What God Wants For Your Life

The light was fading pretty fast in the late hours of the day, here in the foothills of the Rockies. It fades all the more quickly when, as it did today, the clouds roll in and a late spring snow begins to cover the ground.

I had finished my first day of reflection and much of what had been on my mind was the need to exercise the freedom that God has given me. It is easy to feel hemmed in, stymied, and confined by life. Structures, places, people, the times in which we live — they all conspire to limit the freedom we exercise.

The only key to exercising some freedom from those restrictions is to choose freely those things that draw us into deeper, loving relationships with God and with one another. That is, in fact, life’s true agenda: to live in ever-deeper connection with God and with one another.

I watched as the lights on the mountainside became visible in the homes scattered across the mountains and thought of the life choices that had brought each of those families to the places they now live. My prayer is that they and all of us are where we are today, thanks to the freedom of that kind of choosing.

A million choices,
Their lights scattered across the hillside,
Undifferentiated in the quality of their light
Or the nobility of the choice made.

Undifferentiated, that is,
Except by freedom,
The desire to love,
And the desire to be loved.

This entry could be entitled “A Message from God.”

But I took the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory once and they asked if I’m a messenger from God. I don’t think they thought the answer, “yes,” was a good thing.

Nonetheless, you may need to hear this. Only you know if you do…

I need to be able to trust you with the loneliness of it all. You know I love you. That needs to be enough.

I knew you before I called you.

No more bargains. No more “Give me this and I’ll do that.”

No more dependence upon the structures. They aren’t a substitute for trusting me. (And they aren’t trustworthy Believe me. Been there. Done that. Have the scars to prove it.)

No more reporting relationships that absolve you of moral and spiritual responsibility. Life is not something that someone else made this way. Life is, for the most part, the sum total of your choices.

No more refuge in the established way of doing things. I am not willing to have my voice muffled by the soft comforts of “we’ve always done it this way.”

Now it is time to live out of what I have taught you. Yesterday doesn’t matter. Tomorrow might not come. Indecision is a decision. Do something. Anything.

Exercise your freedom. Take a risk.

Just be sure it is out of love for me and for those around you.

I recently went on retreat at a Jesuit Retreat Center in Colorado. Located outside of Sedalia, it is in the high desert, not up in the mountains. But being back in Colorado reminded me of a family trip that my parents took us on when I was nine.

One of my most vivid memories from that trip was the drive up Mount Evans, which (if memory serves me correctly) is over 14,500 feet above sea level. At one point the road twists and spirals above what is called the tree line — that point at which both the climate and the altitude makes it impossible for anything to grow.

I still remember how the combination of wind, snow, sleet, and hail polishes clean the windward side of the trees and drives them to grow down and close to the ground. That’s life at the tree line and for trees at that altitude, there is no break, except perhaps the changes in season — and even then, the altitude tends to cancel the benefits.

Life at the tree line is not a bad metaphor for life forged under relentless pressure and without protection. The misshaping force of stress and abuse, the absence of grace and forgiveness, can have the same effect.

A healthy spirituality acknowledges our en-bodied nature as children of God. Spirituality is not a footrace to do things of a spiritual nature in the same relentless, face-paced, perfectionistic, competitive mode in which we do everything else. In fact, at its healthiest, spiritual formation reminds us that a rather different balance might be a good thing for us in every department of life.

Make room for things that give you a break from life at the tree line:

• Rest
• Find time for recreation
• Cultivate and nurture intimate relationships
• Make room in your life for people who love you
• Be gentle with yourself
• Receive forgiveness
• And, above all, take refuge in God when you need it

One of the gifts of the Christian life is the growing network of friends one acquires over the years — thoughtful, reflective, dedicated people who encourage you simply by living in responsive ways to the presence of God in their own lives.

Not long ago, one of those friends wrote in frustration:

I find myself troubled about an aspect of our new church that just keeps pushing my buttons. In fact, I’m finding myself becoming increasingly impatient at this common line of thought.

I’m involved in a prayer group. As we gather to pray or to study, the majority of conversations start off this way:

I didn’t do my preparation work this week because of attacks by satan.

I’m a little bit late today because of attacks by satan.

Did you notice how tired our associate pastor looks today…you know, it’s all those attacks of satan.

Can / will you share a little bit about your thoughts on this subject?

In shorter form, this is what I had to say:

Satan has no power of his or its own (whatever the appropriate pronoun might be).

Christians are not dualists (or we shouldn’t be). We don’t believe that there are two Gods or two powers at work in the world — beings of comparable strength and cosmic presence. The language that we use referring to light and darkness is meant to convey the spiritual gravity of the choices we face. It should not be taken flat-footedly and literally.

