Getting Out of Our Own Way Faithfully
Recently, I was on my way out the door at my local library. It was newsletter folding day, and several volunteers were out sick. I was asked to help out.
Now I pray regularly to be ready to help when asked. I had things to be done, but nothing urgent. Still, there was a moment of wrestling with the unplanned request. I stayed. I folded newsletters with my neighbors. I had a wonderful time and we all were able to go into a beautiful day sooner because of working together. It was a joy – and a moment of spiritual practice when I could transcend my expectations and plans for the day and answer the needs I met along the way. I was given the opportunity to live faithfully, to practice neighborliness and to be generous with what I had – time – letting go of my schedule that did not need to be so rigid.
I am really good at avoiding living out my aspirations and ideals of being a person of faith. I find myself praying in the morning to be kinder and more loving, and then meeting myself angry about some cruel jab and put down I’ve received and going on from there growling at others out of my hurt and resentment. I find myself promising to serve open-heartedly and help out where I can and then wanting to rush on with what I had planned with the day rather than stop and help someone who’s just asked. Maybe you’ve met yourself in the same kind of situation.
Sometimes people will ask me how I can be a person of faith when I am obviously not perfectly living my aspirations. This is a common misunderstanding about what faith is. Faith is not transcending or rising above our human condition. Transcendence is not perfection of our being or leaving our humanity behind. What we are transcending is what holds us back from growing spiritually, risking faithfully, and loving boldly each and every day.
Once I was sitting in a room discussing my job expectations, and one of the employers expectations was to be human. I asked for clarification, because there are a great many ways we can be human, for good and for ill, and in our humanity our failures and imperfections may be part of our spiritual growth and learning as much or more than our successes and accomplishments. Here was a room full of people who believe very much in human possibility and know well the goodness we can do, and yet what was meant was that I could be fallible, could be tired, could be imperfect. Growing faithfully into a bigger, more positive sense of what it means to be human requires our transcending the need to divide people into saved and damned by how perfectly we fulfill or fail each other and ourselves. It is our spiritual work.
We don’t flower in faith because we are perfect or accomplished. We grow faithfully through our struggles, our imperfections, our practices, our misses, our failures, and our trying again. We grow faithfully transcending what holds us back and twists us away from mercy, forgiveness, love, and generosity. Humility requires transcending vanity, while still having a strong sense of self-worth. Generosity requires transcending fear and growing in trust and good-will. Forgiveness requires transcending vengeance, while holding still to loving accountability and radical acceptance. Every human trait that is considered spiritually positive demands our living practice every day. The way to transcendence is right through the muck and mire, trampling over carefully created schedules and being ready to give a whole-hearted “yes!” when asked.
- Another Helping of Brokenness - March 1, 2014
- Keeping On Though Not Yet - June 11, 2012
- Spiritual Drought & Restoration - June 4, 2012
