Resting in true freedom

I’m in Connecticut this morning, after driving up from the Philly area late last night. I’m off to New Hampshire and some peaceful replenishment later this morning or early afternoon. I’ve received so many good wishes for a nice trip, so many curious interrogatories, and a few funny observations or complaints about pending assignments, all delightful. So many loose ends, so many little things to review, so little to worry about. My Mom and I spent a good amount of time over the weekend talking about worry, and how useless it is. It only exists in a state of bondage or slavery. In the Kingdom, nada. Freedom rules. Because God rules, and the rest is His Story.


Growing Into Our True Freedom

True freedom is the freedom of the children of God. To reach that freedom requires a lifelong discipline since so much in our world militates against it. The political, economic, social, and even religious powers surrounding us all want to keep us in bondage so that we will obey their commands and be dependent on their rewards. But the spiritual truth that leads to freedom is the truth that we belong not to the world but to God, whose beloved children we are. By living lives in which we keep returning to that truth in word and deed, we will gradually grow into our true freedom.


The Spirit Will Speak in Us

When we are spiritually free, we do not have to worry about what to say or do in unexpected, difficult circumstances. When we are not concerned about what others think of us or what we will get for what we do, the right words and actions will emerge from the center of our beings because the Spirit of God, who makes us children of God and sets us free, will speak and act through us. Jesus says: "When you are handed over, do not worry about how to speak or what to say; what you are to say will be given to you when the time comes, because it is not you who will be speaking; the Spirit of your Father will be speaking in you" (Matthew 10:19-20).
Let's keep trusting the Spirit of God living within us, so that we can live freely in a world that keeps handing us over to judges and evaluators.


Freedom Attracts

When you are interiorly free you call others to freedom, whether you know it or not. Freedom attracts wherever it appears. A free man or a free woman creates a space where others feel safe and want to dwell. Our world is so full of conditions, demands, requirements, and obligations that we often wonder what is expected of us. But when we meet a truly free person, there are no expectations, only an invitation to reach into ourselves and discover there our own freedom. Where true inner freedom is, there is God. And where God is, there we want to be.


Leave it to Henri (Nouwen) to set the tone for my trip to the lake, with the three above coming in over the last three days. How perfect! While living and breathing my disciplined obedience, I am off to savor my freedom, in God’s arms. There is no “love language” needed to be learned or understood with Him in the center. He speaks and offers the language of the soul of all of us. It drives and nourishes everything. Nothing else matters but this.

I will write a little over the week, maybe, and will live and love and learn a lot, to be sure. Enjoy your freedom!

Freedom or slavery - choose

“Most men don’t want true liberty; they just want a just master.”

-- Martin Buber

“Life without the courage to risk death in order to truly live is a form of slavery.”

-- Seneca

“The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. Freedom and slavery are mental states.”

-- Mahatma Gandhi

“Often we think of discipline and freedom as opposite things, but this is not the case. There is no freedom without discipline or, to put it another way, there is no freedom without faith and constant practice at being free. To play the violin freely, to paint freely, to write freely, to live freely… all these take discipline and relentless practice.”

-- Will Beckingham

“What we make of other people, and what we see in the mirror when we look at ourselves, depends on what we know of the world, what we believe to be possible, what memories we have, and whether are loyalties are to the past, to the present, or the future. Nothing influences our ability to cope with the difficulties of existence so much as the context in which we view them; the more contexts we can see and choose from the less do the difficulties appear to be inevitable and insurmountable. The fact that the world has become fuller than ever of complexity of every kind may suggest at first that it is harder to find a way out of our personal dilemmas, but in reality the more complexities, the more crevices through which we can crawl.”

-- Theodore Zeldin, in An Intimate History of Humanity

Red: [narrating] In 1966, Andy Dufresne escaped from Shawshank prison. All they found of him was a muddy set of prison clothes, a bar of soap, and an old rock hammer, damn near worn down to the nub. I remember thinking it would take a man six hundred years to tunnel through the wall with it. Old Andy did it in less than twenty. Oh, Andy loved geology. I imagine it appealed to his meticulous nature. An ice age here, million years of mountain building there. Geology is the study of pressure and time. That's all it takes really, pressure, and time. That, and a big goddamn poster. Like I said, in prison a man will do most anything to keep his mind occupied. Turns out Andy's favorite hobby was totin' his wall out into the exercise yard, a handful at a time. I guess after Tommy was killed, Andy decided he'd been here just about long enough. Andy did like he was told, buffed those shoes to a high mirror shine. The guards simply didn't notice. Neither did I... I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a man’s shoes? Andy crawled to freedom through five hundred yards of shit smelling foulness I can't even imagine, or maybe I just don't want to. Five hundred yards... that's the length of five football fields, just shy of half a mile.”

-- from a scene in the movie, “The Shawshank Redemption”


Freedom is an inner state and is not based on our external circumstances. Slavery is a rigid dance of stuck-ness with both the slave and slave-owner equally stuck, equally enslaved, based on fear and the unwillingness to risk death in order to really live. Freedom requires more discipline and practice, more love of and trust in God, and more responsibility (including self-responsibility) than most are willing to commit to, leaving both slave and slave-owner equally committed to their stuck-ness, and with convenient someone’s to blame for it. What a waste of life.


Life is too short to be wastin’ complainin’ about one’s predicament.

It’s time to either get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.

