How Do You See Others?

"Your idea of me is fabricated with materials you have borrowed from other people and from yourself. What you think of me depends on what you think of yourself. Perhaps you create your idea of me out of material that you would like to eliminate from your own idea of yourself. Perhaps your idea of me is a reflection of what other people think of you. Or perhaps what you think of me is simply what you think I think of you.
"Our ability to be sincere with ourselves, with God, and with other men[sic] is really proportionate to our capacity for sincere love. And the sincerity of our love depends in large measure upon our capacity to believe ourselves loved. Most of the moral and mental and even religious complexities of our time go back to our desperate fear that we are not and can never be really loved by anyone."

- Thomas Merton

One of the reasons I am continually fascinated by Thomas Merton is that he seems to know me so well. Maybe he knows us all well.

If I am honest, I must admit that I have not always reflected upon why I respond to people as I do. I have not always reflected upon why I view people the way I do. But as I grow older, I spend more time in self-reflection... in contemplation. This helps me to see more clearly at 40 than I ever did at 20.

When we are young, we lack sincerity and humility. When we view negativity, frailty or flaw in another, we are convinced that it is all about them. They are the broken ones in need of repair and therapy. When I see the flaws of others, I feel better about myself. But why is that?

The irony is that the negative flaws and frustrations I see in others really are reflections of my own insufficiencies. If I am honest, there were many experiences in my life that caused me to feel unloved or unworthy. This brokenness is manifested in my understanding of others. I've known this to be true for others as I engage in pastoral counseling - I can see their problems! It has taken many years for me to realize that it has been my problem.

Do I believe myself loved? This is the real question. When we believe we are loved and when we believe we are who God desires us to be, it is amazing how we see people differently.

Words of Life

I often wonder why it is that I can see so clearly the flaws and blemishes of others, yet rarely see them in myself. My own inadequacies shape my worldview, particularly as it relates to how I view others. Am I mistrusting? Maybe the lack of trust is more about me. Do I look upon others with a lack of hope and optimism? Maybe it is the fear of my own failure that I despise.

Thomas Merton said it best,

They want me to be what I am in their sight: that is, an extension of themselves. They do not realize that if I am fully myself, my life will become the completion and the fulfillment of their own, but that if I merely live as their shadow, I will serve only to remind them of their own unfulfillment.

"Do others merely live as our shadow?"

We must dig deep into the interior of our own lives and motives. Who are we? Why do we look at others the way we do? These questions and many more call me to not only dig deeper inside myself, but they also encourage me to speak words of life to others, especially to those I have influence over. Is it possible that if we build healthy spirits in our children, our spouses, and our loved ones that it will affect how they view others? Can our encouragement have influence beyond the walls of our home? If my family is filled with a clear understanding of who they are in Christ, won't they find the 'completion of self' Merton speaks of? Won't they view others not from the shadows of their fear, but from the fullness of grace?

Kathryn Stockett, in her book The Help, reflects this through a beautiful interaction between the house maid Aibileen and the white child she cares for, Mae Mobley Leefolt;

I touch her cheek. “You alright, baby?” She say, “Mae Mo bad.” The way she say it, like it’s a fact, make my insides hurt. “Mae Mobley,” I say cause I got a notion to try something. “You a smart girl?” She just look at me, like she don’t know. “You a smart girl,” I say again. She say, “Mae Mo smart.” I say, “You a kind little girl?” She just look at me. She two years old. She don’t know
what she is yet. I say, “You a kind girl,” and she nod, repeat it back to me. But before I can do another one, she get up and chase that poor dog around the yard and laugh and that’s when I get to wondering, what would happen if I told her she something good, ever day? She turn from the birdbath and smile and holler, “Hi, Aibee. I love you, Aibee,” and I feel a tickly feeling, soft like the flap a butterfly wings, watching her play out there. The way I used to feel watching Treelore. And that makes me kind a sad, memoring. After while, Mae Mobley come over and press her cheek up to mine and just hold it there, like she know I be hurting. I hold her tight, whisper, “You a smart girl. You a kind girl, Mae Mobley. You hear me?” And I keep saying it till she repeat it back to me.

As for me, I will speak words of life and encouragement. I hope it will shape my view of others. I hope it will shape my children's view of the world.

Tradition vs. Convention

Okay, so I realize it's been May since I posted on my blog, which actually discounts it from being a blog. But when you live on St. Simons Island and you take a summer break, well..., the summers last quite a while here.

Anyway, I am back to posting excerpts from Merton that we use for discussion in staff meetings at Wesley. While I realize it isn't original content, it is transformative nonetheless. Let it get in you and you to can fall in love with Thomas Merton. Now that evenings on the back porch are more bearable (and enjoyable) you may even see some original gleanings before too long.

Matthew 15:1-20
1Then Pharisees and scribes came to Jesus from Jerusalem and said, 2“Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? For they do not wash their hands before they eat.” 3He answered them, “And why do you break the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? 4For God said, ‘Honor your father and your mother,’ and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ 5But you say that whoever tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is given to God,’ then that person need not honor the father. 6So, for the sake of your tradition, you make void the word of God. 7You hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied rightly about you when he said: 8‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; 9in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’”
10Then he called the crowd to him and said to them, “Listen and understand: 11it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” 12Then the disciples approached and said to him, “Do you know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard what you said?” 13He answered, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted. 14Let them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if one blind person guides another, both will fall into a pit.” 15But Peter said to him, “Explain this parable to us.” 16Then he said, “Are you also still without understanding? 17Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer? 18But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. 19For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. 20These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.”

Excerpts from No Man is An Island, “Vocation – Tradition in the Monastery” by Thomas Merton

• The first ones to condemn the monastery that has become infected with worldliness are those who, in the world, are themselves least monastic, for even those who have abandoned their religion often retain a high and exacting idea of religious perfection.
• Where the sense of monastic tradition is lacking, monks immediately begin to lead unbalanced lives. They are unable to learn true discretion. They cannot acquire a sense of proportion. They forget what they are supposed to be. They are not able to settle down and live at peace in the monastery. They cannot get along with their superiors or their brethren. Why do all these things happen? Because the monks who have never learned how to be real monks are driving themselves crazy trying to live the monastic life with the spirit and the methods appropriate to some other kind of life.
• It must be learned. And it cannot be learned without direct contact with the channels of life through which it comes. That is why St. Benedict urged his own monks to read Cassian, St. Basil, and the Desert Fathers. But the reading of ancient monastic books is only one of these channels, and by no means the most important. The only way to become a monk is to live among real monks, and to learn the life from their example.
• Tradition is living and active, but convention is passive and dead. Tradition does not form us automatically: we have to work to understand it. Convention is accepted passively, as a matter of routine. Therefore convention easily becomes an evasion of reality. It offers us only pretended ways of solving the problems of living—a system of gestures and formalities. Tradition really teaches us to live and shows us how to take full responsibility for our own lives. Thus tradition is often flatly opposed to what is ordinary, to what is mere routine. But convention, which is a mere repetition of familiar routines, follows the line of least resistance.
• Tradition, which is always old, is at the same time ever new because it is always reviving—born again in each new generation, to be lived and applied in a new and particular way.
• Tradition nourishes the life of the spirit; convention merely disguises its interior decay.
• Finally, tradition is creative. Always original, it always opens out new horizons for an old journey. Convention, on the other hand, is completely unoriginal. It is slavish imitation. It is closed in upon itself and leads to complete sterility.