The Real Self

It is argued (and I concur) that existence apart from God is really a false existence--it is not real, not recognized by God because he did not create or imagine any thing to have existence outside of relationship with himself ("In him all things have their being." Col. 1:17.) 

The setting up of the "imagined self" is the fruit of the snake's suggestion in Genesis 3 that if humans act outside of unity with God, we "would be like him," implying we would not need him--that we could BE independent of him. This is where the false, uncreated, illusory self was projected, which some believe is the Original Sin. 

Salvation, then, is found in the recognition that life ONLY exists in relationship to God as we surrender in openness to that relationship--only IN HIM do we live and move and have being (Acts 17:28). We are not to fight, strive or perform to get in that relationship--that would be the work of the illusory self--we simply come with brokenness and openness in response to his call and trusting in his mercy alone.

The sad part is most of us cannot recognize the REAL us, who is created by and held in life by God. Many contemplatives refer to the real self as the "hidden self," which is self-explanatory--it is a part of us that is not easily known and must be discovered. Paul alludes to this when he says that pagans are "darkened in their understanding and alienated from the life of God" (Eph. 4:18). Though God created us to live out of an identity all wrapped up in him, many of us live without any illumination of that "self"--our minds are "darkened." 

To make matters worse, we mature living, deciding, experiencing life out of our false, illusory self as though it were our true self (but which is no self at all!), and we build and plan our lives in a Babel-esque way to "reach the heavens" completely out of sync with God's plan. 

When I suggest to myself that I do not really know myself and have been living, planning, reacting to life, and processing the human experience through a FALSE SELF that isn't even REAL (because it was not created by God), it is disorienting at best and paralyzing at worst. But it IS the claim of sacred text--we are not who we think we are if our whole lives have been built upon a self who is not REALLY a self. This is why we are in such deep kimchee. We don't even know ourselves, which makes faith an inapplicable abstraction to us.

So...how does one DISCOVER the real self. Ahhh...if only that were an easy step 1, 2, 3, answer. But it is not. The true self is about as easy to find as God's presence within is easy to find. As obscure as that sounds, that's about the most accurate way to describe the road to discovery of the true self. In The Confessions Augustine wrote: "I could not be then, O my God, could not be at all, if you were not in me; or, rather, unless I were in you, of whom are all things, by whom are all things, in whom are all things." 

It is only when you seek the face of God that you discover your own true face. This is not to suggest that you and I are God, but that we only find ourselves as we look at God (like we see a reflection of our faces when we look at the water). 

This is not a path of exactness or certitude. In fact, it is much the opposite. This path is one requiring humility and vulnerability as one moves into what many call the "cloud of unknowing." Think of the two places we are most touched by the Person of Christ: when he lies in the manger as an innocent, vulnerable baby and when he hangs on the Cross naked, nailed and dying, refusing to call for help. It is in these kinds of weak places, uncertain places, desperate places, painful places, "this-could-go-in-a-way-I-didn't-anticipate" places, where we fall in love with Jesus and see him most clearly. 

I think we find our true selves in these kinds of places too. That's why Christians embrace the Way of the Cross. Following the Way of the Cross means we don't have to hide from our struggles, weaknesses, inconsistencies or failures--we can actually stare through them to the mercy of God and in so doing, we actually find our TRUE SELVES in Christ. This is how we deconstruct the false, illusory self and find the self God imagined us to be instead of wasting our lives living through the fake phantasm of a being (unrecognizable to God) we created in ourselves. 

My hope, as the Bishop-Protector of the Order of St. Anthony is to challenge us to persevere in book-ending our days in prayer; embracing weekly fasting; finding paths of simplicity of focus and living; participating in weekly Eucharist; submitting to spiritual direction and the sacrament of reconciliation; et.al. In so doing, we are NOT to act out of the false self--which is only interested in posing; performing; being perfect or right; proving we are better than other people; trying to make up ground for our own stupid; trying to earn brownie points or a Eagle Scout badge from God; etc. 

We are doing this to submit to a process that helps us enter "the manger"--as infants in faith, needing to be taken care of more than trying to be in charge. We are doing these things to nail ourselves naked to the cross vulnerable and helpless, doing what we don't necessarily want to do. Think of those times when you plan to skip a meal in anticipation of redirecting your hunger towards the eternal, or it's time to do an office and you think: "Oh no...I have to do these same prayers again!" It's easy to feel like doing the office twice a day is going to kill you (at least a little). But, maybe that's the point?