God’s gift is too precious to waste.

Nothing is wrong, even when things go dark and quiet.

"The problem is not that there are many problems, and the problem is not even that one 'most difficult problem' itself. The problem is in our attitude toward problems, expecting not to have them at all, and/or thinking that having them is a serious problem that shouldn't be."

-- Theodore Rubin

"Challenges and problems call forth our courage and our wisdom (and our relationship with Him); indeed, they often create our courage and most deeply access our wisdom. It is only because of problems that we grow mentally, physically, and spiritually. When we desire to encourage the growth of the human being as well as the spiritual being, we challenge and encourage and stimulate the human capacity to either solve or possibly just 'be with' difficult problems, therefore the problems are not really the problem at all - how we relate to them and who we become in them is the real issue at hand."

-- M. Scott Peck

"It is despair and grieving that begins to clear out the heart and allow the reality of loss in. This same thing, when fully allowed, allows the heart to heal and lets life return, but this time a new and different life, a real and true one. It cannot be changed - there is - thank God - no doctor Frankenstein. At some point, ready or not, we have a standing invitation to meet with our own mortality. If we are wise we become at that moment more truly and richly and fully alive, and nothing will quite affect us the same way again. Problems cease to be problems. We don’t cling feverishly to life but we cherish the lives of others because they, too, are such brief and remarkable occurrences."

-- Rev. Landau Krivchenia

"Since God knows our whole future, our whole nature, our heart, our mind, our feelings, and our current capacity to listen, He isn't ever going to say one word more to us than we can deal with or understand at any given moment. So, if we are not hearing what we want to hear, or maybe not hearing anything at all, it says more about us than Him, and we needn't be impatient with Him or ourselves. It is an unfolding that will reveal more and more as we explore and listen deeper. The more open to the ongoing exploration we are, the more patient with the deep listening we are, the richer and deeper we hear the instruction, which soon turns into blissful dialogue that leaves us totally thankful for whatever got us there."

-- Charles Stanley


This all reminds me of the "Jake Pogo Stick Story" of my recent fatherhood experience, and it is so true. There is no point, really, in God speaking to me in any way when I am fretting over smaller things than what He is up to in my life. Until I am really ready to hear, see, and possibly wrestle with in order to more clearly understand, what He is up to - which is usually only after I have exhausted myself needing Him (or anyone else, for that matter) to hear what "I'm" up to, or until I am totally overwhelmed by my external circumstances - I am stunned and often feel very disappointed in, if not callously betrayed by, His silence, but I have learned that His gentle, patient, even if totally exasperating, silence is much better and more effective than what I could have quite reasonably deserved (only visible after I wake up) in my ignorance.

Thank You for not being cruel, Father, during the times of my blindness, ignorance, and complaint-laden stubbornness, especially during those times when I become cruel to myself and others, in blind response to my perception of others' cruelty, which is only a mirror to myself. Thank You for loving me in ways only You can, which aren't driven by me in the moment (and thank God for that), but by Your Perfect Plan for me, which waits so calmly for my observation, interest, and acceptance. Thank You for teaching me the power and richness of my so-called problems, to the point where they cease being problems and become instead great gifts. Thank You for teaching me to embrace loss and even death, the ultimate problem, letting go of everything I cling to to feel safe and secure, all illusion, which delivers me to true life and eternal, infinite gain. In humble silence, I sit, wait, and walk with You.


(this reminds me of me and Bosco this morning, a chillin' and a waitin', and now out a listenin' and a talkin' and a walkin')

Paper handcuffs

"People who live their lives bound by conventional norms and standards are often roused to fury by another's departure from convention, largely because they regard such a departure as a direct criticism of themselves, when in reality it is just that person achieving a level of audacity, courage, and independence (liberation from one's own 'paper handcuffs') that seems so obviously and so forever unallowable and unattainable. We cringe at (and often literally try to disallow through dismissal, ridicule, or open hostility) freedom that we can see but don't proactively insist on or live out for ourselves."

-- Bertrand Russell

"It is so easy in the world to live after the world's opinions; it is easy in solitude to live after your own, as well; but the courageous man is he who, in the midst of the hurry and stresses-out noisiness of the world, sees the deeper truth and keeps with perfect calm and sweetness the independence and creativity of his solitude."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is uniquely beautiful. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. And that would be a tragedy."

-- Martha Graham

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you just like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting."

-- e.e. cummings

"The average man does not want to be free; he simply wants to be safe. He does not want true liberty; he simply wants a just master."

-- H.L. Mencken

"It's important that people should know what you stand for, and equally important that they know what you won't stand for."

-- Mary H. Waldrip

OK, this message is hard to send today, because it is a pained affirmation and a bold stand both for and against. I feel all of these feelings deeply - vulnerable to attack in my audacious non-conformity, calm and sweetly peaceful in my heavenly solitude, beautiful in my uniqueness, totally, joyfully, sometimes deliriously myself, free and light in walking that genuine liberty, boldly, and maybe while feeling a little nervous trepidation, clear about my stands. What I stand for is true life - the life that Jesus promises and offers for free. It's not only choosing not to die (or to merely survive), but choosing real life as a joyful, raucous celebration. What I won't stand for is blatant, in-my-face rejection of life, which is happening more and more often these days, at an alarming rate, really as many's malaise turns to mischief and murderous mayhem, and I must stand against this total and remorseless rejection of life, both to protect the sanctity of my own life, and to protect the flame I hold from a fire hose determined to put it out. I sent a note the other day to a dear friend who had paid me what I referred to as a "delicious compliment," and his reply to that comment is something that I will cling to as what seems like growing numbers of people seemingly give up and go away (and I will not reject them, but I will also not chase after them). It will sustain my belief that the light burning in me is genuine and the hope I point to is real, and that anyone can turn to it at any time, and turn back to it at any time after they leave it, but it is not my job to chase after them in panic when they are clinging to darkness and death. The affirmation and beautiful celebration went like this:

"Well, that's because you are a wonderful chef and have served up some real home cookin' - you have stuck to your promise not to serve me shit ... and the taste buds of my heart love you for it!!!!!"

