Coming Home To Ourselves

In today’s readings, we get some harsh words. In Exodus, God tells Moses that the people are “depraved.” In the gospel, Jesus is delivering one of his esoteric teachings about how humanity missed the boat by missing him.

I know that humanity has its challenges, but we cannot get to God by trashing ourselves. Unfortunately, many of us have internalized a lot of negative and harsh messages about who we are and we engage in a lot of self-judgment and comparison.

We human creatures are groaning, [Paul] said, because we’ve had some glimpse of who we might be, and it’s painful to wait for our full transformation into persons of unbounded love and compassion.
(Gayle Boss)

I was sitting with someone recently who has gone through a lot of harm and loss in their life. Unable to do what they had been doing a few years ago due to chronic illness, they now use harsh words to judge themselves. Even though they’re often in pain (and just making it through another day is an achievement), they use words like “lazy” to describe themselves. What they can’t do then drowns out any value in what they can do.

I know that in these Lenten blogs, I offer a lot of reflections on serious topics, challenges that we face (individually and collectively) and things that we can be more mindful of. These might all be part of the journey.

But doing more is not necessarily the point of Lent.

I want to pause here in the Lenten journey and make sure you know that God loves you as you are. Read that sentence again. You do not have to do anything today for God to love you more. And there’s not a thing you can do to make God love you any less.

This is not a spiritual bypass.This is not an accountability pass. This is just the truth.

The best place to start the Lenten journey is wherever we are. We all have messy, complicated, ever-changing, beautiful lives. And some of us have been through a lot in life and/or a lot lately. As Anne Lamott loves to say, “So don’t compare your insides to someone else’s outsides.”

For some of us, making sure we shower and open the blinds today is a big lift. That is holy work.

For some of us, not drinking alcohol today is a major focus of our life. That is holy work.

For some of us, caregiving or taking care of kids will consume all our energy. That is holy work.

For some of us, surviving another day at work or school with all the challenges that we face there will take all we’ve got. That is holy work.

For some of us, trying to heal or take care of ourselves is what we need to focus on. That is holy work.

God can use it all. And God needs it all.

On one occasion, Jesus was in the temple with his friends and they saw a wealthy person put a lot of money in the offering. The disciples were duly impressed! On the other side of the synagogue, however, a poor woman drops a meager coin in the slot and Jesus said that she “gave more” than the other person and drew the disciples’ attention to this.

Heroic achievements and grand gestures are not what God desires. God wants your heart. If your heart can offer heroic achievements today, then by all means give it. But if your heart can barely get out of bed due to grief or sadness or exhaustion, offer that.

I often think of this simple poem by Nayyirah Waheed when I need to remember to slow down and just be where I am today. I often imagine God saying this to me, “be easy. take your time. you are coming home. to yourself.”

For me, and I’m guessing for many of us, being where we are – with all of its limitation and promise – is often a challenging place to be. We heap “shoulds” upon ourselves about what should be happening, what we should be doing, what we should be feeling – instead of leaning in to what is genuinely going on for us and resting there for a moment. The great spiritual writer, Cole Arthur Riley, says that “I’ve accepted that the whole of my life will be a pilgrimage toward the sound of the genuine in me…My journey to the truth of God cannot be parsed from my journey to the truth of who I am.”

Just for today, welcome yourself home wherever you are in life. Give God what is genuine in you today – even if you deem it to not be much. Know that it is enough. Rest in God’s love.