What if the broken, empty, "I-seem-to-just-be-going-through-the-motions", boring places like the Office can often be, IS the kind of place where we can best bump into God and discover the true human self he created? Not the moments of inspiration or great experience (though we welcome those with thanksgiving). Remember, God inhabits obscurity. He abides in the quiet, secret, hidden place, which seems like a glass through which we can only see darkly. I think we should train ourselves to welcome this as the adventure of faith. Faith may always be a sketchy enterprise, but it can be one that is exhilarating as we radically throw ourselves into it. I want to be like a free-jumper off of the cliffs of the human experience smack into the darkness, which is faith. Whether it's a win or loss, whether I live or die, is not in my hands. My role is simply to jump. I hope this is what all of us in the Order aspire to. 

The Shadow Self

Well…I was busted again today by the Holy Spirit. One of the great truths that has emerged through the contemplatives and mystics of the ages is that we humans often prop up a false or “shadow” self into our daily lives. This shadow-self loves to pretend it is the REAL us and loves to try and control the events of our lives along with the people we encounter.

I think the presence of the shadow-me in all of us is the result of Original Sin, which in the Genesis narrative appears when human beings imagine a NEW BEING that wasn’t God’s design—one that claimed it didn’t need God. The anti-God, serpent’s voice claimed that this “new you” would be “like God.” But it was not. It was not a self that God imagined or approved—nor did he recognize it. This would mean that this shadow-self is non-being because it was NOT the creation of God. Remember the claim of Rev. 4:11, “For you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being” (emphasis mine). Things only have being when God creates them. Col 1:17 tells us that all CREATED THINGS are all things are “held together” by Christ.

The shadow-self is NOT created and is NOT held together by God. Technically, it is nothing (no-thing). It is a falsity held together conceptually BY US. It has no substance, no reality—it is only a phantasm that takes shape when we try to attach things to it to make it seem real (like throwing a sheet over a ghost to give it form—anybody remember Casper?). We try to give this mirage’d-self realness through passion, fame, status, pleasure, intellection, experience, etc. But it doesn't work. It doesn’t work because the shadow-self is not a self that God sees because he did not create it. It has no "being" for only created things have "being" through God.

So here I sit in front of the prayer: “I have sinned against you in thought, word and deed.” I admit that even my very religious, regimented life can be empowered by the imposter of my life—my shadow self! How do I know? Because God-forbid anyone interrupt my prayer time or the plans that emerge out of this special, sequestered time! If I live an unexamined day, my shadow-self ends up being the lord of my life—even of the time that should be the time when I am being formed by God, where the true-self God imagined me to be emerges. 

Unbelievably, there are times when my very prayer time is being empowered by my shadow-me, thereby quashing the real-me. 

Crap.

Truth is, it is this shadow-self that must be crucified.

But, the real me is so imperceptible at times. Though it is the real me, I am so used to living out of a false-me, I can’t seem to find the real me—the one imagined and created by God in his likeness and image. I am like the poor pagans described by Paul in Eph. 4:18—People who “are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.” Think of that. The life of God is RIGHT THERE; WITHIN THEM…but they cannot see it. The are “separated” from it. It eludes them.

Augustine nods to this reality in the Confessions as he talks about his life before he crossed the threshold of faith when he was looking for God in things in the world. He claimed that all along God was WITHIN HIM: “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Late have I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you.” 

The Psalmist speaks of "The Lord, Who holds our souls in life” (Ps 66:8). You and I are alive right now because he is IN US holding us IN LIFE.

Our REAL SELF is rooted in this reality:

GOD HAS WRAPPED YOU INTO HIMSELF AND SITS WITHIN YOU.

The secret of my identity and your identity is in the love and mercy of God and is identical with him, as we are in his image and likeness (there is no suggestion here that we are God but only our life only happens because of him). He is the reason for our existence. This can only mean there is one central purpose in life--to discover happiness, purpose and fulfillment in our discovering ourselves in the Person of God. We am IN HIM, not in our false selves. If we find him, we will find ourselves.

