Radical Spirit by Joan Chittister

Author:Joan Chittister
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2017-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

What are the spiritual implications of this step of humility?

I remember so well, too well perhaps, my invitation to speak at a very prestigious university. I had packed my own doctoral gown, for the occasion which is the custom for such academic events, and was carrying it. But in the car on the way to the lecture hall, they told me that they didn’t allow any gown but their own to be used. I said, “Well, in that case, I won’t wear a gown at all. I’ll speak in my suit.”

After all, I figured, if my gown wasn’t good enough for their stage, why invite me in the first place? After all, it was the gown I earned at my own university that had gotten me there. And this was no time to begin to pretend that I was something I’m not.

It is precisely to the acceptance of the real in our lives—the authentic, the honest—that the sixth step of humility calls us.

The circumstances in which we find ourselves are the material out of which we must make our lives. To avoid what is, to want to be someone or something we are not, is the ultimate abandonment of the life in which we are meant to grow to full stature. Otherwise, when we look back at where we’ve been, what can we ever see except masquerade? Who and what will we ever know ourselves to be? When we ask ourselves what we have done with our lives, what will we list: the awards, the trophies, the money, the things we’ve bought, or the people we’ve cared for, the ideas we’ve promoted, the truth we’ve told? Will we ever be able to say, “I became myself by being myself and doing everything I could do for others”?

The key to choosing what is authentic in life and keeping our own integrity at the same time lies in tending always in the direction of simplicity. It is a cry to develop a sense of enoughness. To learn to be happy with enough money, enough attention, enough success, and enough comfort takes the senseless striving and accumulating and hoarding and competing out of life. It leaves us with more than status. It leaves us with a life worth living.

The problem is that modern culture itself encourages us to play at who we are long before we’re it. In this age, families are long gone from homesteads. Outside our own small worlds, we are anonymous now. Old friends, even brothers and sisters who know us best, are spread across the country. We’re suddenly far from the people who knew us in grade school or lived down the street from us. And therein lies the struggle.

We can be anyone we choose to be now. Anyone but ourselves. Which makes social charade—the little lies, the tiny but impressive diamond, the manufactured educational or professional history—so alluring. The truth is that impersonation—the ability to be who we are not—is simply so easy to do now. Which makes the sixth step of humility more important than ever before, perhaps.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.