I feel happy...and hopeful

This morning I woke up feeling happy...even now the mood holds. I am listening to a combination of old Motown and RnB...still wearing my flannel pjs. P has given up the battle and has gone back to bed. M is reading. R, A and B are all at school. The lights are dim and I have no pressing demands.

I was thinking yesterday about relationship. I think that naturally we do not seek out deep and intimate relationship with other human beings, but we long for them. But I think that we are made to be in deep and intimate relationship...these are the kind of relationships that are ultimately satisfying and uncompromisingly safe.

Everything in culture mitigates against meaningful relationship...busy lives, social taboos, fear of vulnerability... I think you might be able to say that these things are cultural universals that keep us from each other. What each culture looks like and expects might be vastly different; however we are programmed to hide our weakness and pain. We all suffer at some time with a deep fear of being exposed and we have a few options to confront that fear. Some of us might ignore it...some of us might construct a life to keep ourselves safe and others of us rush into it battling the fear. I think we are called to overcome fear...even the fears that no one else could possibly see.

I think that I lived enslaved of fear for a long time. I was meticulous about keeping the facade of 'everything is alright' without thinking that freedom was possible. As I have been reading Henri Nouwen's (http://www.henrinouwen.org/) The Way of the Heart, I have been challenged to not run from the things stored in the dark corners of my heart, but to let the Light expose them. He clearly differentiates the pursuit of privacy from the pursuit of solitude. Where privacy is the place of nurturing the self...a therapeutic place we go to garner strength to face the challenges of life; solitude is the furnace of transformation where we go to face our false self...a place of seeing ourselves stripped and needy where we can met God in our naked shame.

In this book Nouwen refers to the teachings of the Desert Fathers; not that he is advocating a life of cloistering or asceticism, but that we can learn the principles of confronting our false selves and engage the world around us as more accurate representatives of Christ. What has challenged me has been the passion with which they pursued knowledge of their false selves so that they could then die to themselves and be reborn yielded fully to the call of God.

Nouwen writes: The task is to persevere in my solitude, to stay in my cell until all my seductive visitors ( mental, spiritual and other distractions) get tired of pounding on my door and leave me alone. The "Isenheim Altar" painted by Grunewald(see right) shows with frightening realism the ugly faces of the many demons who tempted Anthony ( an early Desert Father)in his solitude. The struggle is real because the danger is real. It is the danger of living the whole of our life as one long defense against the reality of our condition, one restless effort to convince ourselves of our virtuousness. Yet, Jesus "did not come to call the virtuous, but sinners" ( Matthew 9:13).

As strange as this might seem it gives me hope...hope that I can enter into that place where I see myself as I am...my fears, weaknesses and sins exposed...so that I can then fully experience that feeling of being made clean and set free. The thing is that I currently believe that I stand forgiven and accepted by my Maker. But I know that I do not walk in that place of full surrender, and that is my goal...to be yielded to the one who made me, knows me and loves me best.

So how do this tie into the ideas of relationship? The thing is that if we could live like we believe, truly believe that we are accepted. Then we will be less bound by the approval, affirmation or judgement of those around us. If we are less bound by 'what others think' then we are more free to be who we are. The more free we are in who we are, the more we encourage others to enter into that same freedom and the more intimate relationships we can be part of. Where fear and hidden lives teach others to live with fear and with a hidden life; a life of freedom tangibly demonstrates to others that fear doesn't have to rule and in nakedness is a freedom that can be sought.

Not that I have achieved this, but when I think about my future this is what I long for. To be able to walk in freedom because I have nothing to hide and nothing to fear.