Some meditations:
On Faith and Confidence
"Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging (one another); and all the more, as you see the day drawing near...Strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed." author unknown
"Love one another as your self." Jesus of Nazareth
Confidence--to have faith in
words with common roots--confide, confidant, fidelity
What does it mean to have self-confidence? To have faith in one's self, to trust one...to trust one's abilities? one's loyalty? one's convictions? Does self-confidence have its roots in experiences (the past) or in faith and hope (the future)? Perhaps it should rely on both, being skeptical of the former? What leads to a lack of self-confidence? When does one lose faith in one's self, stop trusting? Perhaps it is related to when one begins lying to one's self, no? When a person knows s/he is capable of self-deceptions, of nearly unconscious self-denial, self-confidence is difficult to preserve.
So how is this trust rebuilt? First, it must come through honesty. Being honest with one's self will begin to rebuild trust, and eventually, self-confidence. Two, it must be tried and built upon new experiences. As time passes, and honest action occurs, one's faith in one's self will grow. This is especially true as one experiences great challenges--and remains honest and patiently steadfast through the challenge. Success in these times is not absolutely necessary to the rebuilding of confidence but the honesty is. Finally, eventually sucess in one's goals and actions is likely needed--although it shouldn't be the prerequisite to building self-confidence. But without the acheivement at some point it is likely that any other attempts to build self-confidence will be stalled or undermined. Therefore, it may be very important to have many short-term reasonable but still demanding goals upon which confidence can grow. These goals can be of any nature, from the mundane to the banal, from a promise to make one's bed everyday to an unwavering commitment to do one kind act for a stranger each day. The goal should be concrete, a step beyond what one does comfortably or habitually, and able to be done on a regular basis. As one succeeds over and over at achieving these goals, self-confidence should grow.
Closing impressions:
Self-confidence should be deeply linked to self-love and self-respect. It cannot be separated from sincere self-care. A person who does not truly care for her/his self will not have self-confidence. But one who treats him/herself with truly humble respect (not self-worship, but love) will grow in love for others as well because s/he will see the need for con/fidence with others and extend that love of her/his self to her/his cocreation. For truly, we are all part of the world's self, and we will learn confidence in others the more we learn to confide in our selves.
On Peace
If there is to be peace in the world, I must have peace in my heart.
What are some qualities of peace?
compassion mercy just actions love care
understanding forgiveness absence of fear
What are some enemies of peace?
anxiety striving for perfection anger fear selfishness
apathy misdirection self-righteousness distraction dishonesty
Is it necessary to understand my fear and own selfishness in order to have peace in my life? What is it that I fear? Why, now, do I fear being alone? It has never mattered to me much before, but recently, now that I seem to have "lost" it, I am afraid of losing love. I must be able to draw on the love that exists, in plenty, in the world. I must receive love, and not be anxious of the places it seems not be. For I must know that if I love myself--and all of the rest of creation to which I am connected--then I will never lack love. And if I receive love from God--whose love is infinitely eminating through the Spirit & the spirit of Creation--there is no amount of bad energy that can ever last against this love God has & gives to me.
But if I hoard this love--fearing its scarcity or the possibility of losing it--I will have already lost it. For it is in giving that we receive. When I give love, share love, I make love and can reap the harvest that I sow. This love can be found in all creation--the trees, the fields, the air, the grass, the people, the sea, the mountains--they all can love me and hope to be loved by me. So why this longing? I must recognize that if God has made a temple in me and rests the Spirit here --I am full of love. There is no part of me that God does not love. I am struggling right now to hope in this truth, but I will pray for it to take root & grow. I pray now for seeds to be planted in my mind and heart that say--I am loved. I am love. I have love. I give love and need love and have an infinite supply of it, if I will draw it from and give it to all that I am connected to.
I pray to have an open heart and the will to love others without a need to see that love have any end achieved other than itself. Remember Dmitri--how you love this child without knowing him, how your heart opens to him and how you are able to desire no response from this child except that he know and receive love and that it somehow manifest itself in his life. Let your attitude toward all be the same. Love your "enemies," the "strangers" among you--from an insecure position, without the guarantee or even likelihood of receprication. Love, and peace will follow.
posted by Nik Sushka at
12:02 PM
1 Comments:
"[The parable of the Good Samaritan] This story represents the possibility of mutual belonging between two strangers. Jesus points to a new kind of fittingness, belonging together, between the Samaritan and the wounded man. They are fitted together in a proportionality which comes from God, which is that of agape [unconditional love], and which became possible because God became flesh.
The enfleshment of God extends outward, through such new links as the Samaritan makes with the Jew, into a network which we call the Church. But this is a network, not a categorical grouping; that is, it is a skein of relations which link particular, unique, enfleshed people to each other, rather than a grouping of people together on the grounds of their sharing some important property.
Corruption occurs when the Church begins to respond to the failure and inadequacy of a motivation grounded in a sense of mutual belonging by erecting a system. This system incorporates a code or set of rules, a set of disciplines to make us internalize these rules, and a system of rationally constructed organizations-private and public bureaucracies, universities, schools-to make sure we carry out what the rules demand. All these become second nature to us. We grow accustomed to decentering ourselves from our lived, embodied experience in order to become disciplined, rational, disengaged subjects. From within this perspective, the significance of the Good Samaritan story appears obvious: it is a stage on the road to a universal morality of rules.
Modern ethics illustrates this fetishism of rules and norms. Not just law but ethics is seen in terms of rules-as by Immanuel Kant, for example. The spirit of the law is important, where it is so, because it too expresses some general principle. For Kant the principle is that we should put regulation by reason, or humanity as rational agency, first. In contrast, as we have seen, the network of agape puts first the gut-driven response to a particular person. This response cannot be reduced to a general rule. Because we cannot live up to this - "Because of the hardness of your hearts" - we need rules. It is not that we could just abolish them, but modern liberal civilization fetishizes them. We think we have to find the right system of rules, of norms, and then follow them through unfailingly. We cannot see any more the awkward way these rules fit enfleshed human beings, we fail to notice the dilemmas they have to sweep under the carpet: for instance, justice versus mercy; or justice versus a renewed relation, as we saw in South Africa with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a shining attempt to get beyond the existing codes of retribution.
Within this perspective, something crucial in the Good Samaritan story gets lost. A world ordered by this system of rules, disciplines, and organizations can only see contingency as an obstacle, even an enemy and a threat. The ideal is to master it, to extend the web of control so that contingency is reduced to a minimum. By contrast, contingency is an essential feature of the story of the Good Samaritan as an answer to the question that prompted it. "Who is my neighbor?" The one you happen across, stumble across, who is wounded there in the road. Sheer accident also has a hand in shaping the proportionate, the appropriate response. It is telling us something ,answering our deepest questions: this is your neighbor. But in order to hear this, we have to escape from the monomaniacal perspective in which contingency can only be an adversary requiring control."
-Charles Taylor
8:48 AM
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