But only God can help us do this--it is not the work of human effort alone. Thomas Merton claims that we cannot find God—we must wait for him to find us by uttering a word into us. He is claiming that the finding of ourselves is an incarnation, not a human exploration. This means for us to know God, God must make himself known to us. Merton goes on to say that for God to make himself known to us, “God must not only be great, he must be small--small enough to enter our littleness and to make himself known there.”

This is the why of the Order. This is the why of bookending our lives in prayer. We are looking for God. We are looking for ourselves—our true selves.

When I think of the essence of sin as being the impulse to live out life from a false-self instead of the real-self, I realize I could say the confession prayer constantly—and then repent for saying it 3/4ths of that time out of my false-self!

This makes me feel hopeless AND delighted.

Hopeless because I realize faith is beyond human effort and I will never be very good at it (never beyond the acumen of a child). Delighted because this was NEVER supposed to be about the false-self (which is the only part of me that COULD feel hopeless, guilty, shamed, dejected), but about the REAL-ME who only has life in God.

An Order of "Salvific" Love

When I think about social justice issues like caring for the needs of the poor--those without basic necessities like food/water, or those on the underside of power (the sick/aged/oppressed/in prison), I have generally thought of these concerns as "outreach" or mission.

But what if these concerns are NOT to be born out of a concern for mission directly, but only secondarily? What if these things are actually the initial evidence of salvation or of God's presence in our lives? What if caring for the other is not an expression of outreach any more than prayer or the studying scripture are? What if it is these actions are simply natural expressions of our transformation by the love of God and show that we are members of God's kingdom?

We all know that the only snapshot Jesus gives us of Judgment Day is Mt. 25 where the qualifying issue for entering into God's eternal life is whether or not we cared for the poor, the sick, the lonely, the hungry. I don't think any of us believe that Jesus was saying any one "earns" eternal life by participating in those things (Paul actually says that if we work with the poor to the point of deep personal loss without being motivated by the love of God--we profit nothing! [1 Co. 13]). So what Is Jesus saying in Mt. 25? Perhaps he was simply saying these are the things that most evidence the claim that salvation has dawned in us?

Remember John's comment in 1 Jn 3:14, "We know that we have passed from death to life because we love." Then he says (vv. 16-17), "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?"

John is arguing that the presence of salvific LOVE is evidenced by the action of caring for the have not's. James chimes in, "It would be like seeing a brother or sister without any clothes out in the cold and begging for food, and saying, “Shalom, friend, you should get inside where it’s warm and eat something,” but doing nothing about his needs—leaving him cold and alone on the street. What good would your words alone do?" (James 2:15-17)

If we love God we must care for those who have no voice; no power; living under systems of abuse. But this must not be motivated by a political impulse or as an "outreach" to win people to Jesus...but simply because the love of God is in us. The psalmist claimed that "God lifts the poor out of misery" (Ps 107:41). It is just what he does because he is love.

The psalmist also said of the godly person who has ANY strength (Ps. 72):

For he (the good ruler) shall deliver the poor who cries out in distress,
and the oppressed who has no helper.
He shall have pity on the lowly and poor;
he shall preserve the lives of the needy.
He shall redeem their lives from oppression.

May we in the Order be known, not only for prayer and personal piety, but for engagement with the invisible people who are easy to ignore and forget. "Lord, help us. Lord, have mercy on us."

What Telos Are You Following?

In praying this morning's Song of Creation, I couldn't help but think of the curious claim made by Genesis. Whether you take the creation story literally or not does not quash the inferences of that narrative of beginnings. According to Genesis, God creates by speaking, "Let there be..." After which these four words follow: "and it was so." 

When we read of the dawning of human beings we discover we were not just "spoken" but formed by God's hands and "breathed" upon, thereby becoming living souls. Whatever that means, it implies human beings are "special creations." In the text God "commands" Adam (not just says), "You shall NOT eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." 

I remember reading through these chapters devotionally 30 years ago and hearing in my heart (it seemed to be the Spirit to me): "Did you notice that it does not say, 'and it was so'? When I speak to creation, it simply does what I say, when I speak to humankind, that is not so."

Using the language of Aristotle, everything that appears on the earth has what he called a "telos," which is to say it has an end, a design, a built-in way that it is. This is true for trees and stars and dogs and flowers and black holes. In the Song of Creation prayer stanzas appear like:

Glorify the Lord, O nights and days, *
O shining light and enfolding dark.
Storm clouds and thunderbolts, glorify the Lord, *
praise him and highly exalt him for ever.

