Tag: compassion

Out of the Shadows

Mystic and trappist monk Thomas Merton often wrote about the true self versus the false self. In simple terms, the false self is the humanistic side of our personality and spiritual nature. It is the superficial nature of our being that glides through life unengaged with the Divine Creator and a life of compassion. The true self moves us from the posture of separateness from others and toward seeing others as through “the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes.”

The false self leads us to follow our own ways of self preservation and people pleasing to fit it. The false self are the masks we wear when we refuse to consider another way or perspective in our thinking of self and others. It is the place where pride or position block us from acknowledging when our decisions harm another. It can be a shadowing life of self existence which is earth-bound and with little spiritual connection to God. It is a picking and choosing of scripture that we use as a means to justify our inaction/action rather than using scripture to form and reshape us.

The past few months, I have been discovering my true self all over again. I lean toward the mystic side of things, meaning I love spending time in prayer and listening for the Holy Spirit to speak. I love moments of solitude when the divine imagination takes me places that seem unworldly. While I love a good liturgical service, it has always been the prayer time, and that special period leading up to the breaking of the bread and the pouring of the wine when I feel most connected to God.

For many years I wasn’t able to attend services because of my job. Over a period of time, I even became too exhausted to rest with the Lord. I stopped feeding my soul, and my soul began to grow shallow and empty. I became a shadow of who I really am as I struggled to survive on my own strength.

Beyond the spiritual life, I also set aside my heart of compassion and standing up for people different from me, especially those living in need of help to survive in these difficult times. I connected with people at different groups, but because of the conservative church that I attended, I kept quiet and in the shadows. I quietly supported the LGBTQ+ community, but never let it be known, except to a few friends. I quietly supported families with children/grandchildren who are a part of the LGBTQ+ community, who were also afraid of letting people know about their family. I watched the heartbreak and walked with them, in the shadows.

My heart ached for the immigrants and the way that they are being treated in our country today. I saw the hungry becoming more hungry in the economic upheaval in our country. I saw families who once had good government jobs shrink with embarrassment of their unemployment, and cried silently with them. But I did little more than pray and it grieves me as I reflect back on those times.

Mostly, I stayed silent out of fear of losing my own job, and losing connection with the people in my conservative community that I have come to love. I put me before God and before others and failed to serve in the ways I have been gifted. I left my true self out for self preservation. I went dark in my lead to support others as I waited on others to lead. And I waited too long to be a part of the solution and change.

I got it wrong.

We studied Matthew 9 recently, and I was overwhelmed with the stories of love and compassion that Jesus had for the most despicable of people in his time, and the weakest of people in the community. Not only did he sit with the despised tax collectors, he invited one to become a follower. He met “across the aisle“ with people whose views were quite different from his, and that wanted to destroy his ministry and life. He listened to them and asked them questions so he could understand them, and hopefully they would understand him. He brought healing to the blind, the leper, the shunned woman, and many who were discarded by society.

That’s the Jesus I want to follow. That’s the Jesus with whom I connect. That is the Jesus who changed the law, and said it was simple. Just love the Divine and love others as we would be loved.

It is such a simple and basic formula, one that doesn’t require legislation to bash and destroy people who are different from us. The current administration, and Christians who support it, are moving towards belittling any person of color, any person with a different “lifestyle”, or who has a different belief—Christian or otherwise. That isn’t what I would consider an America modeled after our Lord Jesus Christ, which many claim we need.

So I ask you, have you read Matthew 9? Have you read Matthew 25? Have you read the stories of Jesus and his love and compassion for the least among us? Have you sat with those words and asked “Lord what does that mean for me and my heart and life?”

I invite you to come out of the shadows and take a stand, just like Jesus did, for the weak, for the abused, for the different than us. Take a stand, even if it means you may no longer worship in a church where you are worshiping. Take a stand, even if it means people who are close to you will disagree. Come out of the shadows and find your true self, find the heart of Jesus that resides deep in your soul, and then act according to his commands.

References:

Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Doubleday: 1966), 140-142.

Adapted from Matthew Fox, A Way To God: Thomas Merton’s Creation Spirituality Journey, p. 185.

Living Loving Serving

A Day of Remembrance: 9/11 Thoughts

Post author By Maggie Marcum
Post date September 11, 2015
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This morning I woke with that same somber cloud of quiet sadness that has hung in the air every September 11^th since 2001. I don’t know why, but going to bed last night I thought this morning would feel different from all the other years. Fourteen years has not changed anything. I still want to cry and I still have trouble believing what happened as I, and millions of others, relive the hours and days of that tragedy.

