Taking it "as it comes"

Friday in the Third Week of Advent. Time to reflect. Not just during Advent and Lent but all year, Fridays are days of penance. Days of abstinence and, hopefully, recollection.

On the recommendation of a trusted teacher, my spiritual reading for Advent has been a little book by the late Metropolitan Kallistos Ware. The book, Sacraments of Healing, published posthumously, consists of conferences for a retreat he led in 1999. While his overall theme is peace, he discusses the sacraments of healing: penance and anointing. To start, he sets forth a lovely Christian anthropology and he ends with a deep and deeply moving reflection on death.

Since today is a penitential day in a penitential season, I am focused on Metropolitan Kallistos' meditation on death. The aspect of his meditation that struck me, especially in light of the fact that I am turning 60 next year, is how, as a Christian, to live life, to pass through life's various stages.

Here I am going to get a little personal. For some reason, lately I have felt the need for affirmation. This feeling holds in all domains of my life: professional, ministerial, and personal. When I don't get it, I find myself feeling disappointed and even angry at times.This is not a wholly new experience for me. Quite the opposite. For some reason, in this season, this unhealthy need has been set in bold relief.

Admittedly, this deep need is quite juvenile and I am grateful for the grace to recognize this. I am even aware enough to know that it stems from some developmental issues.

Concurrently, this year more than other times, I have really struggled with praying. Nonetheless, I feel the Lord drawing me closer to Himself.One evening not too long ago, feeling unaffirmed and unappreciated, I was really struck by a palpable intuition from the Lord. He wants me to find my affirmation primarily in Him, not from Him, but in and through Him. As for the rest, whether I am affirmed or not, whether I am appreciated or not should be a matter of indifference. This has been reaffirmed several times since then. What this means for me right now is dealing with some disappointments.

Reading the final chapter of Ware's Sacraments of Healing, I came across this: "Surely, the secret of true life is to accept each state as it comes." True wisdom, it seems to me, is not verbose or complicated but direct and simple. As with most true wisdom, easier said than done. Along these same lines, there are a couple more things from this chapter I have been mulling over. One is from a Cecil Lewis poem, "Walking Away," that Met. Kallistos used:

How selfhood begins with a walking away

Reflecting on this, Ware states: "By hanging on to the old, we refuse the invitation to discover the new."

Lord, help me walk gracefully into a new season of life, always in the newness of life in You.

For our traditio today, let's turn to the late Rich Mullins. It's funny, Rich always thought he wasn't enough to lead people to Jesus. In honesty, none of us are. We lead people to the Lord, as Saint Paul insists, not through our strength but through our weaknesses, through our need and how He strengthens you and more than meets your needs. In and through Him, you come to recognize what it is you truly need and what you really don't need and, therefore, what you shouldn't seek.