Embracing Holy Instability
"Real holiness doesn’t feel like holiness; it just feels like you’re dying. It feels like you’re losing it. And you are! You are losing the false self, which you foolishly thought was permanent, important, and you! You know God is doing it in you and with you, when you can even smile, and trust that what you lost is something you did not finally need anyway." - Richard Rohr
I ran across the above quote from the Jesuit, Richard Rohr recently. It was one of those moments when my whole body heaved a sigh of agreement and relief. My experience on this journey of faith is dotted with those moments he described. But its not only my experience. My mind and heart are full of significant conversations with people on this path who some of the time feel like I'm losing it. I've been party to many conversations that begin: "I really need to tell you something" and end with: "thanks, because I really thought I was losing my mind."
Over the years I've brought small examples of my own encounters of instability with the divine mysterium to the pulpit, to sacred conversations, sharing how God has spoken through the appearance of stars in the sky, or ripples on the water, or feathers on a path... pointing me in a direction that I'd not been able to see or choose on my own. When I share the holy subtle nudges of God that cause me to wonder if I'm losing it, there has always been a knowing response. Perhaps the only way God can really get our attention is by destabilizing our firmly entrenched status quo.
But it sounds foolish, doesn't it, to embrace instability. Yet, when divinely orchestrated instability comes we have two choices. We can embrace it as God's way of moving in our lives, or we can struggle with it. The first response feels like body surfing in clear, lively azure waves on a bright summer day. The second way feels like body surfing in quicksand. The first way we paddle out to catch the wave with God right next to us. The second way we enter the murky pond alone. Embracing divine instability builds faith and trust in a God we cannot see and leads to wisdom. Struggling with what God has allowed puts blinders on our minds and hearts and we burrow into deeper darkness.
At any moment, we can choose to embrace the instability that has come into our lives as a nudge to holiness. We embrace it not to fight it to the ground, but simply place it in our hands and offer it back to God as an act of worship. We embrace it in faith believing that nothing that has touched us was not first sifted through God's hands and has some good that it will leave in our lives. We do not deny the pain it may cause at present...but we acknowledge our confidence that God's love can and will use it somehow for our good -- so great is God's love for us.
As Rohr wrote, when these moments of instability come, what we lose is the self that we thought was authentic (or at least the self we had become comfortable with). It's painful. Often times it makes us sad for a while. Sometimes the 'who' and 'what' we are becoming is not at all clear. But when we embrace change as coming from the hand of God, our fears receed.
What is the place of holy instability in your life at present? Has the instability come in terms of our health, career, children, parents, finances, dreams? When being conformed to God's Image (becoming holy) is the goal of our life -- all of these things are what God uses in the process of our transformation. Does it feel like you're dying? Commit it, submit it, remit it to Christ who promised to exchange our heavy burdens for His way that is easy and yoke that is light.
Becoming holy, like growing older, is not for the faint of heart. I believe with you-and for you if necessary-that what God is leading you to become, is beyond anything you presently can think or imagine. Your holiness, like His will one day shine like the noonday sun! Until then, embrace the sacred instability. BLESSINGS AND JOY IN THIS HOLY WEEK, THE CELTIC MONK
I ran across the above quote from the Jesuit, Richard Rohr recently. It was one of those moments when my whole body heaved a sigh of agreement and relief. My experience on this journey of faith is dotted with those moments he described. But its not only my experience. My mind and heart are full of significant conversations with people on this path who some of the time feel like I'm losing it. I've been party to many conversations that begin: "I really need to tell you something" and end with: "thanks, because I really thought I was losing my mind."
Over the years I've brought small examples of my own encounters of instability with the divine mysterium to the pulpit, to sacred conversations, sharing how God has spoken through the appearance of stars in the sky, or ripples on the water, or feathers on a path... pointing me in a direction that I'd not been able to see or choose on my own. When I share the holy subtle nudges of God that cause me to wonder if I'm losing it, there has always been a knowing response. Perhaps the only way God can really get our attention is by destabilizing our firmly entrenched status quo.
But it sounds foolish, doesn't it, to embrace instability. Yet, when divinely orchestrated instability comes we have two choices. We can embrace it as God's way of moving in our lives, or we can struggle with it. The first response feels like body surfing in clear, lively azure waves on a bright summer day. The second way feels like body surfing in quicksand. The first way we paddle out to catch the wave with God right next to us. The second way we enter the murky pond alone. Embracing divine instability builds faith and trust in a God we cannot see and leads to wisdom. Struggling with what God has allowed puts blinders on our minds and hearts and we burrow into deeper darkness.
At any moment, we can choose to embrace the instability that has come into our lives as a nudge to holiness. We embrace it not to fight it to the ground, but simply place it in our hands and offer it back to God as an act of worship. We embrace it in faith believing that nothing that has touched us was not first sifted through God's hands and has some good that it will leave in our lives. We do not deny the pain it may cause at present...but we acknowledge our confidence that God's love can and will use it somehow for our good -- so great is God's love for us.
As Rohr wrote, when these moments of instability come, what we lose is the self that we thought was authentic (or at least the self we had become comfortable with). It's painful. Often times it makes us sad for a while. Sometimes the 'who' and 'what' we are becoming is not at all clear. But when we embrace change as coming from the hand of God, our fears receed.
What is the place of holy instability in your life at present? Has the instability come in terms of our health, career, children, parents, finances, dreams? When being conformed to God's Image (becoming holy) is the goal of our life -- all of these things are what God uses in the process of our transformation. Does it feel like you're dying? Commit it, submit it, remit it to Christ who promised to exchange our heavy burdens for His way that is easy and yoke that is light.
Becoming holy, like growing older, is not for the faint of heart. I believe with you-and for you if necessary-that what God is leading you to become, is beyond anything you presently can think or imagine. Your holiness, like His will one day shine like the noonday sun! Until then, embrace the sacred instability. BLESSINGS AND JOY IN THIS HOLY WEEK, THE CELTIC MONK
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