Monday Meditation, Sep 20, 2010

The Book Title That Changed My Life
Several years ago I came across a book title that had a more profound effect on my life than I could have imagined.  For a long time, I didn't read the book; but I kept it in my office where I could see the cover.  The title?  How Come Every Time I Get Stabbed in the Back My Fingerprints Are on the Knife? 


For me, that book title names the biggest obstacle to our continued spiritual growth: We have a well-developed habit of looking outside ourselves at the sins and transgressions of others. And we tend to think of God as being "out there" somewhere rather than being present in each person.  In an attempt to avoid what we don't like or can't accept in ourselves, we look "out there" to find someone else we can blame.  Psychologists named this phenomenon projection,  but our spiritual forebears knew and recognized it for centuries.


Jesus used the "splinter in the other person's eye, plank in my eye" metaphor to name this fixation. This scapegoating seems to be rampant in our time and our society. It's those politicians or political activists who are to blame; it's the Muslims who are at the root of our troubles; it's all those illegal immigrants...; it's the bankers, and on and on.


What do you suppose would happen if everyone followed the example of our great saints--and our Savior--who wasted no time glaring at the sins of others?


Blessings for the week,
Bob

The "Let's Imagine it's Monday" Meditation

The Gospel messages in these "ordinary" times are pointed calls to what it means to be a follower of Christ (all from Gospel of Luke):
Aug 8:   Be watchful and awake
Aug 15: He has cast the mighty down from their thrones
Aug 22: Enter through the narrow gate (apparently with NO "baggage"!)
Aug 29: Go and take the lowest place
Sep 5:   Renounce all your possessions [to be] my disciple

I feel like crying out, "Give me a break for a minute!"  But notice the cadence and "the call":  we don't need all the "stuff" that we accumulate; and that includes our mental stuff.

As the wonderful English mystic, Evelyn Underhill, puts it:

"We mostly spend our lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do. Craving, clutching, and fussing on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual---even on the religious plane---we are kept in perpetual unrest; forgetting that none of these verbs has any significance, except in so far as they are transcended and included in the fundamental verb "to be"…Being, not wanting, having, and doing, is the essence of a spiritual life.


Let's carry that message in our hearts this week.