The Glorious Truth

I read a quote this morning from William James that said, “Truth Wins.” As we wind down our series with Parker Palmer, I couldn’t help but think about his call to live an “undivided life.” His bottom line, expressed beautifully in “Let Your Life Speak,” is simply to tell the truth. We were taught to speak the truth since we were old enough to process language. But no one taught us to tell the truth about ourselves. Few of us even know that truth. We hold to the lie that started years ago when we bought into messages urging us to be something or someone else in order to feel loved, respected or successful.

How many years have we spent trying to make life work by being someone we are not? How much money have we spent to create an image that is admired and valued among our friends and colleagues? How much have we medicated ourselves with over - functioning, alcohol, food and other people as we try to detour past our deepest fear?

My dear friends, it’s time to pull back the curtain and see the glorious truth: Bringing my whole self, just as God made me and gifted me, is the best I have to offer humanity.
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Incomprehensible Suffering Requires Compassion More Than Answers

I am often saddened by Christian’s response to suffering. In today’s blog, I am taking a short detour from our work with Parker Palmer. Brian McLaren's compassionate and sound response to John Piper’s position on the tragedy in Japan compels me to speak up.

It's a lengthy read but an important conversation. Graciously, McLaren brings heart and truth to what some call God’s judgment. My prayers go out to the ten's of thousands who are hurting and afraid in Japan.

Brian McLaren's reponse to tragedy in Japan

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"I Sat Down Because I Was Tired"

Legend has it that years after Rosa Parks became the “first lady of civil rights” a graduate student came to Ms. Parks and asked, ‘Why did you sit down at the front of the bus that day?’ Rosa Parks did not say that she sat down to launch a movement, because her motives were more elementary than that. She said, ‘I sat down because I was tired.’ But she did not mean her feet were tired. She meant that her soul was tired, her heart was tired, her whole being was tired… She decided, ‘I will no longer act on the outside in a way that contradicts the truth that I hold deeply on the inside.’

Where does one get the courage to “sit down at the front of the bus” in a society that punishes anyone who decides to live divided no more. People like Rosa Parks have transformed the notion of punishment itself. They have come to understand that no punishment anyone might inflict on them could possibly be worse than the punishment they inflict on themselves by conspiring in their own diminishment.” Parker Palmer

As we continue our journey with Parker Palmer in “Let Your Life Speak,” Palmer reminds me of the voice within that is continually calling me to radical honesty and radical trust. To bring his point to light, he retells the story of Rosa Parks monumental decision to take a seat at the front of the bus.

As I sit in her shadow, I pray for the courage to keep “sitting down.” My illusions tell me I will have a better life if I go with the status quo and keep trying to win the blessing of people that will honor me with their stamp of approval. After all, that’s how I’ve lived for the last fifty-five years. But at what cost?

So many of us have spent most of our life coming to understand who we really are. I pray for younger followers in the faith to find the courage to live an undivided life. I pray that our kids will really like who they are rather than disowning themselves to be who we think they should be. People complain about younger generations and their disregard for truth. I hope I live to see the “church” filled with people who are living the truth of who they are rather than being bound in a prison of judgment and fear.

I know of no greater example than that of Jesus who never gave in to what others wanted him to be. The religious establishment had their own idea of what their Messiah would look like but it was far from the truth of God’s extravagant love. Jesus, being true to who He was and what He came to do, took a stand that led to the ultimate “punishment”… but my, he launched much more than a movement.




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My True Self

Brennan Manning says, “Be who you is cause if you ain’t who you is, you is who you ain’t. That power packed sentence is what I call my homework for life. We are all born with a unique personality and different gifts. Most importantly, we are blessed with the possibility of claiming our true identity based on God’s image of us. It has taken me 40 years of being a Christ follower to accept and rest in my true self. I found that without seeing myself through the truth and grace of God, I am constantly striving to become what my ego is telling everyone else I am. When that image takes a deadly fall, I am left to look up from the ground and offer God a needy little girl (well, perhaps I should say, “old woman.)” It is at that very moment that I begin to see my true self and find peace in who I am and who I am not. I find that I am regularly tempted to prop myself back up based on images built through my own ego or other’s perception of what they want me to be. So today I have a choice to listen to my ego, driven by fear or to listen to the truth in my heart, which is rooted in God’s love.

To continue our inspiration from Parker Palmer, he says it this way…

Today I understand vocation (life) quite differently – not as a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received. Vocation (life) does not come from a voice “out there” calling me to be something I am not. It comes from a voice “in here” calling me to the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God

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Denying the truth about who I am and who God is causes great pain. At an early age, we are taught to live a life of self protection and self promotion in order to receive the love we crave. Once we are willing to drop our illusion that these strategies will give us what we long for, we can begin the journey to freedom.

Parker Palmer in “Let Your Life Speak”…

"True self, when violated, will always resist us, sometimes at great cost, holding our lives in check until we honor its truth. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about – quite apart from what I would like it to be about – or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions.”

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