Good morning…
As we gathered for the last time this semester for our Monthly Spiritual Growth Group, I read aloud from my heavily underlined copy of The Hidden Life Awakened. Sharing from pages 130 and 131, I highlighted the spiritual growth of our spiritual mentor 93-year-old Betty Skinner.
“All of this inner work was gradually bringing Betty to a clearer knowing of her true self as well as enabling the presence and love of God to transform her,” write Kitty Crenshaw and Dr. Cathy Snapp. “She was trying to step outside of herself and dispassionately observe and identify her negative behaviors and attitudes in order to separate her false self from her true self, her illusions from what is real.”
I sense we, as an online community, have been doing similar inner work this week. We have admitted our controlling “crazy,” our unsightly UGLY, our ego-driven big “I” struggling to die. Identifying our negative behaviors and attitudes, we are learning to separate our false self from our true self, surrendering our blessed mess at the foot of Christ’s cross. Like Betty, we know that a clearer understanding of our True Self will enable us to allow the loving presence of God to gradually transform us.
“As she continued to do this,” I quietly shared, “she became increasingly attentive to God and, at the same time, more are of what was going on within and around her. She was seeing everything through new eyes. The line between the sacred and the secular was slowly disappearing. Everything happening in her life was exactly what was supposed to be happening, and all of it as opportunity for healing. She was beginning to see things as they really were, not as she hoped they would be or as her biases had always seen them. She continued to work on observing and identifying what was happening within her…”
That is exactly what we do as a small group face-to-face the last Wednesday of every month during the school year. Using prayer and sacred readings, sand tray symbols and silence, journaling thoughts and sharing stories, we observe and identify what is happening within us month after month. This is exactly I sense ourselves doing as on online community, soul-to-soul, observing and identifying God at work.
“She continued to work on observing and identifying what was happening with in her by watch for the five Cs – competing, comparing, complaining, controlling, condemning – and more and more consistently practiced naming, claiming, and taming them. When she became aware of a negative behavior, feeling, or thought, she named it by objectively calling it what it was. For instance, when she felt the old obsessive need for privacy, she acknowledged it as her need to control and then claimed it as part of her false self. To tame it, she simply offered it to the Holy Spirit, trusting Him to redeem it. She could not transform herself, but in time and with practice, she could create the space for God to do the work of her redemption.”
“I wish I could live in this space all the time,” one of the women said of our spiritual direction cocoon, a sacred space lovingly called by another woman, “A womb with a view.” With time and with practice, we are each creating more and more quiet space in our everyday lives, opening up our own “womb with a view” to witness firsthand the slow redeeming work of the God who is transforming us, from inside out.
For we too once were foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various sinful desires and pleasures, spending and wasting our life in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another. But when the goodness and kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared [in human form as the Man, Jesus Christ], He saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we have done, but because of His own compassion and mercy, by the cleansing of the new birth (spiritual transformation, regeneration) and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out richly upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that we would be justified [made free of the guilt of sin] by His [compassionate, undeserved] grace, and that we would be [acknowledged as acceptable to Him and] made heirs of eternal life [actually experiencing it]… (Titus 3:3-6a, AMP).
…Sue…