Created things always glorify the Lord in that they always reflect his telos for them--they are and do what they were intended to be and do - "and it was so." This reflection of God's intended telos is a shout of praise to God! It "glorifies" him.

But when it comes to humanity--we have a choice. We can either submit to the telos he imagined for us or come up with one on our own. The great struggle of life, of creation, of eternity is: What telos are you following? Who/what is Lord of you?

When Two or Three Are Gathered

Jesus statement that when two or three are gathered in his name he is in their midst, seems to suggest that he is with us differently when we are together than how he is with us each as individuals. This would mean that there are things that happen when the church gathers that cannot happen when she doesn't. 

If this is true, then it is a strong defense for the concept of corporate grace that is NOT available to individuals alone--which is the argument for sacrament, whose Mother would be the Church. If that is true then the Church is no longer an option--she is essential to faith.

A definite shift in imagination.

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

I was thinking about the phrase from the Lord's Prayer: "Lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil." In this prayer we are asking God to direct us away from future temptations that would cause us to stumble into the sins that "so easily beset us" (as we would hope any good navigation program to route us around trouble on the road ahead).

One of the real dangers of a commitment to a holy life is to try and move into holiness based on human effort. This is the kind that resists temptation as it comes, only to find yourself a little worried that in the next wave of temptation you will not be able to endure it. This is resistance based on personal effort, which always leaves us feeling weaker and more susceptible to sin.

However, in the Lord's Prayer we are being invited into something more than human effort. In essence we are asking:

"Lord, you know my penchant of harboring a wandering heart and my tendency to think/act badly. Would you help me to steer clear of this by helping me to remember to look to you to lead me out of temptation when I feel the gravitational pull of sin? I admit that sinning is par for my wounded soul and that wandering from you for relief instead of running to you is really what I am best at doing without the direct action of your grace within me. Help me look to you for escapes In temptation, instead of in myself (1 Cor. 10:13)."

"Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil." 

A great prayer.

Resisting Performance in Prayer

One of the greatest treasures I embrace from my Evangelical/Charismatic roots is bringing the piety and passion of my heart into the prayer moment. As wonderful as that is, that is not the ONLY purpose of the Office. 

One of the realities of living in the intense spirituality that accompanies those of us who feel called to bind up the brokenhearted and bringing freedom to those who are in captivity, is that that kind of work will burn you out. Spiritual warfare creates a loss of personal energy. If all prayer does is demand MORE personal energy, we will do it less and less. Then we will drift into things that seem like rest because they require nothing from us but yielding, and they carry their own energy -- things like sin.

This is one of the central reasons I am committed to praying the Offices day in and day out. I don't have to perform or bring my best...I just have to show up. The Offices themselves carry a kind of spirituality that transcends emotion and intellect and they hold us in life without demanding tons of internal energy. Reading the naked texts; praying the rich prayers and collects doesn't require spontaneity or tons of passion. Praying the psalms--these are things that don't demand emotive response. The Offices are a naturally supernatural, wholistic approach to life and faith that are like a good workout for the soul. You get a workout--it's a little hard to get through in the moment, but you just feel better and think better throughout the day.

The stories of men and women who are deeply committed to the Kingdom of God and end up getting lost in the morass of personal or family failure are too well known to us. Let's be a people who hear and respond to the deep ache of the world with the Gospel of deliverance and transformation without losing our way or imploding emotionally. What we do day in and day out in the Order will help us here.

A Politic of Hope

The central political claim of the Church has been that one day the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. But that day isn't until the Savior breaks through the clouds and enters this dimension. Until that day, at best, we have the pale good. There are no political saviors--only the Savior. This is Augustine's thesis in the City of God--here, only the city of Cain rules and we must lower our expectations for what can be here--which leads to the recognition of 2 realities:

1. Every political position has some wrong and every political position has some right 
2. Only when we LISTEN to each other can we find a modicum of right that is resides in any group

Just as in the basic unit of the family, listening and compromise is the only way to find unity, so it is in the public arena. The sad thing is that black and white thinking and right/wrong fundamentalism rules the day and makes listening and compromise an almost impossible thing. 

We pray, not for one group to win over another but that we can actually hear each other and not make FATAL MISTAKES. 

There is no way natural human minds with political aspirations will make the true good prevail...hopefully we can have leaders that will do the least to destroy the good that lingers here by common grace.