Satan is not another God. He is “anti-God.”

In fact, one could argue that in the absence of God, it would be impossible to talk about Satan, sin, or evil. If we lived in a cosmic vacuum and if we were here by virtue of chance, then “what is” would be all that there is. Moral judgments about actions, behaviors, patterns, and trends would be irrelevant.

It is only in the presence of God that, by contrast, we can talk about the nature of sin, evil, and Satan. As such, language that invests Satan with the ability to overrule our will and run our lives can be spiritually misleading.

If we choose, evil can grow and become reified. It can gain mass and moment. The darkness around it can deepen. If we persist in turning our back on God, then we can become captive to what Paul describes as the “futility of our minds.” The Holocaust, for example is a sobering and frightening testimony to the power of evil fed by the individual and collective choices of otherwise “normal” people.

But that power of such evil (as great as it can be and as perverse as it can become) is derivative. It does not have an existence of its own. It is the corruption of the good, the result of saying “no” to God over and over again. In that sense, it matters little whether there is a devil (as such) and it is a mistake to attribute our laziness or lack of focus and discipline to attacks by Satan.

It gives the devil more than he is due — and it absolves us of the spiritual responsibility to say “yes” to God.

And that may be the unspoken reason that such language has gained in popularity. We find it hard to own or responsibility before God. Yet, that is the real issue. As long as we remain open to God, willing to respond, and vulnerable enough to seek forgiveness when we fail, then evil cannot take hold in our lives. And — at the hands of God and his children — the devil will get his due.

Blogging has reminded me how important spam filters can be. Use a key word of one kind or another in a blog and you will get a stilted response from:

sexygirlseekssexyguy@subprimemortgages.com

“I admire the information in your blog. Please send money.”

(My computer turned even this bit of nonsense into a url without my asking it to. So….no promises what might be on the other end of the link.)

We live in a world filled with spam. And the great gift of the modern world is that spam looks for you, you don’t need to look for it.

• Health and wealth gurus who want to teach you how to pray your way to wealth.

• Ex-hippies who want you to string your own necklace of spiritual wisdom.

• Self-help experts who have discovered that there is almost as much money in talking about spiritual matters as there was a generation ago talking about sex.

• And even a handful of authorities with religious and academic credentials who (as unrecovered fundamentalists) have discovered truths about religion that you should know now — so that you can live in liberated despair that we are all just an accident (but they won’t share that part with you).

But if you think spam crowds your in-box and robs you of valuable time at work, just think what spiritual spam does to cloud your mind and divert your heart’s energy. Every piece of spiritual spam out there threatens to lighten your wallet, waste your time, and divert your energy.

Use a filter. Not all of it is worth reading and some of it is a soul killer.

I, Me, Mine, and No. It’s the vocabulary we use when we are two (the so-called “terrible twos”). And it’s cute — for a year.

But by age three it’s tiresome. After that — at ages 22, 32, 42, and 52 — it’s called narcissism.

I, Me, Mine, and No can become the focus of our prayer life, the subject matter of our pilgrimage, and the concern that we share with others regardless of where the conversation started. We don’t make time to listen to others. We run roughshod over other people’s lives trying to find a way to meet our own needs. We bully others in an effort to get our way.

As tough as it can be on others when we act that way, the real problem is that when our spiritual lives are about I, Me, Mine, and No we are less useful to God and of little or no use to others.

We all experience pain, loss, frustration, and depression — and there are times to bandage those wounds. And there are times in life when an appropriate set of boundaries and the word “no” can be very important. (Often, for complex social reasons, those moments may be more important for women than for men.)

But the life-long, imperious two year old is — well — a life-long imperious two year old. And there is nothing adult, courageous, faithful, available, or useful about someone who perpetually behaves like a two year old.

There are times when we all need to hear the sharp, firm, familiar words of spiritual counsel…“Grow up.”

God is patient with our needs and attentive to our pain beyond all imagining. But we are called to be the children of God. That gift requires that we grow up and learn to be available to God and to others. Available to do the hard thing, the courageous thing, the selfless thing — things to be done today, in the world where we live, among the people we have been called to serve.

I, Me, Mine, and No is not the vocabulary used by someone who hears that call. It is You, Us, Yours, Ours, and Yes.

My mother didn’t have the same opportunities that I have enjoyed.