So, and thank you from the bottom of my heart, G.S., I am going to keep cookin', and keep servin', and keep the fire burning bright, and I will be here if you ever want some home cookin', and if you don't I will not try to track you down and force you to eat. I will stand for your right to choose your path, even if it is death, and I will mourn your choice without wearing it or worrying about what I could have done. I am boldly doing what I could have done and will keep doing it.


Hejsan kompis! Kan jag hjälpa dig?

(this Swedish greeting means "Hey friend! Can I help you?")

The dying life

"Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live, anticipating life in some dreaded, ill-defined, or very tentative future. Before they know it, their time runs out."

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

"How could there be any question of 'acquiring' or 'possessing' when the one thing needful for a man is to finally 'become' - to BE, at last, and to die (often, if not every day) in the fullness of his being."

-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully and openly and totally surrendered is prepared to die at any time or lose everything he has in any moment."

-- Mark Twain

"To abandon oneself to sound principles is really to die - and to die for an impossible love, which is the contrary of romantic love."

-- Albert Camus

"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us unintentionally while we live."

-- Norman Cousins

"One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive."

-- Friedrich Nietszche

"From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die."

-- Samuel Johnson

"Only those who have dared to let go can dare to re-enter."

-- Meister Eckhart

"For 'tis not in mere death that men die most."

-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

"Die of nothing but a holy rage to live."

-- Alexander Pope

Holy rage to live. I like that.



In fact, I resemble that remark!

FREEDOM!!!

And Weil I'm at it...

I know a whole lot of people who are suffering greatly right now. The pain of human life seems to know no bounds and refuses to be denied. It is everywhere we look, and totally relentless. And the physical circumstances of one's existence really don't seem to make much of a difference when it comes to our penchant for and tendency toward suffering - it just doesn't seem to matter if one is admittedly addicted to something or if no addiction is being openly acknowledged, or if one claims to believe in and know God or doesn't care about God in the least, or if one is gainfully employed in the world or painfully unemployed, or if one lives in supposed freedom and liberty or in grim oppression and slavery, or if one is diagnosed as ill or insane or is unconsciously striving to fake both health and sanity, or if one is married or in a committed relationship or not, or if one lives in abject poverty or in the most opulent wealth. No, suffering infuses and overlays the full sweep of human experience, and, eventually, if we let it, it brings us to our knees, together, and there we can find God right in our midst, and the peace that passes all understanding, and, if you've noticed, nowhere else is that possible.


"We are just ordinary humans - searching, fearful, loving, and very vulnerable, and we will never grow up, never learn justice and compassion, and never understand spirituality, unless we face the stark reality of our suffering. Instead of replacing false securities with fake religion, instead of setting out with grim determination to make sure that atrocities do not alter our carefree lifestyle, can we instead learn to love one another enough, and love life enough, to sit together and face the horrors of real life without running away from each other?

This kind of love defies rational explanations and religious formulas, and faces life as it is. Simone Weil wrote, 'the mind comes slapping up against our physical and emotional suffering and affliction like a fly against a pane of glass.' For all our reasoning or our piety, our work for justice or our medical progress, our secure borders or our wars against terrorism, life remains full of bitter suffering. In every life, in all of life, there comes a time when, like Job in the Bible, all we can do is cry out to God, even against God, suffering life's agony and facing God's silence. Weil says, 'It is when from the innermost depths of our being we need a sound that means something - when we cry out for an answer and it is not granted to us - it is then we touch the silence of God.'

Religion must not ever betray that silence. If it tries to put words where silence belongs it ends up in idolatry or triviality. Let pain be pain, let silence be silence, and let religion do its real job of binding us together, holding us as we suffer, weaning us off cheap comforts, and releasing in our guts the cry of Christ, 'My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?' This is the cry of every creature, and of all humanity, as we face the darkness and pain of existence itself.

If there is any faith, any hope, any life after death and despair, it lies within, through, and beyond the deepest emptiness humans can bear. Sometimes through ecstasy, mostly through pain, life shatters us and seduces us into this void. Here, religion must fall silent and fall apart, once it has taught us to live without illusions, to love without reasons, to let go of our securities and our insecurities, to trust the emptiness, the mystery, that draws the cosmos out of silence - and draws light and life out of darkness and death."

-- Michael B. Kelly

And Weil I'm at it...try these 15 on.

Read them slowly; savor each and every one.

"Humility is attentive and silent patience."

"The highest ecstasy is the attention at its fullest."

"To 'get power over' is to defile. To possess is to defile."

"A mind enclosed in bitter, critical language is trapped in prison."

