What God Wants For Your Life

I enjoy working in spiritual direction with business people.

There is no more powerful combination than someone who is spiritually focused and outwardly motivated to achieve goals in a thoughtful, reflective fashion.

These are people who understand that the work world is not alien to spiritual values. It is an arena in which we hammer out our values in sharp contention with a world that is often indifferent, if not hostile to them.

They also understand that the sharp contention cannot be avoided. It endlessly reinvents itself. Looking for institutions and structures in which we are completely at home is a lost cause. Even apparently spiritual institutions are governed by motives and values that are alien to the spiritual commitments that they are designed to promote. That is life in the world.

Business people are just less likely to labor under the illusion that the world in which they work is that complicated.

Spiritual direction is not for people hiding from life, its challenges, or its complexities. People who are hiding from life need to work on their denial first, then they can begin to look for direction.

Spiritual direction is for people who understand that we are here to seek God in the middle of the complexity.

Our emotions can be important spiritual companions. Just remember, there is a difference between listening to them and being co-opted by them.

Disappointment, for example, measures the distance between what we want and what we have. It can also measure the difference between what should be and what is.

Seen in that light, disappointment can spur us to achievement and drive us to work for justice.

But disappointment can also point to other problems: unfair or unrealistic expectations, unhealthy desires, greed, and envy.

Measure the distance in your disappointment between

what you want and what you have
what you expect and what has happened
what should be and what is

Ask yourself:

Why does the distance disappoint me?
When I have accounted for the distance, what does it tell me about the needs of my soul?

Do I need to grow or mature?
Do I need to forgive?
Do I need to let go of unfair expectations?
Do I need to work or even fight for what is right?

There is information in disappointment. Learn from it, don’t be led by it. Listen for what God is trying to tell you in the middle of it.

My work often involves working with clergy and students preparing for ordained life. Many of the personal issues they face are no different from those faced by others. They simply have a different spin.

Years ago, for example, I counseled a 40-something priest. He had been married for 15 years.

The plans he had made to go to seminary were no surprise to his wife, nor were the moves that are inevitably a part of ordained life. But she secretly resented it. She considered herself the only one who worked during the years that he was in school (though seminary and part-time jobs thread through it represented a great deal of work). He had encouraged her to follow her own path, but she felt that she had been left with inferior opportunities for education. And although the moving actually increased her opportunities for professional development, she became angrier with every move.

What accumulated was an emotional debt that he could never repay; and the weight of it was as apparent in her public behavior as it was in private. She scolded him in public and complained in private. When the young priest attempted to address the issues, she curtly responded that she was “entitled to her opinion.” Over time, the prospects of ever changing the narrative that she wrapped around their relationship dimmed and his desire to even change them waned. Eventually, they divorced.

You are entitled to your opinion. But life-giving marriages are not about countervailing claims. They are about a shared spiritual journey, mutual investment in the spiritual and emotional growth of another human being. They are about a capacity for adventure. They are about forgiveness.

A relationship burdened by emotional debt is a relationship in trouble.

Life’s most intimate relationships are opportunities for spiritual deepening. The sacramental nature of marriage, for example, depends less upon the liturgical rites that initiate it, than it does on a couple’s ability to nurture spiritual growth in one another.

So, a marriage devoid of that concern is likely to offer something well less than is possible and, worse yet, runs the risk of actually undermining the spiritual development of the men and women involved. For that reason, what might seem trivial or domestic in its nature actually has spiritual implications.

Take, for example, the way in which the roles of men and women are often shaped by the divine right of helplessness invoked by some men and women.

Countless relationships and several books on marital bliss make it clear that more than a few marriages are shaped by the assumption that men are exempted from, if not constitutionally incapable of shouldering a wide array of responsibilities: domestic chores, child-rearing, the active shaping of home life, and on-going responsibility for nurturing romance are a few of the wide-ranging categories that come to mind.

