need to be re-grounded.

If it is (a) -- a feature of human existence -- then the overwhelm is something that must be accepted, embraced if possible, and smiled upon.  Feeling overwhelmed doesn't mean that we're bad.  It doesn't mean that we are failures.  It just means that we're human.

If the overwhelm is (b) -- a signal that life is out of control -- then a different approach may be called for.  We may need to take some time to re-focus, to re-prioritize, to re-assess how we are living our days.  We may need to say 'no' to some of the things we have committed to.  We may need to pull back from some projects.

My hunch is that our overwhelmed-ness is sometimes (a) and sometimes (b).

Many of us have surely overextended ourselves.  Too many of us have difficulty saying "no" to things, and a hard time drawing boundaries around our energy and our time.  We accept new responsibilities, even if our old responsibilities were already placing a drain on our energy.  We do not do the hard work of setting priorities and goals, but rather just slide along from one day to the next, treading water and staying afloat.

But even if we were to be energetic priority-setters and boundary-keepers, there are going to be times when life is simply overwhelming.  Life cannot be fully controlled, no matter what the experts say.  Life is not like some crisply-edited movie.  There are messy parts, there are boring stretches, and there are times when we just cannot get to everything.  Books and websites that promise to help us get our lives under control (in 12 easy steps!!!) may be tantalizing, but they may promise more than they can deliver.  I've got a decent stack of books that promised to be The-Book-That-Will-Change-Your-Life-Forever.  I've read them, and I still get overwhelmed plenty.


So as we begin a new year, if you find yourself feeling overwhelmed, I invite you to join me in a couple of approaches.  (1) Take a deep breath.  (2) Smile.  Know that this moment is actually a beautiful moment, whatever may be happening.  (3) Ask yourself and ask God what your current overwhelm is about.  Is it something you can change?  Or is it something that you need to live with for a little while?  Are there things about it that you can shift?  (4) Take small steps.  You do not need to fix your entire life today.  See if there is one thing that you can do that will help.

"When you pass through turbulent waters, I will be you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned," says the Lord (Isaiah 43:2).

Psalm 1 and Your True Self

In just a few days, we will begin a New Year.  It’s time for us to get used to writing “2014” on our checks, documents, and other paperwork.  (It usually takes me until March to become accustomed to writing the new number!)  A New Year always presents us with a chance to begin afresh, to recommit ourselves to the way we want to live, and to reflect on the priorities of our lives. 

As we begin a new year, I want to invite you to consider the Psalm that is at the beginning of the book of Psalms.  When the editors of the Psalms assembled this book long ago, they carefully positioned Psalm 1 at the beginning.  How can Psalm 1 help us with our own new beginning this January?

"Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners tread, or sit in the seat of scoffers,” the psalm begins.  Psalm 1 begins by casting a vision of how not to live.  According to Psalm 1, there are bad ways to live.  There are unhelpful, unhealthy, unwise ways to organize one’s life.

The psalm continues, “But their delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night.  They are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither.  In all that they do, they prosper.”  Likewise, there are good ways to live, ways that nourish health, wisdom, productivity, generativity, joy, and delight.

It occurs to me that what Psalm 1 may be describing is the difference between living according to your true self, and living according to a false self.  The terms “true self/false self” were popularized by the Christian mystic Thomas Merton, and many of us have found them to be very useful concepts for understanding how God wants us to live.  Your “true self” is the “real you,” who you are at your core, the “you” that was created in the image of God.  

When we are living out of our true self, or in congruence with our true self, we will have a strong sense of where we are going in life, but we will not be anxious about getting there.  We will be able to make difficult choices and decisions.  However, when others disagree with our decisions, we will be able to stay connected with them and to continue to love them.  We will not be excessively concerned about what others think of us.  In the language of Psalm 1, we will be like a strong, vital tree nourished by streams of water -- rooted and grounded.

What does it mean when we are living out of a “false self”?  Our “false self” is something like a mask that we put on because we think that is what others want us to be, or because we think that will help us to be successful, or because we think that is what is expected of us.  But this mask, this ‘false self,’ does not come from a deep place within us.  It is imposed on us.  When we are living out of a “false self,” we will tend to be preoccupied with what others think, and we may be restless, always feeling off-center.  Again to use the language of Psalm 1, we will be tossed to and fro, like the "chaff that the wind drives away."

Living from the “false self” may be what Psalm 1 describes as the “way of the wicked,” or the “path that sinners tread,” or “the seat of scoffers.”  It is not the path that God is calling us to, but is a path that is imposed on us by the world or by our fears or by what others think.  The True Self is grounded in God’s love and God’s will, and is deeply rooted, like a tree by a flowing stream.  It is the “way of the righteous.”

What I have found to be particularly helpful about the concepts of “True Self/False Self” is that they have a less moralistic tone.  When many of us hear words like “righteous” and “wicked,” we immediately shift into a very moralistic, legalistic, judgmental way of thinking.  We imagine a stern judge who administers rewards to the righteous and punishments to the wicked.

But when we are able to think in terms of “True Self” and “false self,” we are led to think of our lives in less judgmental ways, and more holistic ways.  Living out of the True Self is not something we do because we’re afraid of being punished if we don’t do it.  It is something that is deeply, deeply good for us.  And because it is deeply good for us, it will in turn be deeply good for the world.  Because we will be bringing our best selves to the world, and it is always true that the greatest gift we can give the world is ourselves, not what we can accomplish or perform.  

What do you think of when you think of your True Self?  What does your True Self love?  What does your True Self want?

The Importance of Grief

Maybe it's because we're in that part of the year when the days are getting increasingly darker.  Or maybe it's because we're moving through the beautifully dark season of Advent in the church.  Whatever the reason, I've been thinking a bit lately about the importance of grief.  Some people might expect that thinking about grief would be really depressing.  But strangely, it hasn't been depressing at all; it's actually been peculiarly comforting. My own sense is that, in the months and years to come, grief is going to be a very important dimension of life, leadership, and ministry in our world.

But this presents a problem.

It presents a problem because our success-oriented, pleasure-oriented, North American culture does not do grief well.  Rather than acknowledging the losses that come to us, and willingly entering our grief over those losses, we tend to force ourselves to smile and say, "I'm doing just fine."  "Strength to strength!" we proclaim. We tend to think that life ought to be successful and pleasant, and because losses don't feel good, we deny them, pretend they aren't that bad, and try to move around or past them.

The trouble is that losses don't just go away.  When we refuse to acknowledge our losses, it's as though they build up inside of us, and they will gradually drag us down.  The degree to which we refuse to acknowledge our own losses (trying to shut them out of our minds) will be the degree to which we are unable to be with others in their losses.  Their losses may remind us of our own (which we are trying really hard not to think about), so we will tend to avoid and keep our distance from them.

Grief obviously applies to the Big Losses of life, as when someone close to us dies.  But there are a myriad of other losses that can come to us.  Loss of a job; a break-up in a relationship; damage to our reputation; financial trouble; someone bullying our child at school; failure at a project; theft of some piece of our property; a decline in the status and prosperity of our country; a drop in confidence in our political leaders; shrinking attendance in churches; and on and on.  At this point in history, we are in the midst of quite a bit of loss.  Grieving is not all we should do in response to these losses; but it is an important component of our response. 

A key task for leaders in the coming years will be to develop our own capacity to grieve our own losses, and to help those whom we lead to grieve theirs. "Blessed are those who mourn," said Jesus, "for they will be comforted."  Grieving our losses will be one key part of moving forward, rather than being something we should avoid at all costs.