Human maturity is neither offensive nor defensive; it is finally able to accept that reality is what it is.
We can save ourselves a lot of distress and accusation by knowing when, where, to whom, and how to talk about spiritually mature things.
If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own. What a clever place for God to hide holiness, so that only the humble and earnest will find it! A “perfect” person ends up being one who can consciously forgive and include imperfection rather than one who thinks he or she is totally above and beyond imperfection.
There is no way to peace. Peace is the way. There is no path toward love except by practicing love. War will always produce more war. Violence can never bring about true peace.
In my experience, if you are not radically grateful every day, resentment always takes over.
Failure and suffering are the great equalizers and levelers among humans. Success is just the opposite. Communities and commitment can form around suffering much more than around how wonderful or superior we are.
Only when we rest in God can we find the safety, the spaciousness, and the scary freedom to be who we are, all that we are, more than we are, and less than we are.
Faith for Jesus is the opposite of anxiety. If you are anxious, if you are trying to control everything, if you are worried about many things, you don’t have faith, according to Jesus. You do not trust that God is good and on your side. You’re trying to do it all yourself, lift yourself up by your own bootstraps.
A mature Christian sees Christ in everything and everyone else. That is a definition that will never fail you, always demand more of you, and give you no reasons to fight, exclude, or reject anyone.
All we can give back and all God wants from any of us is to humbly and proudly return the product that we have been given – which is ourselves!
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our Life’s Star Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness. And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy.2.
If you look at the history of heretics who are condemned, their transgression is normally about issues of authority, priesthood, administration of sacraments, and “Who’s got the power?” I cannot think of anyone who was ever burned at the stake for not taking care of the widows and orphans, or for any issues of orthopraxy.
It is hardly an exaggeration to say that “us-and-them” seeing, and the dualistic thinking that results, is the foundation of almost all discontent and violence in the world.
Perfection, rather, is the ability to incorporate imperfection! There’s no other way to live: You either incorporate imperfection, or you fall into denial. That’s how the Spirit moves in or out of our lives. – from Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the 12 Steps.
I believe contemplation shows us that nothing inside us is as bad as our hatred and denial of the bad. Hating and denying it only complicates our problems. All of life is grist for the mill. Paula D’Arcy puts it, “God comes to us disguised as our life.” Everything belongs; God uses everything. There are no dead-ends. There is no wasted energy. Everything.
We always become what we behold; the presence that we practice matters.
To quote Archimedes once again, you must have both “a lever and a place to stand” before you can move the world. The educated and sophisticated Western person today has many levers, but almost no solid place on which to stand, with either very weak identities or terribly overstated identities.
The anger and mutual disrespect that I find among both conservative and progressive Christians today is really quite disturbing. It feels aligned much more with political ideologies of Right and Left than any immersion in the beautiful love of God. Jihadism and Zionism have become the death knell of any remaining beauty in religion for many sincere seekers all over the world. It is all so sad that we could regress so far in the name of God, who wants only to lead us forward.
But once we become practiced at a contemplative worldview, a “thisness” way of seeing, there is nothing trivial anymore and all is grace.
The saint is precisely one who has no “I” to protect or project. His or her “I” is in conscious union with the “I AM” of God, and that is more than enough. Divine.