Over-managing others

I'm lured (again) into over-managing others---or at least, anxiety over trying to manage others (whether or not I actually get them to do anything at all). The church. The staff. My sons habits. The household and finances. How do I interact with others and exercise the authority I'm given while not over-managing or micromanaging? Isn't there another, better way?

Jesus says, "Do not worry" about the stuff of daily life. Seek the kingdom of God, and what needs to come your way will come. Today gives you enough to worry about, and you've got enough to do just managing your own life, let alone the lives of others (Matthew 6.25-34).

Trouble is, the way others live affects me deeply. Add to that, I have some responsibility over how they live---especially the employees I lead and the sons I feed. So it's not a surprise that I want to get them to do and be certain things---their behavior directly effects me and how I feel about myself.

Argh! Me. Me. Me! When will I get over me? "Oh wretched person I am! Who will rescue me" (and them) from me? (Romans 7.24)

Get the me-that's-always-pushing out of the picture, and they'll all be free to be much more than the little you want them to be.

From my journals, October 6, 2007

Signs of Awakening

There are signs of awakening all around us.  And there are people who are daring to give voice to that awakening; they’re trying to find words to put with their experience.  Sarah’s one who’s reaching for words—and she, like so many others, is helping us to imagine the future by doing the hard work of bringing to the light of day what the Holy Spirit is speaking in her during these twilight hours before the Dawn breaks upon us.

“There’s a longing that’s stirring within me—a longing for holiness.  You’re right about the Wal-Mart style of Christianity, and it’s created an experience of deep sadness in me, a disappointment at the overall cheapness of it.

“I long for something of value, something of real goodness that cannot be quantified or made systematic. My longings are hard to explain; it’s more of an I-know-it-when-I-see-it kind of thing, and I know it when I see it because it’s real.  I’ve also experienced the kind of conversations within church communities that sound like they’re on the right track, but they’re not.  People ask each other: ‘what does it look like to be real?  How do we create something authentic?’”

Sarah rightly knows there’s an intrinsic link between holiness and realness.  And she knows there’s something false lurking nearby when realness is used for some other purpose.  The moment real can’t stand on its own as a good thing in its own right, is the moment you’ve come face to face with phoniness all dressed up and looking pretty.

If you’re weary and wary of the charade, chances it’s not cynicism that’s at work in you.  You’re part of a larger awakening.  But it could turn to cynicism if you don’t link up with others who’ve glimpsed the first rays of Christ’s coming dawn.

In my experience they're often nearer than you think.  But knowing each other requires guts; we’ve got to try to give voice to what we’re longing for, and risk speaking it to others.

Rewiring our interior lives is work

The way of love may well be easier than we are led to believe, but learning to internalize love is not so easy. Jesus said “the gate is narrow and the road hard, and few take it.” It’s this kind of work, the rewiring of our interior lives, that he’s talking about. To use the language of faith, this hard road of rewiring is the path of salvation.

If the Jesus story is right, it will require death to something we’ve long cherished, even if it makes us miserable–our fear of being hurt. We’ve internalized the way of suspicion, fear, and withholding. That internalization is part of what the Bible calls sin---the deep internalizing or identification with ways that alienate us from God and each other. Sin may be more than that, but it’s certainly not less.

Discipleship is not merely assenting to doctrines–-thoughts about God. It’s about the internalization of a w/holy different way of life–-the identification of our lives with Another. It is putting off the “old self” and “putting on the new” in St. Paul’s language.

True Jesus said the gate is narrow and the way hard, for “putting on this new life” means that we’re taking a road less traveled, we’re swimming against the current.

But Jesus also said, “take my yoke upon you and learn from me; my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Identification with love, internalizing the way of truthfulness and life, is an easy way when we’ve done the hard work of dis-identifying ourselves with ways that are wrecking us and the life of our world.

Dis-identifying, or turning around and walking the other direction will be hard at first. But when we’ve walked for a while time against the crowd we'll find they’re actually on a hard, hard climb while we’re on a gentle slope downhill.

It’s easier to love than to build walls . . . seriously

In response to the post, What if God is searching for you? Hunter writes, "It's a difficult thing to understand and remain open in the midst of life experiences that can be painful."

Hunter, I’ve borne my share of the kind of pain that could shut me down, make me cynical, closed, even bitter. But I wonder if staying open and vulnerable is really as hard as we often think it is. I wonder if it’s more difficult not to open ourselves; if it's harder to stay closed up. I mean, in my experience, it really takes work and effort to put up walls, grow thick skin. The inner self obsesses, thoughts cycling through my mind.  My mind seems to gleefully enjoy peddling my anxious thoughts around in circles, keeping me focused on being a victim or wanting to have some other reality than the one I'm living.

I find I suffer when I feel I am entitled to some other kind of treatment. I suffer when I want something else or to be somewhere else.  I suffer when I want something other that what is.

I don’t mean to minimize the pain people like you and I face, but I’ve tasted those moments when, instead of being elsewhere mentally or wanting something else, I am fully present, vulnerable, free to live in this moment.  I've tasted remarkable freedom when I don't believe the little stories my thoughts are trying to sell me about myself and others, about my situation, and so on.

Love is difficult because our minds don’t want us to give in to love. Oh, they like the idea, but not the reality. For love by-passes the mind, shelves it for awhile.  The mind must sit before love which welcomes all things trustingly, and desires only what is and not what would be, could be, or should be.

I think it’s actually easier to love than to build walls. It's easier to remain open than our controlling minds want us to believe. St. Paul said that he had learned to be content regardless of the circumstances (Phil. 4). He didn’t allow himself to identify himself with any thought. Fully identified with Jesus Christ–”dead” to his false self–he was free to live in love.

Hunter, I hear some of this is your comment. I hear you inching yourself toward the freedom of love. But like us all, your mind gets in there and says, “Watch out. Guard yourself.”  The little bugger gets us peddling in cramped little circles again, round and round the petty worries that keep us stirred up. It’s little wonder we’re exhausted.  Keeping the walls up around a well-castled self take a lot of overhead.

But when I love, I find I'm never tired.

Love above all

What do we intend?  Only love.  The aim and fruit of an intentional life is love—divine and human.  The goal and harvest of a spiritually awakened life is participation in love.  When we love, all of life is prayer. Of course, difficulties and difficult people will try to tell you that love’s too squishy, soft, weak.

Don’t you believe them.

If the cross of Christ has anything to do with love (and it does), there’s nothing weak about love.  This is one reason I’m persuaded by true Christianity.  In Jesus we see the intention of God.  Love.  Love alone.  Love above all.  And love is the ultimate power—irrepressible, unconquerable, eternal.  Through Jesus we know love—not merely as aspect of God, but as the very nature of God—for “God is love” (1 John 4.8). Love is not an emotion we share, nor is it an emotion of God—something like glue that holds the Trinity together.  Love is uncreated.  It is the divine energy that continually inflames our hearts and unites us to God by the power of the Holy Spirit.  Through the Spirit we actually participate in the heart of God, the Source of all things, which is Love.

So your intention, the concentration of your life around love, gathers your energy to this one thing.  You intend to—

• Awaken to the power of love.
• Look a friend in the eye . . . and hold it.
• Speak words that are heart deep.
• Listen without judging or hurrying.
• Smile when you’re tempted to frown.
• Begin that unwelcome task you’ve been avoiding.
• Walk in the rain . . . slowly.

And as you do each thing, gather your heart into the Heart of Love, which is the Source of all things.

Say deep within: “I intend to love in this moment as if there were no other.”

And God will send you grace upon the wings of your simple, earnest prayer.