This is a blog post from Oct. 2, 2009. I found it scanning memories on my Facebook page. Apparently, at one point, I could write and think and communicate things. My brain if foggier now. This is worth a re-post, though. I hope it is helpful to you in some way.

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And all of you, clothe yourselves with humility in your dealings with one another, for: “God opposes the proud but bestows favor on the humble.” -1 Peter 5:5b

This was the beginning of the reading for Evening Prayer on Wednesday. These direct instruction passages make you think. This one is very important I believe. Tucked back in the back of 1st Peter – a very central thought. Relationships with others. How to “be” as a human being as you deal, as you will constantly, with other human beings.

It can be taken, I suppose, as merely a command to obey, and if you don’t obey it, you’ll get the hard side of God on the back of your neck. That would be an unfortunate way to look at this statement (or any for that matter). One would expand such a statement and ask questions:

Do you want to be close to God or far away? Would you rather be who God created you to be or some twisted other thing? Do you understand this whole thing? Do you get that it’s about the utter and complete transformation of your being and not just about you doing the right thing or being right or being good? One could ask those questions of the hearer – of us all.

If you’re always thinking, “I am humble in this situation, he’s the prideful one,” and you just know that God is favoring you or your side and “opposing” the other – if that’s you, you probably don’t know what humility is. If you’re looking for His favor as some kind of reward for your having been humble, and His active opposition to the other as some kind of punishment for their having been proud, you should see yourself as at the bottom of a very high mountain.

If we have figured out “how to be humble” in order to be on God’s good side –

“See! See me Lord! I am a humble man! Give me your favor – you said!”

You see yourself being what you believe is good and you try to shine the spotlight of yourself to heaven, so God will see you too. HE sees. He sees much deeper than our supposedly good actions. He knows the deep intentions of our hearts. We think we know them. If He exposed them to us as they really are, I think we would be destroyed by what we saw and heard.

Humility

“Change me, O God. Make me into the Image of Your Son!”

Let this be our prayer. Better, often, if we shut our mouths and lie down – throw dirt on our heads. Better we apologize when we feel we have no need to. Jesus had no need to die on a cross either – not for Himself. Better we forget what others have done to us and remember only what we have done, and lift that up to the Father in His great Mercy. Better we stop trying to find ways of showing how good we are, to others, to ourselves, or to God. Better we simply do as the Scripture passage continues…

So humble yourselves under the might hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time. -1 Peter 5

And I imagine it would be best if we didn’t get too excited about what the “exalt you” business means or we’ll be right back where we started from.

God help us. Lord have mercy on us. Fill us with Your Grace, Father.

However you want to recognize that you are broken, it just needs to be recognized. You have to see it. You need to acknowledge the reality of it. I’m not talking about Hell or punishment. I’m not talking about whether or not you’re “good enough” to be loved or to exist. I’m not saying anything like that. I’m saying what has always been said, in either good and helpful or bad and unhelpful ways, that this cosmos, this realm of our existence, is cracked, is broken, and that goes down into the level of our being, all of us. We don’t come out perfect. Our “choice-makers” don’t come out working just right. And along the way, we may either learn to be good or learn to be bad, better or worse, if you will. But, we are in need of transformation.

This deep change we are all in need of doesn’t just happen in one way. It also doesn’t happen overnight or instantaneously. Just because someone, however well meaning or gifted, lays their hands on you, and you feel something amazing, and fall down, doesn’t mean you are FIXED. It may have been part of the process, but that one event didn’t do it. Just because you feel guilt over something you have done (which perhaps you should to some extent), and you go to Confession, confess your sins, are truly sorry and intend to be a better human, and receive Sacramental absolution from the hands of a Priest, does NOT mean you are entirely FIXED (think sex-abuse scandal, or about any psychopathic serial killer who’s ever gone to confession).

Transformation into what and who you were created to be is the goal, and this is a long process – life long. There are certainly tangible steps we must take along the way, and all those steps may not be the same for everyone, but we must take them. We must put ourselves under the running water in order to get wet and be washed. These are all analogies, you understand. Almost anything we can come up with to describe what’s going on in that deep, deep process is simply something we come up with so that we can at least partly understand it. We must open ourselves, get into the flow, step into the river, be washed, have reconstructive surgery, get a soul transplant – yes, all that. However we understand it (although partly), we have to find that way to put ourselves into the way, The Way. And if we expect it to happen quickly, we will be disappointed and perhaps, give up. Don’t give up. Adjust your expectations. Keep moving in that direction.

I find that incredibly hard to believe. Impossible, actually.

First, or second of all, whichever number, this happy we speak of today, in this culture, here, now, is really just a construct. I don’t believe it’s something that exists in and of itself. I don’t think it floats out there waiting for us to grab hold of it and stuff it inside ourselves. It’s an idea which has developed over time, and we have come to collectively believe in it.

Now, even if it did exist somehow, in the way we think about it, to think that we can reach through the deep complexity of our human existence and simply “turn it on” is, honestly, kind of ridiculous.

Certainly there are things we can choose. We can choose, most of the time, what actions we will take, or not take. Even that is more complicated than we often imagine. But, sure, we can maybe choose to do more things that are positive as opposed to negative. We can choose not to speak when we obviously shouldn’t. We can choose not to drown ourselves in dark things when we feel (those of us who struggle with such things) the darkness coming on (and it does just “come on” for mostly no reason). I don’t have to close the curtains, turn the lights out, and listen to The Cure and The Smiths all day, or God forbid, Bright Eyes or Elliott Smith.