"All sins are futile attempts to fill voids; there is only one way to fill voids."

"A hurtful act, thought, or word is the transference to others of the degradation which we bear in ourselves."

"The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like the condemned man who is proud of his large cell."

"Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention."

"Attachment to desired results is the great fabricator of illusions; reality can be attained only by someone who is detached."

"The only way to truth is through one's own annihilation - through dwelling for quite a long time in a state of extreme and total humiliation."

"Nothing can have as its destination anything other than its origin. The contrary idea, the idea of and insistence on progress, is poisonous."

"In struggling against anguish one never produces serenity; the struggle against anguish only produces new depths and forms of anguish and suffering."

"It is only the impossible that is of interest to (while totally possible for) God. He has given over the merely possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of His creatures."

"If we are suffering illness, poverty, disappointment, or misfortune, we think we shall be satisfied on the day it ceases. But there too, we know it is false; for soon after one has gotten used to not suffering, one desires something else."

"Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and other people, even us and God. Every separation is also a link."

-- Simone Weil (who lived only 34 years, but oh, what a life)

In her analysis of history and revolutions, she showed that every revolution ultimately replaced one form of oppression with another. For her, this showed that the reality of history is a never-ending struggle for power. This is why she believed that for true change, a spiritual awakening must occur in individual conscience.

Take an example: why, with all the money thrown at poverty in the US, is there still poverty? For Weil, the answer to this question is that the programs and money were directed at the wrong problems by the wrong people, thinking wrongly. Because they were programs by those who had for those who did not have, the misrelation in power continued - in many ways, the rich instituted programs that would continue to benefit them and maintain their hold on power. They simply coudln't help it - they knew no other way.

Perhaps this in and of itself justifies the notion that living with the poor and oppressed changes one’s consciousness. Of course, a fleeting, shallow, simple, or superficial identification with the poor will not be an authentic experience. But a continued and extended opening up of oneself to the pain and suffering of the poor and oppressed - putting oneself into their condition and seeking that condition - would seem to work a change in the spirit.

Perhaps this is why Weil commends the mystical practices of the saints - this rigorous and methodical emptying of oneself does not come easily - it is too easy to believe that one is there while still holding on to the escape route in the back of one’s mind. It demands something like a spiritual practice to seek out all those ways we have of deluding ourselves and lying to ourselves. Weil never says that it is simply a matter of living with the poor — there is a constant reminder in her writings that this experience must permeate one’s entire spirit and being. In her words, one must become a slave to understand what a slave endures.

-- from Wikipedia's biography of her

Every separation is also a link! What a cool line! The word for this concept is "Metaxu."

Remember all the amazing connecting links between these seemingly separated characters?



Andy put himself in prison, consciously or not, literally as well as metaphorically, to learn what bondage really was - the bondage he had actually created for his wife without realizing it - and then, finally after 22 years, he learned what freedom really was.

Seizing freedom - to give, to love, to truly live - through chosen slavery

"The man who does way more than he is paid for will soon be paid for way more than he does."

-- a fortune cookie saying from yesterday's lunch

"To love without expectation of return on my investment frees me to love with purity of heart, mind, and soul...I am not distracted by selfish motive or disappointed by insensitivity...I am free to love...just love...the experience of which is its own reward and always tends to elicit itself, eventually."

-- L. Hodge

"When I consciously surrender all illusions of power over my life, turning it all over to Him, I gain complete power over my death."

-- Yours Truly

The answer is simple, I have found, after much experience and wrangling to "figure it out." The desperate search for fairness and security is futile. These are not objectives worth seeking, as we grow and mature. They are simply echoes from childhood thinking and feeling. The desperate longings - to be properly loved, reasonably cared for, respectfully compensated, rightfully considered - these are all, in the end, wastes of one's time and energy. It can never happen good enough, no person or situation can ever get it right enough, to heal the ancient wounds in our child's heart and mind. The answer, which quite commonly comes only after much trial and error and ultimate frustration and failure in one's personal explorations and finaglings, is to completely give up the battle to get the answer, and to humbly ask for forgiveness, grace, instruction, and opportunities to serve. In other words, we are to fight to free ourselves from the slavery to the world and its ways, including the slavery of our own human desires, only to then become like a slave to Him and His. And in this inner revolution comes true life, the life of mature adulthood, the life of total possibility and blissful co-creativity with our Creator.


1-4If you've gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care— then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don't push your way to the front; don't sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don't be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.

5-8Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself. He had equal status with God but didn't think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what. Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human! Having become human, he stayed human. It was an incredibly humbling process. He didn't claim special privileges. Instead, he lived a selfless, obedient life and then died a selfless, obedient death—and the worst kind of death at that—a crucifixion.

-- Philippians 2:1-8 (The Message)

"Because he came to literally give us his life (not asking us to try real hard to be more like him, within our own efforts and struggle, but to give up all our efforts and struggle, accepting a new and eternal and singular reality, letting him live his life through us), from this awareness forward living a spiritual life means living in the exact same constant communion with the Father as Jesus did, through the Holy Spirit, and thus making God present, real, and tangible in the world."

-- daily note from Henri Nouwen

My willingness to become first aware and then conscious of my worldly masters (which I did not initially choose at all, but inherited, and then would choose unconsciously) is the first step in delivering me to the freedom to choose my Master, and then life as a "free slave" (vs. an unwilling, victimized one) can begin.