The net result is that, more often than not, women are burdened with taking the initiative along a wide-range of activities. The excuses given for this helplessness range from debatable assumptions about the differences in gender to the rather more aggressive claims to being the one who “makes more money.” Conversely, some women invoke the divine right of helplessness with regard to money, leaving their husbands to dictate financial decisions.

There are, of course, variations on this theme; and it is probably less common among younger generations — although it finds new permutations with each change in generation as well.

The net result is that both partners are robbed of opportunities for spiritual growth. Women saddled with the responsibility for things at home labor under both the number of tasks involved and no small amount of anger and bitterness over being treated like indentured slaves. Men assume the role of little boys evincing a strange mix of entitlement and dependence that robs them of deepening their own spiritual lives.
Conversations about rights and gender equity obscure the spiritual losses, stressing instead the legal nature of the relationship between men and women. But for people who understand themselves as children of God, something far deeper is at stake.

Marriage is a relationship that mirrors our relationship with God and it is meant to nurture it.

Neither the claim to a divine right of helplessness, nor the counter-claim to equality quite succeeds in acknowledging what is at stake, nor what is lost when the sacramental nature of the vows no longer make a claim on the lives of both husbands and wives.

Marriage partners who know this do not need to invoke their rights — they know what a gift they have been given.

In the run up to Toy Story 3, we’ve been watching Toy Story 1 and 2. The great thing about both movies and (according to the reviews) the new one as well, is their candor and directness. They may have a cartoonish quality and the characters may be toys, but the movies speak all the more powerfully about out lives as a result. They sneak around, under, and over our defenses.

In the jealous face off between Woody (the cowboy action figure) and Buzz (the space action figure), the movies make a number of those points. Woody, you will recall notes that Buzz can’t really fly, he falls.

That observation and others, along with his own encounter with the limitations of being an action figure bring Buzz to the brink of despair. But when he finally owns the goodness of his own existence, Buzz lives into the truth with pride.

Carrying Woody on his back as they sail through the air trying to return home to their owner, Andy, Woody observes, “Buzz, you’re flying!”

Buzz responds, “This isn’t flying, it’s falling — with style!”

Today is my birthday and I haven’t been a huge fan of any of them on this side of the 50-divide. But I am learning that there is a place for living gratefully into the days we are given as the children of God.

And it beats the alternatives:

We can measure ourselves against the un-realism of youthful expectations.

We can beat ourselves to death (almost literally) over could-of, should-of, and would-of in endless post-mortems over decisions made.

We can let anger and despair rob us of joy in what we do have.

Or we can celebrate what we have and remember that we are loved — by God and by a handful of people who know us as we are…”falling with style.”

Most of us live a schizophrenic existence. We can talk at length about our prayers, church, and our relationship with God, and wax eloquent about our spiritual lives. But the rest of life —- our work, relationships, and a long list of other decisions — are devoid of a spiritual orientation.

There are a variety of reasons we live in this fashion. Some of it has to do with our materialist view of the world and the value we attach to what we can see, feel, hear, and smell. We are inclined to believe that what we can measure is real.

Some of it has to do with our utilitarian bent. What we can use is what matters. And back of those tendencies is a long list of historical reasons for why we are the way we are.

But there is also a fundamentally spiritual explanation for the way we live as well that has as much to with the way we choose to live, as the way we are taught to live.

Bernard of Clairvaux is helpful here in outlining the choices we can make.

Some, he notes, are weighed down by the material world. They are possessed by it, driven by it, dominated by it.

A second group of people live in wonder of the world around them — often exploring and measuring it. Ironically, Bernard observes, they can also have the greatest contempt for the world around them.

The third group asks what divine purpose the world around might have and then choose to live in accord with those purposes.

For those who are genuinely devoted to living a spiritual life, it is this third choice that provides the key. If we begin to ask ourselves how our work, relationships, and daily choices serve divine purposes, life begins to acquire the spiritual character we long to find. It is not a matter of bending the world around us to our needs, it is a matter of the way in which we choose to view the world.

