Kirkepiscatoid

Today’s readings center on “developing a passion for the truth.” She discusses that the only way we become free is to embrace truth, despite the fact it can be painful.

Reflection questions:

1. Meditate on the ways you have cultivated personally a passion for the truth. Do you feel that your quest for truth has strengthened your character and deepened your soul?

Well, at least in the secular sense, I have almost always chosen “real” over “fake,” “substance” over “shadow,” and “raw” over “dolled up.” I have been told that I have a natural inclination to orient myself and go towards the meat of “what’s right and true and good.” I have a “plain-ness and simplicity” about my spirit. I often choose to deal with the truth, even if it is painful or difficult, maybe sometimes simply “to get it over with.” I have a natural curiosity and desire to pack as much knowledge into my head in my lifetime in a wide variety of topics, and I think this is a helpful trait, also.

As I move this quest to a more spiritual and metaphysical sense, I think I have carried this orientation with me. It is slower going, though, because it does not base itself, necessarily, on the same suppositions and assumptions the physical world does. My journey is slower, more difficult at times, and more bewildering at times. I do, however, feel some sense of a deepening in my soul as a result of it.

2. Reflect on how your own search for freedom and self-respect has affected your relationships and community. What aspects of this search have been most difficult; most rewarding?

One of the hardest parts for me is to do some of this work in a way different than my natural inclination to explore things, because my natural inclination is not helpful in this regard, and at times is even harmful to the process. My natural way of exploring the world is to take everything apart down to the screws and springs, look at all the pieces, and put it back together. The problem is, in spiritual matters, the sum total of the spiritual entity is greater than the sum of the parts, there is a synergistic aspect to understanding God and how the life of Christ fits into it, and how we are to honor this through our Baptismal Covenant. You can take it apart down to the pieces and the pieces don’t tell the whole story. In fact, it’s a mistake to think you can figure out the story from the pieces.

Likewise, as I carry this to my relationships with others, this method doesn’t work. No one can stand still and let you rip them open and explore their parts and put them back. Everyone is going to have a place (and it’s different for everyone) where that feels “violating.” Yet when people have mutual trust and respect, and honor the best parts of each other, they often “hand their parts over” to another and allow them to be inspected a little. But no one is going to “hand their parts over” unless the other one does the same. This is very hard for me because as much as I want to explore THEIR parts, handing over MY parts can be incredibly hard!

My reward for sticking with attempting to do that kind of sharing is that it deepens my sense of connection with others. Some of it is “scary deep” and I don’t handle it well yet.

3. Write a list of the experiences that (1) fostered or (2) taken away your freedom and self-respect. How has your soul reacted to these experiences? What have you learned from them?

Without going into the details of the list in this discussion, the experiences that have fostered it almost always involve when someone has moved beyond themselves and saw something in me that they saw needed cultivating, and took the time and energy to do it. In the instances that took away my self-respect and freedom, they almost always involved a need for them to feel superior by putting me down.

The former experience has almost always imbued me with a sense of gratitude (the same kind of gratitude I feel towards God as I learn to become more connected with him); the latter experience has almost always left me feeling drained, parasitized, used, distant from everything, much the same way I feel distanced from God at times over my “I’m not good enough” schtick. What I notice is it becomes a parallel for feelings I have for God, and they can be either a catalyst to draw closer to God or a stumbling block to hide from him. That’s a powerful piece of information; I need to recognize that “the cares of the world” DO affect my relationship with God, as much as I want to delude myself into thinking I can compartmentalize it and keep it all out of the picture. Learning to “leave my cares of the world at the altar” becomes more important in this respect.