Love What Is

Greetings, Dear Ones,

Another couple of turbulent weeks have gone by.  Back at the beginning of May I finished a chapter of my dissertation, or so I thought.  Then I met via Skype with my faculty supervisors, and got a real kick in the gut.  Short version is, I am attempting a theological interpretation of the stories of saints of long ago, but my original supervisors are no longer with the university, and my new ones aren't theologians.  They are wonderful, accomplished, and caring historians, but each time I submit my work with an interpretation of the meaning of the text as the conclusion, they freeze.  They tell me quite honestly, "It's not what we do."  And they're right, but it is what I do, or hope to do.

It has taken a couple of weeks for me to recover from their criticism, in part because it feels nearly unresolvable (although that's an open question still), but even more because it strikes so deeply at what I feel I'm really good at.  And it's really important to me to be acknowledged for being good at things that I think I'm good at.  See where I'm going here?


Enter one of my recent spiritual heroes, Fr. Richard Rohr, Franciscan writer and teacher.  I get posts from Rohr's web site daily, and he has recently begun a series on the Enneagram, a system of understanding personalities, and, as he says, discernment of spirits.  You can see more about it here, if you're interested.  I was only marginally interested in the enneagram, but I like what he's had to say on other subjects, so I was willing to give these posts a quick read.


Good thing for me my "type" seems to be a "One," or I probably wouldn't have read the descriptions long enough to get to mine.  But Type One it is:  convinced they (we) know what's right and what's wrong, and ready to tell anyone who needs to know (whether they want to or not).  Convinced that if they (we) just work long and hard enough we can make the world, and ourselves, perfect.  And desperate to have our righteousness noticed and praised, since that's all we have to offer the world.  But for that, no one will ever love us.  Ouch.  Tough to look straight into a mirror that shows the warts and wrinkles so clearly!

The other interesting thing about Ones is that they operate, it seems, from the gut, as opposed to the head or the heart, although people often mistake them for being overly rational.  But I've been suffering from some low-level gut problems lately that don't seem to be responding to the usual forms of treatment.  And I noticed myself punishing my body for not being perfect -- at least, as perfect as a 57-year-old in reasonably good health can be.  I was insulted that my body wasn't behaving correctly -- exactly as I was insulted that my supervisors didn't appreciate my profound theological insights!

After a bit of reflection, I've come up with a prayer that I'll be using, at least for a while, to help me stop beating up on myself and the rest of the world: "Teach me how to love what is."  Jesus said, "I have not come to judge the world, but to save it." (Jn 12:17)  And the only thing I know of that can save this world, or me for that matter, is love.  If I can use the tools I have at hand -- meditation, Reiki, walking, yoga -- and do them as a student of the God of Love, then maybe I can relax this inner Judge-and-Jury and learn to love as Christ loves, to love what it is simply because it is all God's gracious creation. 

I also have to revise my chapter, but that's now well under way.  I'm trying not to beat myself up paragraph by paragraph, and so far it's going reasonably well.  Pray for me while I get this revision done, please, so I can move along and learn to love the next saint in line.

Blessings, Beth