The schizophrenia is of our own making. Everything has a spiritual dimension, if you are willing to see it.

Bernard of Clairvaux, Sermon for Pentecost 3,3-4 (with thanks to my wife the Bernardine scholar for bringing this to my attention!)

Are you the sinner-in-touch-with-your-sin or Simon-in-denial?

In helping you to answer that question, I have been making a few observations I hope will be helpful. Today, this:

The only way to receive love and forgiveness is to own our need for it.

The literature of spiritual direction talks a lot about false selves — the images of ourselves we project, the things we hope people will think about us, the edited versions of our lives fit for public consumption. It is not just movie stars or politicians who do this — though they have reduced it to a fine art. We all do it to one degree or another.

And, to some degree, it may be unavoidable. Not everyone can be trusted with the unedited version of our lives. Not all relationships warrant it.

But what people do know about us needs to be consistent with the full nature of our lives. Some people need to be trusted with most of what we are. And — above all — God needs to know us as we are.

Until that happens, we cannot fully receive God’s forgiveness, nor live completely into God’s love.

And that — not the fact that he was religious — was Simon’s problem. He didn’t know his own sinfulness fully and he didn’t own it fully in God’s presence. That was clear in his reaction to Jesus’ visitor. His false self — the image that he wanted Jesus and others to see short-circuited his ability to receive God’s forgiveness. He thought he was on the right path and she was not. What he failed to see, in a sense, is that there was no difference.

So, in what Jesus says it becomes clear that neither Simon, nor the woman are our models — what is at issue is the degree to which we are in touch with how much we all depend upon God.

Now, that might leave us all wondering if it wouldn’t be better to be like Henry —- new born, no scars, no losses…

The problem, of course, is no one gets to stay a baby forever. But there is another kind of innocence — an innocence far better than innocence of our making: the innocence of complete dependence upon God.

I have a friend like that who is a recovering alcoholic. The thing about alcoholism is — if you survive it — you get clear about your own frailty in a hurry and you live in daily dependence upon it.

And Skip is like that. He has gotten over his several false selves — some the product of a Harvard medical degree —- some of it the product of building a one of a kind medical practice — and some of it the product of the pride that accumulates around dealing with life and death, as physicians so often do.

There were layers of false selves and the lies to go along with them — and a portion of his own testimony is that he no longer needs to keep track of the lies. And as a result, he also lives with reckless, generous abandon. Caring for people who don’t know him, giving extravagant gifts to people in need, sitting for countless hours for others facing the same struggles he confronted.

He knows he needs God — God’s love, God’s forgiveness. And he is neither as young nor innocent in the way new-born Henry is, but he doesn’t need to be —- nor do you.

He has found innocence version 2.0, the kind of innocence only God can give. The kind that follows on forgiveness and builds in love.

That’s the kind of innocence meant for every sort of sinner who is prepared to acknowledge his or her need.

Are you the sinner-in-touch-with-your-sin or Simon-in-denial?

In helping you to answer that question, I want to make a few points you should keep in mind. Today, this:

We all need God’s love and forgiveness.

A lot of us probably think from time to time that we don’t. We run along — more or less doing the right thing, more or less considerate of our neighbors, more or less aware of God.

In fact, there are points in our lives —- most of them really, really early —- when it’s easy to suppose that most people are “basically good,” as the expression goes.

We had a grandson born this week. Henry is his name— and it’s hard to believe that all of the spoiling, care, love, and concern could be more than Henry deserves. In fact, it is tempting to argue that he is the exception that proves the rule. He is just perfect.

But, in truth, babies are the symbol of innocence and not fifty something old men for a reason. They haven’t been around long enough to make mistakes, hurt people, be hurt, mislead, be misled —-

Henry may never do any really outstandingly awful things — I hope for his sake he finds a way to avoid life’s hardest experiences. But we all accumulate what my wife and I call “road dust” — and I bet you have too. And as you age, the road dust accumulates and the need for forgiveness — given and received — becomes clearer.