Your
core, your deepest DNA, is divine;
it is the Spirit of Love implanted within
you by your Creator at the first moment of your creation.
You begin with
“original blessing.”
–Richard
Rohr
I am asking myself these questions, again.
Where do I find
meaning? By contributing to my world in positive ways. By appreciating and
participating in beauty, truth, love, goodness. I want to point to the good
when I can. Goodness is important to an enneagram One – author Don Ruso talks
of Ones having an inherent God-given sense of each person’s dignity/goodness.
What is my purpose? To find the good. In the mid-2000s, when first exposed to the LifeKeys material, the
top passion I identified was to “influence my world for good and for God” and
my mission simply put was to “nurture people (self and others) to live well and
love God.” Living well today translates to finding good.
If God is good, then good
is God?
If God is love, love is God?
I think so.
I guess “find the good” will
do for my purpose, for today.
It’s not easy for me. I sometimes feel disillusioned
about my day job. What is good about work that doesn’t fit my passions?
To aid in answering that, I bring back a gratitude
practice started years ago when I was hating going to the grocery store. I
forced myself then to call to mind any little thing for which I might be
thankful (and why not make a rhyme of it?):
car to transport
me to the store,
legs to walk
me through the door,
money to
do this sustenance chore,
choice of nutritious foods galore,
family to love and buy food for.
Turns out those are not little things.
About my day job, I will choose to be grateful for – I
can find good in –
-
the opportunity to assist faculty and employer
so as enhance their success: of getting grants to support their research of
doing their jobs well;
-
the colleagues I work with: remarkable and kind
bosses and office mate, competent and decent college peers;
-
getting to lean into my tendency of following
the rules (being compliant!) and making “it” good (improving proposals by
editing and ensuring they’re abiding by the guidelines);
-
consistent occasions to learn and keep my brain
active
-
the
privilege of working part-time that gives me flexible moments and time to sit
still/think/write.
Part of “finding the good” includes being grateful, seeing beauty and truth and love and invitation, and living with compassion and acceptance.
Again I
need to start with me – be self-compassionate and self-accepting to me. Even
when I grouse. Certainly when I’m about to dismiss myself.
On that note, this dream comes to mind from 2010. My know-it-all egoic (dare I say false) self sees and has
compassion for, even delights in, the tender child within.
Dream Sun, August 15, 2010, A Child’s Face.
I
am seated with a group in a circle, and chatting. I listen to one of the
participants: an academic (maybe kind of a big-shot?), then offer a thought or
two. At my input I feel dissed - put down, contempted, disrespected - by the professor
lady.
I feel hurt and resentful, and want to dislike that know-it-all. I
continue to listen and watch her (or was it a him?) and suddenly that
light-haired adult face changes into the face of a child: a dark-haired 8- or
9-year old. I feel tenderness growing quickly within me. It seems to me that
the child -- or child-like soul in that heady, off-putting other -– is to be
given grace, and cared for as all children are to be cared for.
I am excited
about this realization. After awhile I share with her/him and the group what
just happened –- that I actually saw the face of a child as she spoke. And that
I realize it’s a kindness from God to remind me of God’s care and tenderness
toward her, toward me, toward all, big or small.
Today, I will choose compassion, acceptance, the good, delight.
“May you learn to see yourself with the
same delight, pride, and expectation
with which God sees you in every moment.”
– John O’Donohue, For
Solitude, To Bless the Space Between Us
No comments:
Post a Comment