Last Friday M emphasized why we needed to layer on our life map (we are in chapter six of Margaret Silf's Landmarks) the moods and feelings we felt as we experienced consolation and desolation in the past for emotions are among life's most powerful drivers to action or inaction.
Emotions such as fear can override reason and will and cause us to act in ways where there is a disconnect or disintegration among our reason, will and emotion, showing up a personal compass that is wonky. That old chestnut from Saint Paul about not understanding what he does - for what I want to do I do not do and what I hate I do - features hugely here.
It was interesting that she brought this up for I have been feeling very stuck in a pattern of behaviour lately and been reflecting on what I can do about it to reprogramme my self to unite both desire and action.
I realized that there was a two-year period of desolation in my late teens that even now has a huge impact on how I view myself and how I react to situations and people around me. When I experience rejection, I run away and I shut down. I get very pessimistic and I give up easily. At times, I don't even try - out of my fear of failure.
All this paralysis does is paint the labels I had placed on myself long ago in fresh neon colours that shriek words like useless, unattractive, unlikeable, ugly and unloveable, a big fat zero in life.
I forget all my accomplishments and discount all my achievements. I mistrust the affirmations I have received and I doubt my gifts and talents. The inner awkward and ineffectual teenager rules my psyche and my life.
But today I was reminded that I can change history. I can wrest control from the old me and become this powerful woman that in many way I already am, it's just that I do not know it and therefore remain stymied in the mud of self-doubt like a statue rooted to the ground.
In the Gospel today, Jesus defines working for God or doing God's work as simply believing in the one whom He has sent: Jesus himself who is the true bread that gives life to the world.
As I have consciously pledged my life to Jesus, and been living out my faith in fairly radical ways especially in these last nine years, I HAVE become that fearless, untiring pilgrim on the road - I just happen to be taking slight detours here and there...
This was revealed to me in a conversation I was having with P over coffee this afternoon for we were comparing lives and it struck me that I knew where I was going and I was very at peace with my "mission" in life, whereas he was quite miserable and clueless as to what he should do next. It took all my inner reserve not to jump up and shout at him, "Jesus is the way!" thereby startling him, but truly I am grateful for the living faith that centres me.
To get back to that life-changing moment I had this morning, it comes from the words Saint Paul uttered to the Ephesians:
Your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution so that you can put on the new self that has been created in God’s way, in the goodness and holiness of the truth.
Thank the Lord for the wisdom of saints, saints who may have had chequered pasts but did not let that stop them from being the great men and women they were. A greatness that comes from living in the truth of God's love and living out that truth to others.
So, here I am, faced with the opportunity of a workweek that promises me time to do the things I have not been doing. I pray for the ability to go beyond my past desolation to work on believing in myself and my abilities so that I become the person that, thus far, I have only been dreaming of becoming; to make revolution a reality.
As tomorrow is the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, this week's intention of mine is a fitting one.
Emotions such as fear can override reason and will and cause us to act in ways where there is a disconnect or disintegration among our reason, will and emotion, showing up a personal compass that is wonky. That old chestnut from Saint Paul about not understanding what he does - for what I want to do I do not do and what I hate I do - features hugely here.
It was interesting that she brought this up for I have been feeling very stuck in a pattern of behaviour lately and been reflecting on what I can do about it to reprogramme my self to unite both desire and action.
I realized that there was a two-year period of desolation in my late teens that even now has a huge impact on how I view myself and how I react to situations and people around me. When I experience rejection, I run away and I shut down. I get very pessimistic and I give up easily. At times, I don't even try - out of my fear of failure.
All this paralysis does is paint the labels I had placed on myself long ago in fresh neon colours that shriek words like useless, unattractive, unlikeable, ugly and unloveable, a big fat zero in life.
I forget all my accomplishments and discount all my achievements. I mistrust the affirmations I have received and I doubt my gifts and talents. The inner awkward and ineffectual teenager rules my psyche and my life.
But today I was reminded that I can change history. I can wrest control from the old me and become this powerful woman that in many way I already am, it's just that I do not know it and therefore remain stymied in the mud of self-doubt like a statue rooted to the ground.
In the Gospel today, Jesus defines working for God or doing God's work as simply believing in the one whom He has sent: Jesus himself who is the true bread that gives life to the world.
As I have consciously pledged my life to Jesus, and been living out my faith in fairly radical ways especially in these last nine years, I HAVE become that fearless, untiring pilgrim on the road - I just happen to be taking slight detours here and there...
This was revealed to me in a conversation I was having with P over coffee this afternoon for we were comparing lives and it struck me that I knew where I was going and I was very at peace with my "mission" in life, whereas he was quite miserable and clueless as to what he should do next. It took all my inner reserve not to jump up and shout at him, "Jesus is the way!" thereby startling him, but truly I am grateful for the living faith that centres me.
To get back to that life-changing moment I had this morning, it comes from the words Saint Paul uttered to the Ephesians:
Your mind must be renewed by a spiritual revolution so that you can put on the new self that has been created in God’s way, in the goodness and holiness of the truth.
Thank the Lord for the wisdom of saints, saints who may have had chequered pasts but did not let that stop them from being the great men and women they were. A greatness that comes from living in the truth of God's love and living out that truth to others.
So, here I am, faced with the opportunity of a workweek that promises me time to do the things I have not been doing. I pray for the ability to go beyond my past desolation to work on believing in myself and my abilities so that I become the person that, thus far, I have only been dreaming of becoming; to make revolution a reality.
As tomorrow is the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, this week's intention of mine is a fitting one.
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