While relationships can (and have) deformed us and caused us to hide our souls and languish because of it, authentic, generous, and kind community can heal and transform us into the splendor of Christ’s light in us. Third in the series: “Flourish: How to Bring Out the Best in Yourself.” This week is an invitation to the spiritual practice of authentic community. It’s a meditation based on Acts 9.17, 2 Corinthians 5.17, and this quote from Anais Nin: “Everyone of us carries a deforming mirror where we see ourselves as too small or too large, too fat or too thin . . . . Once the deforming mirror is smashed, there is the possibility of wholeness, there is the possibility of joy.”

If we are going to flourish, we will find ways to practice what I call “deep self-inquiry”—if we do, we will, as I said two weeks ago, discover that we are probably far more than we’ve become. Or as I said last week, “We’ve got more inside us than we ever dared to dream.” If we practice deep self-inquiry, we will discover that who we’ve become may not be, in fact, the fullness of who we truly are. And we will discover that the painful, frightening, and unwelcome experiences of our lives often invite us to wake up to the truth that we may not yet be living from our true identity—from the depth of our soul’s true goodness, beauty, and power.

This journey of our soul, the journey into flourishing, will require courage, a gutsy vulnerability. Waking up, changing course, stepping toward our true selves—liberating ourselves from the masks of conformity to someone else’s ideal for our lives, or our family’s, our society’s, or even our religion’s designs for us—stepping away from all this will put us in a vulnerable place; we will step into a moment or season of uncertainty, risk, and emotional (and sometimes) physical exposure that can be enormously uncomfortable, disorienting, and frightening.

The journey of the soul, the journey into the kind of flourishing God desires for us, will put us in a vulnerable place. And because something holy is emerging, up might feel like down for awhile, good might feel like bad, and growth might feel like we’re slipping backward or that we’re even losing our grip on ourselves—which we are, we’re losing our grip on the masks, illusions, and manufactured parts of us which are not, in fact, our true self.

Many times I have sat beside a person in this kind of spiritual transition into their truer self. Many times, I’ve walked beside a person who is, in fact, bringing out the best in themselves though it doesn’t feel like they are; at the time it feels like they are walking through the darkest night. While I may have seen signs of the beauty of their emerging soul, the exquisite light breaking through, they could not. To them, what was in fact a new beginning, felt like it might be the end of them.

There are times in my own life when I wondered if I were not losing my grip on reality—which, in fact, I was. When something new and sacred emerges within us, we do lose our grip on the reality of what was so that we can enter the new reality of what we are becoming. In this way, we will live from the depth of our soul’s beauty, goodness, and power. In this way, we will find our way into the flourishing God desires for us. Sometimes I wonder who I’d be today, had I not shared community with another person who was willing to walk beside me, holding sacred space for me when all I knew was the scared place in which I found myself.

To participate in the journey of your soul is to dare to bring out the best in yourself.

On this journey, we need companionship, community, relationships in which we feel safe and secure as we explore this new sense of being—as our souls, often shy and timid take risks at coming out into the open, presenting the sacred shimmering of our souls to the world, dropping our masks, and being true regardless of what others may say or do in response.

It’s one thing, as I said last week, to 1. Show up to our lives, 2. Brave up when it gets tough, and 3. Get back up when we fail or fall down . . . it’s another thing to live among people, in relationship with others, who can help us do just that.

It’s possible to do it alone, I suppose, just as it’s possible to give birth to a baby alone. It’s just really, really hard, and certainly not advisable.

We need relationships, but too often our experiences with them haven’t given us the help we need to find our true selves, our souls. Relationships with people who matter to us have often come with a high cost. The people we care about have expressed, verbally and non-verbally, certain expectations which have forced us to conform and caused our souls to hide away before we ever got to know them.

We often languish because we do not have persons around us who can love us so much they have no agenda for our lives; they only want us to discover the beauty, goodness, and power of what is deep within us.

“Attend to what rises within you,” we heard Ranier Maria Rilke say last Sunday. “Prize it above all that you perceive around you. What happens most deeply inside you is worthy of your whole love.”

“In your heart shines the eternal beauty and sacredness of our souls,” we heard Jesus say last Sunday. “Let go of everything you possess that lures you away from this inner gold, all that competes with this inner genius and guide.”

“Your soul,” teaches the living Jesus, “is everything. If you lose what’s inside you, nothing outside you will be of any real use to you.”