Then he comes...

THEN every tear is wiped away and there is no more evil...

Forgive Us Our Trespasses

"Forgive us our trespasses" is a part of the cry of our souls twice a day as we utter the words of the Our Father and pray the Prayer of Confession. This is an acknowledgement of a number of things. Here are two:

1. This is a world of ache. Eden is gone and I think we are born expecting it to be here. This Eden-less space, according to the psalmist, is a land where there is no water. We are thirsty and what we long for is not here. Yes, it is in God, but when hunger/thirst strike us, faith isn't our natural default. We seek other gods by looking to other things (sometimes things forbidden) to assuage the deep ache within. In simple ways our hearts wander and we look for life outside the camp of God. We own this when we say, "we have not loved you with our whole heart."
2. It is an acknowledgment that we are still broken and still "being saved" (1 Cor 1:18). Though we find our life in Christ and feel buoyed up in our spirits by interactions with him, in unguarded moments when we feel lonely, bored, threatened, afraid, hungry, tired, etc., we easily default to behaviors that are less than holy--we ALL have familiar sins that "so easily beset us." We shouldn't be surprised when these appear--only sad that we did not see them coming in time to ask for help to face them. Whenever I fail, I always say (echoing Brother Lawrence), "This is the best I can do, Father. And if you do not help me, things will only get worse from here."

We can grow and not keep losing ground in deeper and deeper sin, but we will never be all that good at faith this side of eternity--at best we carry the acumen of a child. We will fail in our love of God and our love of the other. But that is not the end of the world. He remembers that we are dust (Ps. 103). And, the truth is, he is looking for our faith, not our perfection (it is faith that pleases him - Heb. 11:6). Hence, he offers us gratuitous forgiveness. He is more faithful to forgive us our sins than we are faithful to sin (1 Jn. 1:9). We receive that when as we pray these Offices each day and as we sit before a priest and share our brokenness In the sacrament of reconciliation (a sacrament that is pretty pale to us Protestants).

Be ok with not being perfect, but run like the wind to God when you notice you are not. And mean it when you say to him, "Lord, you lead me not into temptation...you deliver me from evil." What we are saying is, "Lord, help me discern the ache and hunger building in me so that my struggle can be had as I say NO to the impulse of my flesh by embracing the grace to defeat temptation and NOT just when I am defeated by sin and enter the struggle embracing grace to overcome the guilt and bruising caused by sin. I would rather seize the grace that prevents versus the grace that restores, but either way...THANK YOU FOR GRACE! Amen!"

Praying for Kings

Remember as we pray the Psalms we often pray things that seem obscure and inapplicable to our personal lives. This is when we should shift into the awareness that we are praying AS the Body of Christ, speaking for the Body the prayers that have filled the lungs of the Church since her inception. 

This morning's psalm prays, 

"Add length of days to the king's life; 
let his years extend over many generations.
Let him sit enthroned before God for ever; 
bid love and faithfulness watch over him."

Since we have no kings in our modern world, my mind went to a cry for those who are leaders influencing the Church in the modern world--like Pope Francis or our Primary Bishop Quinton, or those who serve as Priests in our Order: like Mark Aarstad/JP Robles/Janis Sharpe/Shelby Swanson/etc--the prayer was "Lord, let these 'kings' have length of days to influence in a way that fulfills why God you have anointed them to be leaders to begin with." 

As an Order, we do not pray for ourselves alone but our very Rule of Life and cries in prayer are for the whole Church around the world.

Praying without Guilt

One of the dangers of praying the Office two times a day is praying the Office two times a day in a rote kind of way. The opposite of "rote" is NOT stirring up some internal passion or by grasping a pressured focus that can produce spiritual hemorrhoids, but a pausing and waiting, refusing to do something just to do it. 

I had this experience this a.m. I didn't want to do the Office and felt guilty about it. That's where I stopped. 

The great revealer of a weak soul is the appearance of negatives like guilt or anger. So I just sat and thought about the fact that I am alive and that meant God is holding me in life. I thought about the fact I was connected to everything in the universe because I am held in being by the Great I Am. I waited till gratitude came--the work of any priest is giving thanks (Eucharist). 

Guilt left.

I was not anxious about anything.

Then I chose to present myself to the one I Am by praying the Office.

