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Weavings May 2015 newsletter - "Embracing What Is" from Upper Room Publishing
VIDEO Fear: Reframing and Transforming
Pema Chödrön describes a liberating way to relate to our fears: not as something to try to get rid of or cast out, but as something we become very intimate with. In so doing, she explains, we come to find that the journey of knowing fear is in fact the journey of courage. From this wisdom, we learn to embrace the fullness of our experience in life.
Wisdom and Delivery from Illusion by Robert Corin Morris
True delight in God's ways comes only after the discomforting loss of various forms of ignorance, illusion, and innocence. Looked at this way, disillisionment can be seen as an event of purifying grace, an open door toward wisdom.
Wisdom in scripture isn't abstract philosophy, but practical, down-to-earth know-how in the midst of challenge, temptation, and difficulty. Biblical wisdom writings encourage prudence and sensibility in daily life: avoiding temptations, cultivating virtues and social skills, developing deftness in dealing with difficulties and difficult people.
The price of wisdom, in the biblical sense, is the willingness to learn: "Get wisdom, and whatever else you learn, get insight," say the biblical wise ones (Prov. 4:7b, NRSV). The price of learning is sometimes unlearning—having our illusions exploded.
For the Spirit to "guide us into all truth, as Jesus promises (see John 16:13) we must learn that ignorance is our enemy, naïveté a false friend, guileness not always a virtue, and total innocence undesireable.
[From Weavings: A Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life, Vol. XXVI, (Nashville, TN: The Upper Room, 2011), pages 22-24.]
Vulnerability by David Whyte
Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without. Vulnerability is not a choice. Vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding under-current of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature; the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability we refuse to ask for the help needed at every turn of our existence and immobilize the essential, tidal and conversational foundations of our identity.
To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events and circumstances is a lovely illusory privilege and perhaps the prime, beautifully constructed conceit of being human and most especially of being youthfully human, but it is a privilege that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share our untouchable powers; powers eventually and most emphatically given up, as we approach our last breath.
The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant, and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.
[From Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words, (Langley, MA: Many Rivers Press, 2015).]
Embracing What Is
May 2015
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NOURISH YOUR SOUL at SOULfeast 2015
July 12-16
The Upper Room's annual spiritual retreat for children, youth, and adults in the beautiful Smoky mountains.
Join Elaine Heath, keynote speaker, and Jacob Armstrong, preacher, for SOULfeast 2015 as we seek renewal in our faith, our churches, our families, and our lives!
*This monthly newsletter is provided as a free service by Weavings/The Upper Room. It is not intended to replace subscriptions to the print journal. To order, call 1.800.972.0433 or subscribe online at weavings.org.
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