Funny the things I remember most, beyond watching the news unfold around me. I remember wondering if I should go to work only to get the call that we were evacuating to be safe. I wondered how to explain this to our daughter because we would have to tell her. The Pentagon was just a few miles away and well, everything was changed. We called friends and family to make sure they weren’t in the Pentagon that day and we called simply to say, “I love you.” I remember the silence that evening more than anything else. Living outside of Washington, DC the sky was always full of planes flying over and cars rushing between work and home and sports fields. Not that night. All we could hear were fighters flying over for our protection. That night we drove to churches to pray. We walked the streets in dark quietness because all the stores were closed. As a nation, we simply shut down.

In the days following we were changed people. We cried openly at work and in the grocery stores, and people placed their hands on our shoulder because they understood. We let people pull out in front of us and nodded in shared grief. We held onto our children and wondered if it was safe to let them continue to live. We were kind and gentle with each other as we processed what was happening in the places near to us. We came to understand that we had to get back up and live our lives to show the world and the people who wished us harm that we were stronger than them. We had to show we were a nation united and that together we would recover.

As you head out today under the cloud of such enormous loss, I pray that you will remember who we were for those few days after. We are still kind, compassionate, praying people. We can still set aside our political and religious bickering to find a way support each other. We can still let someone pull out in front of us and not blow our horn when someone doesn’t move as quickly as we think they should. We can still help our neighbor if they are struggling. We can still ask a stranger if they are ok. We can still gather together, hold hands, and pray for our country. We can rise up from the ashes of that day and honor the memories of 9/11 by being good to one another. Who knows, maybe today could begin anew a nation where we turn off the TV and turn to our families. Maybe today we will pick up the phone and check to make sure a friend is doing ok. Maybe tonight we will remember to say prayers with our kids and tell them how we love them. And maybe tomorrow we can carry on as if every day is the day after.

Dear Lord, out of the shadows of our grief and sadness may we find new hope and light. Lord, make us a people who care for one another, who help each other, and who pray for our nation. Lord help us to remember out of evil, good will prevail. Make us a people of compassion with giving hearts that change our neighborhoods and that brings renewed joy and hope for the future.

Tags 911, compassion, grief, hope, neverforget, prayer, recovery, remember

A Psalm 25 Study for Personal Transformation

Forgiven with Love and Compassion

Post author By Maggie Marcum
Post date October 20, 2014
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It took me a long time to accept that this Jesus whom I claimed to believe in would actually forgive me for the things I had done, and would do, in my life. Yet Jesus gave us the prayer in which he directs us to ask for forgiveness—and to forgive others (Matthew 6:9-15). He tells the paralyzed man that he, “the Son of Man have the authority on earth to forgive sins” (Matthew 9:6). He even forgave those that crucified him, and yet, I couldn’t believe that he would forgive me and my sins or acts of bad behavior.

I didn’t know about “unfailing love” or “compassion” growing up. There were expectations and measurements for good and bad behavior and I believed I usually fell far below any set standards. I was usually told that I didn’t measure up and would never measure up at the rate I was going. Even after committing my life to Christ in my 30’s, I still felt judged in my churches and less than worthy to be there. I may have been judged by some, but mostly I was judging myself and comparing myself against other people—who were most likely hiding their own shortcomings and failures behind a mask of service and pasted on smiles. I constructed my own roadblock to accepting the love that I read about and believed was only given to the really good people surrounding me on Sunday. I heard stories of change and mercy given but I didn’t think that was meant for me.

And then, sitting in the chairs at a prayer service one night, I finally gave in. I laid down on the floor facing the cross and I said “I’m sorry for what I did.” I cried and began to let go of the things I was holding on to. I began to walk through my youth and my brokenness and to ask God to forgive me for those things. One-by-one, he brought to mind those times I hurt others or hurt myself by my behavior. And one-by-one I felt the burden of carrying that shame lifted from my life. Little by little, I came to believe that God loved me, ME personally, just as much as the nice person sitting next to me on Sunday. Little by little I came to know his mercy and layer by layer he changed my life. I started to laugh again. I could hold my head up. I could smile at someone and reach a hand out and tell them God was there, I was there, and we would make it out of the dark together. Just as I learned to see how God sees me, I am learning to see others as he does, with “unfailing love and compassion.” May you too come to know that peace—it is a prayer away.

“Remember, O Lord, your unfailing love and compassion, which you have shown from long ages past. Forgive the rebellious sins of my youth; look instead through the eyes of your unfailing love, for you are merciful, O Lord.”
Psalm 25:6-7 New Living Translations

Tags behavior, broken, change, compassion, forgiven, forgiveness, Jesus, psalm 25, transform