Freedom from fear

"Fear is only as deep as the heart and mind allow."

-- Japenese proverb

"Often fear of one evil leads us into a much worse one."

-- Nicholas Boileau-Despresaux

"A man who is afraid will do almost anything (or nothing)."

-- Jawaharlar Nehru

"Fear is that little darkroom where negatives are developed."

-- Michael Pritchard

"Wicked men obey what they fear, but the good what they love."

-- Aristotle

"The things which we fear the most in life have already happened to us."

-- Robin Williams, "One Hour Photo"

"The most dangerous person is the fearful one; he is the most to be feared."

-- Lidwig Borne

"Is it that they fear the pain of death, or could it be that they fear the joy of life?"

-- Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Pray Your Gods"

"We must face what we fear; that is the case of the core of the restoration of our health."

-- Max Lerner

"It was a high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, 'Always do what you are most afraid to do.'"

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It is the nature of slavery to render its victims so abject that at last, fearing to be free, they multiply their own chains. You can liberate a free man, but you cannot liberate a slave."

-- Louis J. Halle

"When it comes time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way, because they know they wasted it. Live your life bold and free, then, when the time comes, sing your death song, and die bravely like a hero going home."

-- Chief Aupumut, Mohican

"An intelligent fool can make things bigger, noisier, more complex, more showy (pandering to the masses, while more violent to the soul), all rather dramatic overcompensations in response to fear. It takes a touch of genius - and a whole lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction - smaller, quieter, simpler, more courageous and free, more peaceful and loving (focused on the One, while considering and serving other souls)."

-- Hoshang N. Akhtar

As human beings, we are starving for "completion," for that feeling that we are not cursed (although we clearly are, as described in Genesis 3), but are whole and complete, and that we are seen by others for who we are and truly matter to them. We tend to believe that either we can do it (the completion work) by and for ourselves, by working hard and earning positive responses from others for either our attractiveness / beauty, our diligence / hard work, our innate goodness of character, our performance-based merit, our proven, tried and true worldly value to them, or we are absolutely certain that we are not able to do it, so we will simply let it suffice that we encourage and receive negative responses, which we're used to, and "at least it's better than no response at all." Both of these completion strategies are equally fear-based and fatally flawed, even as the world tends to applaud the efforts associated with the former and frowns on those associated with the latter.

In our fearful struggle through our youthful experiences and early interactions with the world and our efforts to grow and mature into young adulthood, where we are desperately striving for certain "positive" responses from others that suggest we are "getting it right" (either that or we are hellbent on playing out our unconscious insistence on negative responses that reaffirm our dreadful expectations that we are "getting it wrong"), we can get stuck in viewing life as all about the responses we "get," but clearly our ultimate growth and maturity will hinge on the courageous and encouraging responses we "give" to others. It is all about our self-crucifixion and our resurrection into mature adulthood, and it happens when it happens. Once again, we must literally die to our desperate "need" for certain responses from people, in order to truly live in our effective and empowering choices of those responses we give (and this is no matter what we were raised with or are experiencing currently). This is the Jesus story, through and through, both how and why he lived, as the whole and complete human being who he was, as well as the "completion" of our humanity, and it has corresponding physiological and psychological intelligence and reason, as can be seen through this beautiful writing from our longtime buddy, Lloyd:

RESPONSIVENESS

By Lloyd J. Thomas, Ph.D.

According to biologists, all living cells have the characteristic of
"irritability". This means each cell in our bodies responds to
stimulation in some fashion. Infants are born with the ability to
respond to both internal and external stimulation. These responses
develop from simple reflexes into complex patterns of speech,
thinking, movement, and social habits. Without stimulation of all the
five sense and the consequent response patterns, children do not
survive. Being stimulated and practicing responses are absolutely
necessary for life. Thus, how we respond to others (thereby
stimulating them to respond to us), will define our role in
determining the nature and quality of our living. Our
response-ability to others is what we use to control the quality of
our relating. We have the response-ability to "make or break"
the nature and quality of our relationships with others.

Shortly after World War II, in an orphanage in Europe, all the
children in an "infants ward" were failing to thrive... except one.
No staff person could figure out why only one child out of some 35
infants, was fat and happy, while all others were thin and
languishing. They decided to watch this special child "around the
clock". They discovered the only factor that could account for the
child's healthy development was the third-shift housekeeper. That's
right. The woman had "taken a liking" to this child and nightly,
while cleaning, had wrapped him in a blanket and carried him around
with him strapped to her hip. She would talk to him, show him
objects, sing to him, and caress his face and body. She was
stimulating the child by her loving responsiveness. The child was
thriving. The others, despite the same diet and routine care, were
dying of a syndrome later to be called "marasmus" or "hospitalism
syndrome". The difference between life and death was the amount
of responsive stimulation the child received.

The nature and quality of our responsiveness to others is of vital
importance. We can survive on negative, even painful responses from
others (e.g. criticism, yelling, punishment). Naturally, we grow more
healthily on receipt of regular, positive caring (nurturing).
However, we cannot last long with no responses at all.

People learn to provoke negative responses when they believe
positive ones are unavailable. Negative responses are more
emotionally satisfying than no responses at all. Children learn this
hierarchy of responsiveness very early. Little Johnny draws a picture
with crayons on a piece of paper and shows it to his mother, who is
talking on the phone. She does not respond to him or his picture. No
responsiveness from Mom there. So, Johnny knows just what to do to
get his need met for Mom's responsiveness. He doesn't think about his
need, he merely reproduces the picture on the wall of the living room!
That gets Mom to respond...negatively of course. But that feels
better to Johnny than no response at all.

