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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I’ve been shadowboxing with my recurring doubt about where I am going, where I’ve been and what my future will look like? Today my life is better than ever, but the doubts will always be waiting for a turn to distract me from my true self. Earlier in the week, I went back to a book that I read in 2004 at a silent retreat. It’s a little book with a big message. This book plummeted me into facing different truths about my life and I began a long journey of change. The voice of truth will forever be calling to my inner soul. I must attend to its cry. This means putting on humility and living each day with gratitude for new life - which begins again with each breath I take.

I would love to share little tidbits of this book with you in the next week of so. Perhaps there is more to your life than the life you are living.

The book is Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer. http://www.amazon.com/Let-Your-Life-Speak-Listening/dp/0787947350

“By all Appearances things were going well, but the soul does not put much stock in appearances. Seeking a path more purposeful than accumulating wealth, holding power, winning at competition, or securing a career, I had started to understand that it is indeed possible to live a life other than one’s own. Fearful that I was doing just that - but uncertain about the deeper, truer life I sensed hidden inside me, uncertain whether it was real or trustworthy or within reach – I would snap awake in the middle of the night and stare for long hours at the ceiling…

So I lined up the loftiest ideals I could find and set out to achieve them. But always they were unreal, a distortion of my true self – as must be the case when one lives from the outside in, not the inside out. I had simply found a “noble” way to live a life that was not my own, a life spent imitating heroes instead of listening to my heart.

”

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Fall... The Beauty of Letting Go

Praying for Release

Autumn, urge me to drop every leaf I don't need -
every task of habit I repeat past its season,
every sorrow I rehearse,
each unfulfilled hope I recall,
every person or possession to which I cling -
until my branches are bare,
until I hold fast to nothing.

Blow me about in your wild iron sky,
crush all that's puffed up,
fluff all that in me needs to go to seed,
send my shadows to sleep.

Tutor me through straining night winds
in the passion of moan and pant,
the gift of letting go at the moment of most abundance-
in the way of falling apples, figs, maple leaves, pecans.

Open my eyes to your languid light,
let me stare in your face
until I see no difference between soar and fall,
until I recognize eternity in single breaths,
faint whispers of cool air through lungs.

Show me the way of dying in glorious boldness -
Yellow, gold orange, rust, red burgundy, brown.

Exultation, a Poem Cycle in
Celebration of the Seasons
by Monza Naff
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Cancer, Death and the Daunting Question, Why?

Judy Moss died this morning at 8:00 am. I wrote my thoughts down last week after visiting her in ICU but didn’t get them in my blog before she died. My words are inadequate but I pray you will get a glimpse of this generous, gracious woman who loved well. As I reflect upon her life and her death she remains a wounded healer.

My friend Judy is dying of cancer. I met Judy after her children, Mike Moss (B9) and Liz Moss (B23) went through Barnabas. Immediately, I found her to be kind and accepting. Theologically, she is probably more conservative than I am but she has accepted me with enduring grace and unconditional love. Though we never spent much time together, when I was diagnosed with cancer last year, I received a card from her with a check in it to help with my medical bills. When I began treatments she sent a wooden cross to me to hold during chemo. When her daughter Liz came by to check on me during my illness she told me that her Mom wanted to know how I was feeling and how my family, particularly Ricardo, was holding up through my illness. Judy was doing all this while fighting her own battle as cancer was spreading throughout her body.

Watching her journey over the last few years and seeing the torment she is now enduring ignites anger in me which asks, “So what are you doing now Lord?????” Clearly in my humanity I cannot understand how God interacts with such evil tragedies like death by cancer. Seeing her in ICU today it's hard to believe she is still alive with so little left of her physical body. Yet her spirit is clearly alive and her countenance is the same as it was before she got sick: kind, humble, thoughtful and full of faith. Many would say that the Spirit of God is always evident in her presence.

Too often Christians comfort themselves or others with beliefs such as, “God has a purpose which will be revealed later” or “this must be God’s will.” I don’t buy it. Surely the creator of the universe and the lover of our souls doesn’t sit on a throne as a parent unmoved by His children’s pain. Surely our God of grace doesn’t roam the earth deciding what illness or tragedy should be assigned to certain families. I’m not willing to get into a theological argument about what God planned or even foreknew. No one can answer the overwhelming question of “why?” If they try, they haven’t suffered.

