The Holy One is with us in all of life. Our purpose for opening the door inward is to help us know and claim who we are so we can more completely join with God in expressing this love in every part of our external world.

– Joyce Rupp

Open the Door: A Journey to the True Self

“Love from the Center of Who You are” is how Paul puts it (via Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase) in Romans 12:9a.   My clients and students at Living Well Ministries are creating and recreating lives with a passion for such a life.  We look inward not in selfishness or escapism, but in order to truly feel and act from the grace which we profess to be God’s.  We boldly explore our present energy blocks, the ideas and habits which get in our way as we aspire to live generously and sustainably in this world.  We dare to look at lifestyle habits of greed, gluttony and compulsion in which we trade spaciousness and receptivity for endless tasks.  In the reality of experienced brokenness, we are learning how to rest in what Parker Palmer calls “a hidden wholeness.”

As I prepare to teach next month’s class on biblical self-care, I am reminded of Coach Cheryl Richardson’s wise challenge.  How can we be truly follow our God’s guidance if we do not make time and room to get to know and listen to our True Self?

Joyce Rupp shares this passion, and I am grateful for the privilege of sharing her work as an invitation for fellowship and discernment among a sacred group of sisters in ministry this year.  We call care so much about following our Lord in a calling to love the world. Really and materially.  It’s my hope that this is a year for all of us of deepening that “Living Well” from which we can do so with joy.

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak: A Spiritual Journey

Oh, how wise and wonderful are Nouwen’s words.  As a “recovering” extravert, I can confess that the capacity to hold such silence has been something I’ve been slow to learn.  But it holds so much reward, both for my friends and clients as well as for myself.  It’s truly a spiritual discipline to practice such stillness, and to be reminded over and over again how Present God is.  This God cannot be reduced to Expert, Fixer, Preacher, or even Knower.  Thanks, again, to Nouwen for giving us words for this grace.  It empowers my imagination about the truly HOLY interplay of silence and proclamation…

“Over the years, I have come to realize that the greatest trap in our life is not success, popularity, or power, but self-rejection. Success, popularity, and power can indeed present a great temptation, but their seductive quality often comes from the way they are part of the much larger temptation to self-rejection. When we have come to believe in the voices that call us worthless and unlovable, then success, popularity, and power are easily perceived as attractive solutions. The real trap, however, is self-rejection. As soon as someone accuses me or criticizes me, as soon as I am rejected, left alone, or abandoned, I find myself thinking, “Well, that proves once again that I am a nobody.” … [My dark side says,] I am no good… I deserve to be pushed aside, forgotten, rejected, and abandoned. Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the “Beloved.” Being the Beloved constitutes the core truth of our existence.”   ― Henri J.M. Nouwen

The highlighted portion above, in this amazing passage, almost made it into my sermon this morning at St. James.  It’s so awesome I couldn’t NOT proclaim it.  So, Facebook friends, I would welcome your thoughts about it.

It’s true, I believe, of individuals AND communities, and a vital piece to recognize for achieving the graced health which is our birthright and out of which we can truly do bold things for Jesus’ cause of justice.  I am pondering further today and tomorrow – in honor of Dr. King – the energy connections between the kind of self-rejection Nouwen describes and the weakness and timidity of the white moderates he so righteously critiques in Letter from a Birmingham Jail.  (We read portions of that today in worship.  Wow. It never ceases to feel like Jesus’ Gospel of Repentance in full force…)

In my coaching, I  serve folks who are beginning to wrestle with this great enemy of self-rejection.  I also support many who have already achieved much liberation, but whose energy is blocked in current areas of life and service. They’re  LGBT and straight, single and in relationships, old and young, lay and clergy.  Individuals and churches.   Together, we are embracing a path that is very very distinct from the religious paths on which many of us began.  Many of our earlier paths have shaped our habits of self-rejection, and can sadly thus be seen as creating obstacles to the REAL spiritual life.

In a lovely reminder from Romans 8… Nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.  No matter your faith background or desire for formal labels or affiliations today, drinking this in (from the Living Well!) will empower you to do great things for yourself and for this world so in need of your creative power.  Let’s explore, together, what that looks like for you.

Are you ready?   I will be thrilled to support you in any way I can.