Couples argue with one another merely to exchange negative
responses, when they believe the other is unavailable for positive
responses. If you are "fighting" with your partner and don't even
remember what you are conflicting about, it is fairly certain you
are fighting merely to exchange negative responses as substitutes
for unavailable positive ones.

Here are a few short questions, the answers to which are vital to
living in a happy and fulfilled manner. How you answer them may will
also affect the amount of joy or misery in your life. These questions
are:

1. How often do I invite negative responses from others out of a
held belief that positive ones are unavailable?

2. How often do I invite positive responses from others when I need
them, out of a belief that I truly deserve them?

3. How often do I proactively, regardless of what I received, offer
positive responses to others, knowing that they'll thrive on them.

4. How often do I respond negatively, almost automatically, out of
my own lack of being positively responded to ... my own emptiness?

5. How often do I ask clearly and directly for the responses I'd
like or need?

6. How often do I withhold responding to others out of my own fear,
guilt, or emptiness?

Responsiveness is necessary for us to stay alive. Every cell in our
bodies is responsive. How we choose to respond, either positively
or negatively or not at all, is up to us, always. Become responsive
to yourself, others, and your environment. Let go of fear. Have the
courage to dream big, no matter what. It can transform your life!

--------------------------------------------------------------------

As children we can't and don't consciously influence the responses we get from others, especially those upon whom we are totally dependent. We can't and don't because we don't understand how it all works, and we are not really interested in learning that at this point; we are simply focused on getting our most pressing needs met directly, even if just minimally, and we are not overly concerned with how others feel about that, really. Childhood is a time of self-centeredness, by design (kind of like the caterpillar stage in a butterfly's life), for survival to be ensured and personal satisfaction to be pursued selfishly. In this place, however, we live in constant fear, and it stunts our dreams, which become about our "survival vs. thrival."

As we grow and become mature adults (and it's not really about age), we begin to recognize that we get to choose how we see and treat ourselves, how we respond to others (which needn't have a connection to how we were treated as children, which for a while created an automatic response to ourselves), and we begin to notice the impact that how we respond to the world has on how the world responds to us, that it is a glorious dance, and that it's not really about us at all. After much trail and error and lots of painful failure and loss in trying to secure our own happiness (yes, the pursuit of happiness is a joke, folks), and then with God's help because we're finally ready to hear and receive it, we awaken to who and Whose and why we really are, we become aware of our beauty and worth, and then and only then can we see the beauty and worth of others, and through consciously choosing to act, feel, see, and respond to the world from that amazing place (vs. operating on automatic pilot, based on our past experience), we are invited into true life in His kingdom, which is only possible on the other side of ...

Living free of rigid systems of any kind

Some powerful excerpts from my latest read, So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore, by Wayne Jacobsen and Dave Coleman, on the subject of regaining your freedom from human systems and institutional thought (putting them in their proper perspective vs. pre-eminent position in your spritual life) and re-establishing your dependence on God alone in living the way He is inviting you to live, as His adored and perfectly cared for child:

"The more at peace we are with ourselves, the easier it is for God to use us to touch others."

"The freedom to be honest and the freedom to struggle openly are keys to real friendship and genuine community."

"Any human system will eventually dehumanize the very people it seeks to serve, and those it dehumanizes the most are those who think they lead it."

"Relationships grow stale amidst relentless, stressful routine, and when the 'machinery' siphons off so much energy just to keep it running, it grows increasingly irrelevant."

"It's not about teaching it, Jake. It's about living it. Learn to live this life and you'll find no end of folks to share it with. Teach it first, however, and that will become your substitute for living it."

"And don't ever protect yourself (by avoiding, defending, judging, managing) at someone else's expense. By attempting to do so, you could be robbing Jesus of an opportunity to do something amazing in you both."

"We only need to do what God puts on our hearts to do - nothing more, nothing less - and doubting His ability to work beyond us is not the best way to hear Him. The great lie of this broken universe is that God cannot be trusted and that we have to take care of ourselves."

"Religious (like any) systems prey on people's insecurities. They haven't learned how to live in and celebrate God's love, to simply follow His voice and depend on Him. Consequently, they can't do anything that might upset their place in a dying fear-based game or they'll feel lost and paralyzed, where dying is not an option, even while telling us to die."

"When we're looking to the future, we're not listening to the Father. Anything we do to try and guarantee security or stability on our own terms will actually rob us of the freedom to simply follow Him today. We'll resort to our own wisdom instead of following His. The greatest freedom God can give you is to trust His ability to take care of you each day."

"What I hope you'll do is simply let God connect you with those brothers and sisters he wants you to walk with for now. Think less about 'starting' and 'growing' something than just learning to share your life in God with others on a similar journey. Don't feed off your need to be more right than others, then you'll know more clearly what He is doing in you."

"'If you really want to learn how to share Jesus' life together, it would be easier to think of that less as a structured meeting or service, with scheduled actions and ritualistic responses, and more as a family you love to be around.'
'I like that. We'd focus more on our relationships than our activities,' Ben offered.
'Exactly,' John answered. 'And you'd be more focused on your relationship to God, because He is the first relationship. Anything valuable you experience in your life together will come from your life in Him.'"