Yes, we can choose some things – for some things and against some other things. But I would be in favor of banning the phrase, “just choose to be happy,” or anything quite like it.

Wrapping this deal up, I’ll say this: As a Christian, I would echo both Scripture and Tradition by advising that we pray always. Never stop praying. If your prayer is simply groaning to God, not knowing what to say, do that. If you can only mumble the memorized prayers of your faith training, do that. Throw your hands out wide and let your heart speak. Do something!

Empathy:  The psychological identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

If you never experience this – if you don’t have this ability, you may not be able to help it, but you are broken in a fairly significant way. In some, it can be a dangerous defect, freeing them to act in harmful ways towards others.

For the record, we’re all broken and “defective” in some way. Some are more broken than others. God loves all of us. He wants to heal and restore us. We can open ourselves to that or not. That’s kind of a choice to love. It’s a choice to be made into a loving person.

The first step, though, is to recognize your brokenness. You won’t open yourself to transformation unless you realize that you need it. You’ll stay the same and think it’s OK. Sometimes the same is fine. Many times, though, it’s far from fine. It’s not OK. I’ll slip this in here because I think it fits well – just because you are something or some way, doesn’t mean God made you that way, that He intended you to be that way.

Some of our ways (thoughts, desires, feelings, actions) need to change in a big way, and we need to put ourselves in a position for that to happen. Mostly we don’t. Mostly we just make up reasons why we’re fine the way we are. We’re not. And that’s not OK.

Grace, Peace, and Healing to all of us.

And certainly, there is forgiveness and redemption for any who fall, if one is open to them. But as I said, we are not all destined to fall in this way. We’re all broken, but that doesn’t necessarily equal being a liar and one who cheats.

Marital relationships are complicated. They are never straight-forward and simple. Even when some of us think they are, they’re probably not. I don’t mean to go into everything that makes one good or bad, here and now. Not possible. But one thing’s for sure – we can’t go into a marriage relationship thinking that something like cheating on one’s spouse is “normal,” that it’s just going to happen. We may as well not get married.

So, just a word of caution and perhaps, hope. All men aren’t inherently self-centered cheaters. I’m sorry if you have experienced this with some of my baser brothers. I’m sorry if you have been hurt by that kind of thoughtless, un-love. Please do not despair. Please do not let that drag you into a spiral of anger and hate. It may take some time, but open your heart, as you are able, and allow God to heal you and build hope into you again.

Peace to you.

Though the proud may utterly deride me
I keep to your law.
I remember your decrees of old
and these, Lord, console me.

I am seized with indignation at the wicked
who forsake your law.
Your commands have become my song
in the land of exile.

—Psalm 119

Sounds good enough, right? Praying that, though, as myself, makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. I certainly do not always keep His law (even the new Law of Love). I’m not so perfectly good that I sit around being angry at all the wicked folks around me. Uhm, David, you may need to chill.

I think we fairly often take too much of Scripture like this as prescriptive, as something we should emulate, simply because it’s “in the Bible.” Sometimes, we are reading thoughts and prayers of those who are thinking and praying out of brokenness, out of sinful self-absorption. In other words, David (or whomever wrote whatever Psalm we may be reading/praying) may be writing/saying things that aren’t necessarily good – that aren’t things we need to think or pray.

Sure, we should read them as part of the purposeful message of God to us. We should understand them as something God wanted us to see, to take in, in the context of everything else. But we can’t always be seeing everything that is written as a positive example for our own internal direction.

So, read the Psalms, please. Pray them – I would encourage you to do this. Let the prayers become yours, as you are able. But understand them as they were written. Get that David was pretty messed up a decent bit of the time. He was scrambling for God like we all do, and he didn’t always get it right. He may well have thought too highly of himself from time to time. Mostly, though, we see that other side balancing things out – the humble side – the yearning for God as the deer pants for running water side. This, I believe, is what we should allow ourselves to be drawn to.

Expectations can be a touchy, dangerous business, whatever they’re aimed at. All the more in prayer, probably, because of the mysterious, not entirely knowable nature of what we’re doing. “I will pray this nine times a day, and ‘X’ or ‘Y’ should happen, will happen, must happen!” Well, no, not necessarily. As we are able to perceive things, “nothing” may happen. What and how things happen is something we would do well to admit we don’t fully understand.

One of the best things we can do with and in prayer, I think, is to tame our expectations. Even when we are praying something we think is “Scriptural,” we may well not be grasping everything we need to in that particular instance, in our particular situation, etc. We don’t know everything. We know very, very far from everything. The sooner we get that straight, the less worn out we will be in this whole deal.

Pray. Pray in different ways. Pray, as the saying goes, “as you can, not as you can’t.” Pray with words. Pray with thoughts. Pray in silence. Pray with others. Pray using a book. Pray with beads in your hand. Pray walking through the woods. Just pray. And don’t get too caught up in what will or will not happen when or as you pray. I promise, if you do, you will get your proverbial bubble burst.

Sure, ask for things, expect things, but don’t make that what it’s all about. Again, go in knowing that you don’t know. You don’t know everything, even about your own situation. You don’t fully understand how God does things. Many things remain hidden to us, but are nonetheless, very real.

So, be humble; modify (not lower necessarily) your expectations; pray in spite of not feeling anything or getting what you want in the way you want; realize that your perception of how things are working out is very imperfect. Trust.

Peace.