She grew up in rural Indiana in a log cabin with a dirt floor. The daughter of a cabinetmaker, there was no money to send her to college. So, when she completed high school ahead of schedule, she ventured into the work world. She raised three children, eventually attended secretarial school, held a few jobs in medical offices, and finally spent most of her time working as my father’s secretary. Ten years ago doctors discovered that she had an inoperable tumor and after exploratory surgery and a long, painful struggle with a feeding tube, she died.

I finished a bachelor’s degree and two graduate degrees. She held a high school diploma and a secretarial school certificate.

I didn’t see the ocean until I was 21. She didn’t see it until she flew over it to visit me as a student in Oxford.

I didn’t fly on a plane until I was 18. She didn’t fly on a plane until she flew over it to visit me as a student in Oxford.

I have lived in three countries and five states. She lived in two states and only one country.

But I relied on her love, looked to her for guidance, leaned on her faith, depended upon her strength, admired her wisdom, and looked to her for intellectual guidance. The gifts that she gave me are so much a part of who I am today that it would be impossible to untangle the fabric that is my life and take credit for any part of it without admitting my dependence on her.

Mother’s day is a good day to remember what it means to be a parent. It is a good day to remember that what we achieve or become is not ours alone. It is a good day to remember that the deepest, intimate relationships with which God blesses us are marked by unfathomable self-sacrifice — the gift of those who often enjoyed so much less than we enjoy.

In a world that is shaped by egotistical claims and constant carping about our rights, Mother’s day is a good day to practice gratitude and humility — a good day to breathe a prayer of thanksgiving for someone who made so much possible.

May light perpetual shine upon her…

Why are we stuck? Why can’t we make changes — even when we know that the changes are good for us?

A central issue is inertia. The same force that keeps any object at rest in the natural world has its equivalent in the spiritual world. Something that is stationary remains stationary until enough energy is applied to move it.

Our habits of the heart remain unchanged unless we exert the needed energy.

Why don’t we push? The reasons are varied.

We may lack confidence in God’s vision for us. We may be paralyzed by fear. Or we may be weighed down by hopelessness.
Knowing this and naming the barriers to change can be an important first step.

But the biggest barrier is the failure to push at all.

Embrace God’s vision for your life and then start to push in some concrete, life-changing fashion.

I worked with a directee in his fifties, who died a number of years ago. His story still haunts me.

The son of a demanding perfectionist who found it hard to accept his son and affirm him had built a life calculated to win his father’s approval. When, in mid-life, a tragic industrial accident robbed him of his ability to go on working, he found himself face to face with the hidden agenda of his adult life — the desire to hear his father say, “I am proud of you. I love you.”

Painfully, he unpacked the realization that the choices he had made were shaped by the desire to hear those words. “You know,” he said, “I’ve done a lot of adult things in my life, but I’ve been waiting for permission all along.”

There are times in life when it is important to stop waiting for permission. There are times when it becomes clear that the people we love are not capable of giving us what should be their gift. There is a time to grieve the fact that they cannot do that for us and then move on.

To be trapped, “waiting for permission,” does nothing to remediate the loss. Give the loss to God. Ask God to keep safe that loss. Ask God to heal that persons wounds and your own. Then move on.

Live, make choices like an adult, own your life in God’s presence — with grace, wisdom, and freedom. You may bear the scars of having been denied gifts that you should have received. You may not have heard the words, “I am proud of you and I love you.”

Your father or mother may have failed to model behavior for you that would have prepared you to give the same gift to your own children in return. These are losses to be named and grieved. But don’t wait for permission.

If you learn to live without waiting for permission, you will have he chance to learn from your loss. You will avoid forcing someone else to have the same experience. And you will model an approach to life marked by a capacity for growth and wisdom.

There are times between the cradle and the grave when that is the only gift that we can wring from our losses. But even if it is bittersweet and hard-won, it is still a gift worth giving.

On the interstate between Philadelphia and Wilmington my wife and I a car with an intriguing vanity plate: YBMEUBU (Why be me? You be you.)

It is hard to know what motivated the owner to choose that message. It might have been offered as a bit of therapeutic wisdom. It may have been an inside joke of some kind.

But there is genuine spiritual wisdom in the message. To develop freely and fully we need to be content with being the people we were created to be. If we struggle or long to be someone else, we are never present to our own lives. Worse yet, we cannot hear the Spirit of God move in them. To want to be someone else is to be in between and nowhere — endlessly.

That is, in fact, the focus of the Tenth Commandment. On the surface it looks like not much more than a prohibition: Don’t covet — don’t long for or take something which belongs to someone else.

But the commandment has a positive and life-giving energy: UBU. Start there and God can find you. God can give to you. You can grow.