"'Then what do I do, just sit around doing nothing while I'm waiting for God to move me? That feels irresponsible.'
'Who said anything about that? Learning to live by trusting your Father is the most difficult part of this journey. So much of what we do is driven by our anxiety that God is not working on our behalf that we have no idea of the actions that real trust produces (remember Joshua at Jericho?). And trusting doesn't make you a lazy couch potato, ever. As you follow Him, Jake, you'll find yourself doing more than you've ever done, but it won't be the frantic, frenzied overcompensating activity of a desperate person, it will be the simple obedience of a dearly loved child. That's all our Father desires.'"

-- all of the above from So You Don't Want to Go to Church Anymore,
by Wayne Jacobsen and Dave Coleman

Understanding the Baby Elephant Syndrome

"There is a story about elephants and their owners in Africa that goes something like this: Look at an adult elephant; it can easily uproot huge trees with its trunk; it can even knock down a house without much trouble. When an elephant living in captivity is still a baby, it is tied to a tree with a strong rope or chain every night. Because it is the nature of elephants to roam free, the baby elephant instinctively tries with all its might to break the rope or chain in order to do what it naturally does, but it can't. It isn't big or strong enough yet. Realizing its efforts are useless, it finally gives up and stops struggling. This process continues, as the baby elephant tries and fails many times until, at a certain point, it is totally exhausted and frustrated, and after that point it will never try again for the rest of its life. Later, when the elephant is fully grown, it can be tied to a small tree with a thin rope or even a ribbon. If it was aware of its size and strength, it could easily free itself by uprooting the tree or breaking the rope, but because its mind has been conditioned by its prior experiences, it doesn't make the slightest attempt to break free; it has lost its will or perception of its ability to do so. The powerfully gigantic elephant has limited its present abilities by the limitations of its past perception -- hence, the 'Baby Elephant Syndrome.' Human beings are exactly like the elephant except for one thing -- we can actually CHOOSE not to accept the false boundaries and limitations of our past perception."

-- The Baby Elephant Syndrome

"Don't let your past dictate who you are today,
but instead let it be a meaningful part of who
you become tomorrow." -- Anonymous

"The human mind's possibilities are limited by
its 'concept' of its power more than by its
'actual' power." -- Na'Im Akbar, Ph.D.

"Argue for your limitations, and sure enough,
they are yours." -- Richard Bach

It's absolutely amazing to me how many times I've heard people say, "No matter what I do or say, I can't seem to change anything (or even make my response to a person or situation different), because he (or she or the circumstances) won't let me." And the belief that this is so is rigid and rock solid, and the reason this is so is NOT that the statement is actually true, but that the person has had their perception of their fully-grown adult capacities for change, healing, transformation severely limited by old, calcified perceptions of their total powerlessness as children, but there is one bright spot here: as human beings (vs. elephants) THEY CAN LEARN THAT THIS IS SO, and they can CHOOSE DIFFERENTLY!

More is possible than you ever imagined,
and not just breaking free, ... but flying.

Extending freedom to the extreme - healthy, loving detachment

"For as long as you can remember, you have been a people-pleaser (although clearly they haven't always been pleased), totally depending on others and their responses to you to give you your identity. You need not look at that only in a negative way. You might have genuinely wanted to give your heart to others, and you did so quickly and easily, even if naively and superficially. But now you are being asked to let go of all these self-made props and trust that God is enough for you. You must now stop focusing your attention on being a people-pleaser and reclaim your identity as a totally free, healthy, whole self, in love with his Maker, willing to follow instructions and let go of all else that would limit or poison life, if ever so sublty, so that you can relax and thrive in His loving presence."
-- Henri Nouwen

"The single most important step in inner healing and deep relational work is detachment. It is developing a detached level of consciousness - an observer/witness perspective - that allows us to start practicing discernment in relationship to both our inner and outer processes. This facilitates the process of learning how to have internal boundaries so that we can start having the wisdom and clarity to integrate a loving spiritual belief system and intellectual knowledge of healthy behavior into our emotional relationship with life. Then we are able to start achieving some emotional balance and integration, and start owning our power to be a positive, conscious co-creator of our life experiences - a loving, mature, empowered force in our own lives, instead of an unconscious co-creator out of the negative, self abusive, self sabotaging reactions that are caused by our emotional wounds and the codependent behavior patterns adopted in childhood."

-- Robert Burney, Therapist and Author of Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls

"For years, I have heard about the concept of detachment, often referred to as healthy or loving detachment. As the child of an alcoholic who went on to be a practicing addict in several areas myself, it is not a term I understood or appreciated, particularly with the words healthy and loving used together with it. Then I saw the following, and it struck a chord!

'Today I will practice detachment by letting go of things I can't and shouldn't control. Detachment means standing back and looking at a situation without having or needing to have a hand in it. Watching fireworks is practicing detachment. Flying a kite is not. Allowing friends the freedom to have their own opinions is practicing detachment. Feeling compelled to change their actions or minds is not. Watching a child create her own drawing is practicing detachment. Holding her hand while she draws is not. I can't control other people, their actions, or their beliefs by forcing them to act or believe as I do. Detachment helps me see the big picture, since I can see things more clearly from a distance. Today, and from now on, I will practice taking care of myself better by lovingly detaching from people or situations that aren't good for me or that don't really need my involvement. God is in charge, and I can let go. Today I will pay closer attention to when I am trying to force the issue or am succumbing to others' need for my entanglement, and I'll remember that my time would be better spent loving while leaving things alone.'