So what is true in all of this? What is God doing? He is present. And that presence fills the room with peace. His presence lifts my heart out of the questions and calms me. God’s presence is tangible as He waits for Judy to be ready. When that time comes, the absence of her Spirit in the room will be deafening. Our memories will return to life before cancer and we will be comforted by the life she lived. Her family will grieve deeply because of her physical absence but will be grateful her suffering is over.

For now, those of us who stand by them can offer our presence and that will be enough.
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Dancing With Fear

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted because I’m actually living after surviving chemotherapy. I’ve heard many say they never felt the symptoms of cancer; it’s the treatment that almost killed them. I agree, however, the chemo has given me life, at least for now. The “at least for now” sounds rather cynical, but I’m afraid of calling myself a cancer survivor. I’ve read stories of women who survived breast cancer only to see it resurface with a vengeance.

I just read Elizabeth Edwards book Resilience, thinking I would gain strength from her hope in the midst of several traumatic events, cancer being one of them. Instead, her words felt almost prophetic. Here is a quote from her book…

“The cancer was back. Well, I suppose the doctors would say it had never really gone. I thought the chemo chased it away... But it only chased away the big pieces; the smallest of pieces had stayed, hidden from the scans, too small for imaging: they had stayed and then grown. And now, here it was again, now grown, now in its new home. No longer in my breast, it had spread to my bones, maybe my lungs and maybe my liver. And it wasn’t leaving. Not ever. In that moment when I found out for certain that I would have cancer in me every single day until one day it finally took my life, all the reasons to live and the reasons to die, the way to live if I could, all danced before me, twirling, enticing until I chose a partner from among them. Live. Die. Fight. Curl up. Look for a hug. Give a hug. Cry. Cry. Cry.” Elizabeth Edwards

Though cancer is the obvious comparison, I’ve been thinking about how all of life entices us to choose a "partner from among them.” With Edwards cancer reoccurrence, “live, die, fight, curl up, look for a hug, give a hug, cry, cry, cry” are reasonable dance partners. As believers in Jesus or having faith in God, we have additional partners to choose from (faith, hope, trust, etc…) but we still have to choose who we will dance with and what message we will dance to.

Sometimes I feel a little psychotic because I seem to change partners more often than not. One day, I am dancing with “hope and faith." Then, without notice or because of some small trigger from my past, I will spend the day or days dancing with “fear and doubt”. Today, fear of hidden cancer, sadness from the recent death of a friend and merely trying to stay the course are enticing me to dance with fear.

Thankfully, my job requires me to stay engaged. Being a part of authentic community and believing my life has purpose sent fear back to the wall. It’s amazing how those two things can pull me out of the fetal position. Within five hours, I have changed dance partners again.

If you find yourself being enticed by fear, sometimes you have to walk through it. Ironically, dancing with fear and doubt usually lead to faith and hope. Other times, being with people (get out of the house) and having enough faith to simply do the next right thing will bring renewed hope.

Who are you dancing with today? There’s not a “right” answer to this question. My encouragement is to put words to the feelings rather than falling in a hole wondering why it’s difficult to get through the day. The dance of fear is always waiting to “cut in.” If the lesson is in the fear, walk on. If not, call someone, go out and live what you are passionate about and as always… do the next right thing.

FYI… as God would have it; I met with someone today who has worked in oncology for years. Her advice, “studies show that people who have a positive attitude, have some form of spiritual life and laugh often have a lower reoccurrence rate than those who don’t.” Go figure.
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"MIMI, WHAT'S THIS?"

With total innocence my precious grandson uttered these words while sitting in my lap playing with the skin around my neck. As he was flipping the loose skin from side to side, I calmly told him, “Honey, that’s Mimi’s neck.” Response, “What’s wong wif you neck Mimi?” I abruptly ended the conversation with, “Mimi is old Adam!!!”

Several years ago I laughed as I read Nora Ephron’s book, I Feel Bad About My Neck. I’m not laughing anymore. I have a chicken neck and am fearful the next step is the rooster neck. The thing about the neck is, you can’t cover it up. I can’t see me sporting a fashionable silk scarf around my neck. May it never be!

I have concluded that there is nothing I can do about my fallen neck so I will simply avoid looking in the mirror. The frightening thing is that others can see it clearly while I try to live in denial. I wonder what other areas of my life I may be avoiding while they are visible to others. The last few years have taught me a lot about embracing parts of my life that I didn't want to see. I had three choices: denial, change or acceptance. This prayer has become a helpful guide when I am willing to embrace my humanity and reach for peace.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

I’m still not happy about my neck!

• What areas of your life do you avoid? Is it time to face the truth? Are you willing to make necessary changes or is it something that requires acceptance?


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