De Mello: Selfish

De Mello: Selfish

“Part of waking up is that you live your life as you see fit. And understand: That is not selfish. The selfish thing is to demand that someone else live their life as YOU see fit. That’s selfish.”

Anthony de Mello, Awareness, Collins Fount 1990, Daily Words, Inwardoutward.org, June 22, 2015

Anthony de Mello was an Indian Jesuit priest who also was a psychotherapist who died too young in 1987 but whose spiritual writings still speak clearly to us today. I think de Mello is trying to tell us that loving others means allowing, supporting them to be the person God created them to be. Self-love or selfishness is wanting others to be the person we want them to be. This is a constant struggle because “we are so wise and have such good ideas!” Sometimes we want others to live a certain way to live out a life along a path that we were not able to live. Other times it is a control issue thinking we know what is best.

We struggle with this form of selfishness with our children, our grandchildren, our students, our partners, our friends, almost any relationship. Of course, this also can be a hurdle to overcome in spiritual direction, wanting our spiritual friends to live a certain form of spirituality, especially the spiritual life that has worked for us. Spiritual direction is a two-way street. It is like teaching or any form of mentoring. If we are not learning from our spiritual friends as well as sharing with them, we become even more self-absorbed in our own knowledge and experience. We must constantly remember that it should be the Holy Spirit present with us in spiritual direction, guiding and teaching us as well as our spiritual friends.

My experience is that two things are helpful. First, trying to live the Serenity Prayer, knowing we can only change ourselves and not others. God is the one who makes the change. We are to sit back and wait for the Holy Spirit to bring about changes.

The second is awareness, awareness when we think we know what is best and start planning the agenda of others and not allowing them to become the person the Christ, the Spirit within is leading them to be. I am counting on the Holy Spirit to bring in de Mello holding up a big stop sign with SELFISH written all over it when I become aware of when I am doing this.

Next, we are to turn around and prayerfully and humbly ask God to transform that selfish energy directed at others into energy for the Christ within us to continue creating us to become the person God birthed us to be and to keep looking for and loving that Christ already in our neighbor.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

grace, Flat Tire

Grace, Flat Tire
“We are very imperfect vehicles for the embodiment of Divine Grace. We’re all driving around on at least one flat tire and with missing or malfunctioning parts. Broken as we are, the impulse is still there: Christ’s desire to incarnate grace and truth.”

Br. Mark Brown, “Brother, Give us a Word,” Society of Saint John the Evangelist, SSJE, friends@ssje.org, a daily email sent to friends and followers of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, a religious order for men in the Episcopal/Anglican Church. www.ssje.org,.

I and another spiritual friend so relate to this message as we both have mobility issues, so we love the image that we are moving around with at least one flat tire and maybe more. Images from our physical life are mirrors into our spiritual life. These images help us know a God who is all knowing and whom we only have a tiny glimpse of from time to time.

I hope to remember the flat tire when I make my mistakes. It helps me to remember I am human and not to beat myself up. I often need a little more air, a little more Spirit in my tires. I like the image of the Spirit, the air we breathe being that air, creation, the mark of the Creator, that is all around us and freely given.

Sometimes our tires become so worn that we actually will have to change them. That could mean so many things. The Spirit can no longer stay within our tires. Perhaps we begin a new spiritual practice. Perhaps it is a sign that our image of God has become too small. Perhaps it means old habits will no longer work to keep us connected.

The flat tire is a work in progress. It is a reminder that we are not perfection and subject to change.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

MLK, Sims: A New Norm of Greatness

MLK: A New Norm of Greatness

“Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.”

Martin Luther King Jr., “Drum Major Instinct,” sermon, Atlanta, February 4, 1968.

Martin Luther King is giving us the short version about servant ministry, which Bishop Bennett Sims wrote about in 1997 in his landmark book, Servanthood, Leadership for the Third Millennium. Our worthiness has nothing to do with our IQ. Being a servant leader is completely different from being the smartest, working to become the greatest, needing to control or needing the admiration of others because of your abilities. Servant leaders make room for and empower others, work to build up others, not to polish the system or the leader’s self-importance. A servant leader does not see production as the first purpose of any family system, endeavor, church, or business.

Human enhancement, not human employment, is the primary aim of organizations led by servant leaders. Meaning and joy in work comes from power with, not power over.

Sims describes collaboration with others as the “meat and potatoes” of human nourishment while competition is the “salt and pepper.” He believes our society has been living on “spices.”

Joanna joannaseibert.com