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Wisdom Story
A married couple, who were childhood sweethearts and had settled down in their old neighborhood, are celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary. They walk down the street to their old school. There, they hold hands as they find the old desk they had shared and where he had carved, "I love you, Sally."
On their way back home, an armored car drives by and a bag of money falls out of the armored car practically at their feet. Sally quickly picks it up. They do not know what to do with it, so they take it home. She counts the money, and it is fifty thousand dollars. The husband says, "We've got to give it back." The wife says, "Finders keepers." She puts the money back in the bag and hides it in the attic.
The next day, two FBI men are going door-to-door looking for the money and show up at their home. They say, "Pardon me, but did either of you find any money that fell out of an armored car yesterday?" She says, "No." The husband says, "She's lying. She hid it in the attic." She says, "Don't believe him, he's getting senile."
The agents sit the man down and begin to question him. One says, "Tell us the story from the start." The husband explains, "Well, when Sally and I were walking home from school yesterday." The agent looks at his partner and says, "Let's get out of here."
Wisdom Quote
This is a difficult job. It can only be done by a lifetime of genuine humility. But sooner or later we must distinguish between what we are not and what we are. We must accept the fact that we are not what we would like to be. We must cast off our false, exterior self like the cheap and showy garment it is. We must find our real self, in all its elemental poverty but also in its very great and very simple dignity: created to be a child of God, and capable of loving with something of God’s own sincerity and His unselfishness.
*Thomas Merton. No Man Is An Island.
Contemplative Musings
To be what I am meant to be, inherently by God and as arising from God and returning to God, I must come to know myself. I must, however, come to know myself progressively as I am. But I cannot know myself as I am without knowing myself as I am in I Am. The way that I am, the truth that I am, and the life that I am is in incompletion a reflection and embodiment of the Completeness that is God, the I Am.
Even as the Completion of Christ is distinct in its incommunicability, the reflection of Christ in me is incommunicable. Therefore, I cannot know myself in God by knowing myself in myself or as society reflects its understanding of itself to me as a mass of like beings apart from God. And this same profane view of apartness from God is a rampant, pervasive teaching even in churches. Therefore, the church usually fails to embody well human incompleteness being holy for being an incompleteness made incommunicable and holy essentially by having life in the Life of God, in Christ, through the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, salvation for me is turning from a lie to a truth. This lie says I am totally separate from God. This lie says I must gain an identity. Rather, I must return to an identity, which is of God, for nothing out of God can be totally without God, even if it lives unconscious of its being part of God.
This true identity is the I am that brings the total self and offers it back to I Am, but through the grace of I Am. I am, then, a means of my own salvation, but totally by the grace of God and through faith in God. I come to know in this the mysterious integration of God and who I am in salvation. God saves me, but God saves me with myself, not merely in spite of myself; and not in a mere abdication to God, but an active surrender to God in fidelity to who I am and who I have come to believe I am.
This entails will choosing repentance and a determination to live a new life. Without this turning from and turning to, I remain in my unsanctified personality. With the turning, the personality itself begins being spiritualized, or made like Christ. Likewise, the energies of the flesh begin being made holy, not just in act, but also in substance. Indeed, there is no true sanctification without holiness, the essence of the I Am, touching and transforming the mind and body; thereby, also, the emotions undergo transformation, for they arise from the interplay of mind and body.
Therefore, in some sense, mysterious, coming to know myself is becoming conscious. Coming to know myself is admitting that I have lived asleep, as most persons live asleep. Coming to know myself is admitting that religion, even what many call Christianity, helped me stay asleep. But this means admitting, also, that Christianity helped me onward to salvation, to waking up. This has taught me that Christianity apart from Christ is an impediment to my coming to know myself in God and glorifying God by the particular and personalized manner in which my being witnesses to God in its existing in Christ. Yet, that same Christianity, by grace, offers glimpses and opportunities of Grace.
In finding this full self, this substantial person, I find at its core both poverty and dignity. I find that I am not totally depraved or corrupt. Rather, the personality separate from a consciousness of and alignment with my true self led to corruption and, therefore, tainted my whole life, including every relationship in my life ~ even my relationship with myself. However, this whole life was the life of sin as separation from God and did not touch or taint the life hidden in God for being of God.
This substantial self is both one of poverty and dignity. Poverty in that it is empty of all but God. Dignity in that it participates in God and, thus, substantially is in God and God in it.
Therefore, to say I am a sinner saved by grace is not to say that essentially I am is a sinner. Rather, the “sinner” is that external self who acts separate from God. “Sinner” is a descriptive term of action and its consequences on all the energies and faculties, when the mind and body are not aligned and submissive to Spirit.
To return to God, then, is to return to truth. However, this truth is not a mere avowal of philosophy or religious teaching. This truth entails the truth of God and myself. This is in God, Who is Truth. Without God, without Truth, I cannot arrive at the truth of myself, for only Truth can give birth to this truth that saves me from the lie that holds me captive to a separation from God in awareness, will, and action.
Without honesty about who I am, I cannot rightly worship and serve God. In Christ, who is the Perfection of way, truth, and life, I find myself. I can never find myself in myself. I can discover myself as the Spirit of Christ discovers me in Christ, to the honor of God and the good of the other in God.
Then, in knowing myself I can better live from myself, which means to live from God and for God. In knowing myself, I can consciously better draw, through loving surrender and active free-will, upon the Life of Christ and, thus, bear more markedly the Fruit of Love. I can say, with St. Paul:
2 Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth.
3 For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God.
4 And when Christ, who is your life, is revealed to the whole world,
you will share in all his glory.
*Colossians 3.2-4 (NLT)
Suggested Reflection
Is it possible you are seen by God to have essentially more dignity than you see in yourself from the perspective of your personality? Explain.
Brian is available to respond to requests pertaining to seeking a Spiritual Director, his speaking, doing classes, workshops, or retreats for churches or other spiritual groups.
For submission of replies, see below:
*Brian K. Wilcox lives with his wife, Rocio, and their two dogs, St. Francis and Bandit Ty, in Clearwater and Punta Gorda, Florida. He is a United Methodist pastor and vowed member of Greenbough House of Prayer, a contemplative Christian community in Georgia. His passion is living a contemplative life and inspiring others to experience a deeper relationship with Christ through contemplative prayer and living.
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