The sun cannot see its own splendor, but the moon can reflect its light. To flourish, we may well need someone who can help us see all that’s inside us that’s still hidden from our eyes.

In today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles we listened to a small part of the larger story of Saul, a religious man, who fought tooth and nail against the movement of the early Christians in the Middle East. He was a Pharisee, a most serious and devoted follower of first century Judaism. To him, the Jesus movement was a heretical threat to the religious rules and way of life that guided his life.

In our reading today, he is on his way to Damascus with authority from the religious powers in Jerusalem to stamp out the Christian movement. The Bible tells us that he “was breathing threats of violence against Christians everywhere.”

Certain he was doing the right thing, he was on the road to Damascus when he had an experience in which he heard a voice ask him what in the world he thought he was doing. “I’m being faithful to God,” Saul told the the voice. “Not so,” replied the living Jesus. “You are blind to what God is up to in the world. Your religion is a mask you wear, and your religious practices are a projection of your own fears. Your very soul is in jeopardy, but you cannot see it. Therefore, I will blind you physically in order to help you come to see how blind you are spiritually.”

And at that very moment, Saul could no longer see. This is figurative language, by the way. Not literal. It’s language designed to help us understand the deeper meaning of this experience. It’s meant to suggest that Saul was not only blind to the ways of God in the world despite his religious zeal, but that his religion, meant to liberate souls and lead us all into flourishing, was shackling his inner sight.

Blind now, Saul was led by the hand into Damascus. “For three days he was without sight,” the Bible tells us, “he neither ate nor drank.” For “three days” he was like Christ in the tomb and on the third he was found by a courageous follower of Jesus named Ananias. Ananias symbolizes the spiritual truth that while no one can take our inner journey for us, our souls are often so hidden beneath layer after layer, defense after defense, that only the gift of another person, who can see in us what we cannot see in ourselves, can help us behold the beauty and goodness of our own souls.

“Ananias went and entered the house,” the Bible tells us. “House” is more than the physical dwelling where Saul was sitting. “House” is the vulnerable, dark, and confining place Saul now dwells. “Ananias laid his hands on Saul and said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on your way here, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.”

The story tells us that Saul was baptized. That is, he underwent a ritual that marked this moment of new beginning. As he rose from the water, “something like scales fell from his eyes.” This is a way of symbolizing what happens when the beauty, goodness, and power of our souls is liberated within us. “When the old has passed away and everything has become new.”

Saul found something within him he never knew existed—something hidden beneath the layers of learning, socialization, expectation, and religious piety—something that completely transformed his life and turned him from a persecutor of the Christian movement to one of its most passionate proponents. Saul changed his name to Paul and would go on to write many of the letters that make up the New Testament.

I wonder what would have become of him had he had no Ananias who entered the darkness of his life and helped him behold the light that is the beauty, goodness, and power of his soul, who simply reflected to him what was already within him.

Saul’s transformation is told in the dramatic religious and symbolic language of visions and blindness and scales falling from a man’s eyes.

But our transformations are no less dramatic.

The French-Cuban American writer, Anais Nin spoke of the liberation of the soul this way: “Everyone of us carries a deforming mirror where we see ourselves as too small or too large, too fat or too thin . . . . Once the deforming mirror is smashed, there is the possibility of wholeness, there is the possibility of joy.”

A smashed mirror is not unlike scales falling from the eyes.

I’m exploring today the role of community or relationships in the inner journey of the liberation of our souls, bringing out the best in ourselves, the way we can truly flourish.

My point is this: though we can take this journey entirely alone, it’s neither safe nor advisable. We need someone who can hold sacred space when we find ourselves in the spiritual crisis which seems to be required for the birth of our souls. When the time of emergence comes—or in my experience, those times come, for spiritual transformation, the emergence of the soul seems to be more of an intermittent evolution over the life span than a single event—we will need persons who love us enough not to have an agenda for our lives.

Often our souls are so hidden from our consciousness that only the gift of another person who can see what we can’t see, can help us find the gold of our own souls.

The sun, brilliant as it is, cannot see its own glory. It needs the moon to reflect that light. So we too need someone who can say to us:

“Let me be your moon,

and in some small way

help you know

the splendor of your light.”

Those kinds of persons are extremely rare. And that may be why so few of us are truly flourishing. But we can change that. We need to change that. I have a dream that, over time, there may be more and more of those kind of people in this church community. And I dream that, over time, there may be more and more people who are bringing out the very best in themselves—the beauty, goodness, and power of their souls.