Now I better understand! In my journey to a more abundant, big, healthy, and loving life, I have learned much about detaching; the world runs just fine with me as a calm observer, and this is particularly true of my relationships with those who I love the most. In finding me and liking what I’ve become, it is much easier to let go of needed results or things. This is one of the things God (or my Higher Power) helps me with every day, and is a benefit from some of the wonderful coaches I've had."

-- Keith Bray, Life Transformation Coach and Addiction Mentor

Sometimes I can get overwhelmed by the perceived and so-called "need" for me (or something) out there, with so much chaos, confusion, and pain boiling and spilling over (and sometimes exploding) from one person to the next, from one community to the next, from one nation to the next. But it is all illusion. Chaos is Divine Order. It is simply life churning and flowing and growing, in its normal state. God is in control. All is well. Even when we're in a panic. I have seen that this is so in the natural evolution of my own life, from blindness to pain to panic to putrification to purification to peace.

But when I feel a little overwhelmed, or am just getting a little sick and tired of it all, which leaves me very dull and weak in my awareness of my own makeup and internal processes, I externalize (project) things and then feel the need to be involved and fix them, usually making bigger messes in the process. That is when it is time to lovingly detach, for my own health's sake. When I take a moment to gain a little distance and perspective, I see how blessed I am, that I get the honor and privilege to love and to hold a hand and to calmly be a beacon of light, a cleansing focus, a milepost of progress, an opening for peace, a shoulder to cry on, a voice of calm serenity, and, most importantly, a holder of God space - intending with Him, interceding for Him, introducing Him, inviting Him, invoking Him. And when I am doing this about, for, and with Him, I gain access to all of His awareness and power, where it's at my disposal, for my own good.

What a deal!

Fully-attained freedom

"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way, no matter what has happened or is happening."

-- Viktor Frankl

"The average man doesn't want to be free (that is way too dangerous, because it offers way too many choices and possibilities); he simply wants to be safe from harm. He doesn't want a liberator; he wants a just dictator."

-- H.L. Mencken

"What is the seal of fully-attained human freedom? - it is no longer being ashamed while standing in front of the mirror, being totally honest, completely naked, and at peace, able to look others squarely in the eye without anger, fear, judgment, or self-doubt."

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Shame is the leading cause of death of the potential for fully self-actualized giftedness."

-- Maria Rocamora

"Freedom is simply 'what you do' with 'what you've done' and 'what's been done to you'."

-- Jean-Paul Sartre

"Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides:
Who cover faults, at last, shame them derides."

-- William Shakespeare, in King Lear

Another seal of freedom, methinks, is the ability to quote Frankl, Mencken, Nietzsche, Rocamora, Sartre, and Shakespeare in the same breath and context without concern or hesitation. :-)

Keep this in mind: guilt is from having committed or participated in a wrong or experiencing some serious failure in actions, thoughts, or words, and involves a bad feeling about something I have done or has been done to me, often accompanied by a desire to hide it; shame (especially of the false and toxic variety), on the other hand, is from a deeper, more chronic feeling that "I am bad, worthless, and/or wrong," which, it would then naturally occur to me, can't be hidden - because it's not just about what I've done but who I am, therefore, in this condition, it tends to need agreement and constant reinforcement from others, which I would then unconsciously and continually "re-create" in my relationships.

For a provocative point of view, packaged in some pretty sound advice for young people just starting out:

"Fail early and grandly and often, and get it all over with (and get over it, this misunderstood 'failure and guilt thing,' so that you're not left languishing in shame). If you learn to deal effectively with failures, and learn from them, you can then learn to abide and thrive in intimate relationships. You can even grow to raise teenagers. And you can have a worthwhile career (that would actually be a piece of cake compared to the previous two). You can learn to breathe when you embrace failure (your own and others') as a natural part of life, not as the determining characteristic of your life."

-- Rev. William L. Swig, in the Stanford 2007 Baccalaureate Celebration

"There is no shame in failing or 'not knowing;' the shame lies in not figuring or finding it out."

Come on, everyone, it's time to rise and shine!

And then, just as I finished gathering the pieces of this message together, the last Bible verse
shared in the sermon at church yesterday was, by sheer coincidence (yea, right), and of course:

"Get out of bed! Wake up! Look up!
Put your face in the brilliant sunlight.
God's bright glory has risen just for you.
The whole earth is wrapped in darkness,
all people sunk in their own deep darkness and despair,
But God rises on you, His sunrise glory breaks over you.
Nations will come in search of your light,
kings to your sunburst brightness.
Look up! Look around!
Watch as they gather;
watch as they approach you:
Your sons coming from great distances,
your daughters carried by their nannies.
When you see them coming you'll smile—great big smiles!
Your heart will swell and, yes, burst with joy!"

-- Isaiah 60:1-4 (The Message)

Yes, time to rise and shine, indeed! How about we create a brand new relationship with our frequent, inevitable, unavoidable mistakes (where we are totally honest, open, real, reconciled, redeemed, sharing of the whole process), thereby allowing for the elimination of guilt and the reduction of toxic shame (as a way of being) to full meaninglessness.