It turned out to be unusually sweet with no hint of rote.

Praying the Psalms

Remember that one central focus of praying the Psalms is that it is not just PERSONAL, but corporate--these are OUR prayers, which means there are times we resonate with what is being said and times we don't. But even in times when we don't, we can IMAGINE how someone somewhere in the global Church may resonate with it given the contingencies of their lives. So we pray FOR and WITH them when we utter a psalm--they are at least intercessory when they don't seem personal.

In one of today's psalms, the writer pens: "I am as useless as a broken pot." You may not feel that way at all today, but certainly you can imagine how the global Church can feel that way in the light of being discounted from culture/power structures around us. So we enter the prayer...imagining being a broken pot that cannot do what it was designed to do...there is loss and a sense of hopelessness...yet, the psalmist continues with the sense that God will fix this eventually: "Blessed be the LORD! for he has shown me the wonders of his love in a besieged city."

The Psalms prayed take us into another dimension of prayer. One that both touches us personally (at times) and springboards us into the global mind of Christ's Church with effective intercession that only eternity will tell of its true fruit.

This is just another way (to refer back to our conversation yesterday) that we enter community and communion with the saints...it is not earthy enough / incarnational enough in the long run (a nod to the need articulated yesterday) but I think it is the foundation for that kind of community. 

I have a cousin in New York that I have only known casually over the years, but since moving here we have been more intentional about connecting with her. Why? She's family. The familial bond pushes me towards her, not just my ache for community. What should push us towards each other is that we are members of one another metaphysically--one body, one faith, one baptism, we worship one God and Father of us all...we pray together, even when we are in different places...THIS is the foundation for community, not ache. And as we pursue it (which is where the convo for yesterday really begins) we pursuing it and what does that pursuit look like - we obliterate the ache as a byproduct, not as the goal.

A Sanctified Gnosticism

Gnosticism, or the notion that there was "special gnosis for a select few," has always been a heresy that emerges and re-emerges in the Church historically. That being said, there IS a kind of esoteric "gnosis" that is NOT easily perceived or understood by the casual Christ-follower, but only by ardent seekers of sacred mystery and transcendent interiority--the stuff we run at day in and day out as we practice the Rule of our Order.

Hans Urs Von Balthasar claimed that the church "does not abolish genuine esotericism." It turns out that the kingdom--the influence of God--is, as Jesus said, "a treasure hidden in a field" that is only grasped by those willing to "sell all they have to buy it." 

In a sense, the Order is an exploration into esotericism, or, dare we call it, a sanctified Gnosticism - a "secret" dance to discover the difference between what is nature and what is grace; between ourselves and God's actions?

What can teach us this but the day-in day-out walk into a life filled with prayer and a sacramental community (which we are still trying to imagine)? It is in the doing that the mysteries become more familiar, while remaining deeply opaque. This kind of knowledge does not just come via teaching alone but by exploring the formative practices of the faith. Think of the "gnosis" that a couple in the trenches of a 50-year-old marriage has that a newlywed couple does not--even if that couple has an PHD in family dynamics.

May this year of vowed-living make us humble, submitted, transformed with genuine esoteric knowledge--sanctified Gnostics.

Praying with Sacramental Imagination

Remember that a sacramental imagination (over against a Protestant imagination) refocuses the "agent" of activity from us (the participating humans) to God. We pray but we don't trust the patterns of the prayers we pray. We simply present ourselves to God (Rom 12:1 style) in the Offices we pray and trust that God is acting in and through us. Sometimes we "sense" that emotionally, other times we don't. But what is true in either case is that over time, as we look back, we become aware that a transformation is occurring in us and (by faith) in the world surrounding us. This higher view is where we are motivated the most to continue in our Vow.

Fasting

Remember that one of the values we embrace in the Order is fasting. Though the Bible never commands us to do so, Jesus said, "when you fast," not "if you fast." He seems to presume that fasting would be a part of our spiritual lives. The uptick of fasting is that it empties us in a way that can remind us that God wants to fill us. 

Try a skipping one meal, or do a 24 hour period of abstinence beginning from dusk to dusk, or a 12 hour fast from dawn to dusk...or whatever. But try something.

Fasting is a great way to slow down our lives and make us more available to God. Richard Foster wrote:

"Fasting reveals the things that control us."

It is a great way to look under the "hood" of our souls.