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Did you ever notice that Jesus does not tend to give what we would call "inspiring" or "motivational" talks? He is not a football coach, nor does he try to engage your will power as such. Your common Christian sense would deny this until you actually study his recorded Gospel messages, and see that it is factually true! Jesus is much more concerned about shaking your foundations, giving you an utterly alternative self image, world image, and God image, and thus reframing your entire reality. Mere inspiration can never do this.
If you depend on being emotionally inspired or newly motivated, you will need a new fix almost every day. If it is a true Gospel message, it will be more about regrounding, reshaping and redirecting you from your core. Thus the quintessential Lenten reading is Jesus' first public proclamation that we know of. In some ways, it summarizes everything he says: "Now is the time, God's reign is present, change your life, and believe some very good news" (Mark 1:15, my translation).
Yes, we do need an emotional charge to make most decisions, adopt specific behaviors, "give up candy for Lent," or make some changes in our life. But Jesus is not talking about changes. He is talking about change! Many changes might well be good and even needed, and surely some changes will result from any shaking of the foundations, but they are not what we mean by Biblical conversion or transformation ("changing the form itself"). These things do not change the seer as such, but only his or her acceptable self image -- and usually for a short while. It is the old and perennial problem of putting the cart before the horse, or thinking that lots of carts ("changes") will eventually create the horsepower. It never finally works.
Any appeal to will power, or even the presentation of some good new ideas, merely engages YOU, but at your present level of maturity and consciousness. Now YOU (in your old form!) try harder, think more or better, and do something different, but your YOU has not been changed in any substantial way. It is still "You" who try harder, think more or better, or do something different. Maybe this will get you into the right ball park for eventual and actual conversion, but in my experience, most people stay right where they are, and wait for the next motivational spiritual message. This is why so much organized religion is so ineffectual in actually changing people.
As the AA people say, religion usually depends far too much on "promotion instead of attraction." The old self needs constant promotional material to keep it going. The new self "hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3) is both attracted and attractive just by being itself. A transformed self engenders life from within, pulls life from without, and channels life in outer directions -- without "trying." The essential religious question is always this: "You must get your WHO right!" Who is the subject here? Who is doing the acting, the loving, the motivating, the repenting? Is "little ol' me" doing this or not doing this? All mature religion is somehow talking about finding your God self, your Christ self, your Buddha self, your Sufi dance. And when it happens, you know it was not a "change" after all, but a wondrous discovery and constant rediscovery of what was always true anyway.
After transformation one realizes that one is a participant! And always has been! It is being done unto me, through me, with me, and for me? Until we realize and act from this larger I AM, there has been no essential transformation, but only an accessorizing of the old outfit. For many of us, this change of form is summed up rather perfectly in Paul's oft quoted line "I live no longer my own life, but the life of Christ who lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). Choosing this or that religious form is often nothing more than a delay tactic avoiding our participation in a Ride that is already happening beneath, before, and beyond all of the forms, and this Ride is much larger than ME. Paul again says shortly thereafter, "It does not matter whether one is circumcised or not, what matters is that you become an altogether new creation" (Galatians 6:15).
The big rub is that to surrender my "singularity" (John 12:24) and fall into this "altogether new creation" will always feel like dying. How could it not? It is a dying of the self that we thought we were, but it is the only self that we knew until then. It will indeed be a "revolution of the mind" (Ephesians 4:23). Heart and body will soon follow.
This is the real "try harder" that applies to Lent, and its ultimate irony is that it is not a trying at all, but an ultimate surrendering, dying, and foundational letting go. You will not do it yourself, but it will be done unto you (Luke 1:38) by the events of your life. Such deep allowing is the most humiliating, sacrificial, and daily kind of trying! Pep talks seldom get you there, but the suffering of life and love itself will always get you there. Lent is just magnified and intensified life.
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That seems to be the big issue in American spirituality. Whether its the Secret, some prosperity gospel or Americanized version of Buddhism....we look for a spiritual fix, don't follow up with any of the work of transformaiton, and go to get that fix again. As I am writing this I realize that it is not just a religious issue. Even for those that are not religious there is the same tendency look for the quick anedote but not the treatment.
Just look at the political theater right now. We want simplistic quick answers but without commitment. Spirituality like most things take a daily practice. Sometimes you walk away with wonderful results but most often no real highs. But for me I have found that it centers me and that centering, that foundation is much more powerful than any high that I have received in previous religious encounters.
Many of us want the pep rally but not the daily walk. The honey moon without paying the mortgage and other mundane task. When Marx says "Religion is the opiate of the masses." I don't see it ,for me, so much as an attack on religion but rather how people treat it. For me growing up in revalistic fundamentalism it was more of a "cocaine of the masses."
What I find in Lent is a period of time, a walk, a journey, daily reflection, a desire to learn of the attachments my life has accumulated and the direct action to let go of them and simplfy. A commitment to life, my community my spirituality. A pathway not a doorway. discipline not fascination. As Trungpa said, "Enlightenment is better than Disneyland." Maybe not as exciting but longer lasting. Not something to point back to in the past but a continuance, a daily activity. And without the long lines, ticket prices and expensive meals.
You can have your Space Mountain. I'll take transformation. But what do I know. I'm still walking this journey.
Live it.
There are at least two verses which refer to giving up your relatives to death. My experience with this concept has been that you are in a situation witnessing anger and judgement under God and there are other people involved. You hear them question Jesus, who is wondering if they are worthy of being here...and you are made to remind them that you have offered yourself up to God to take if he must..as unwilling as you are to leave
and that you have ALSO offered up your family, at this time of knowledge and communion with God and Jesus, to allow them to be given completely to God.
It does not mean that they will die...it means that you see God as the only force on earth who should be permitted to decide on life or death.
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I've read the AA materials more than once, and as far as I can recall, they don't say that at all. They are studiously neutral on the subject of religion as such.
What they do say is that they base their own work on attraction rather than promotion.
I wonder why you would feel the need to misrepresent their teachings so blatantly. Have you given up truth telling for Lent this year?
"Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films."
Now that I have posted it, I feel I need to explain it. You will never hear celebrity A, or politician B or even citizen C stand up in front of a camera, microphone or reporter and state their affiliation with AA. Nor will you hear an advertisement. Treatment centers do run advertisements but they are not AA. People will inevidably fail, organisations will make false promises. AA will endure. It is no doubt a bit deeper than that, but you can get the idea.
Your correction was just about as wrong as his assertion. No big deal. Can you cut him some slack? Cool... if you do. No problem if you dont. Best wishes and God Bless.
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No, my correction was as right as his assertion was wrong.
And yes, I could cut him some slack, if he would step up and correct himself and his mistake.
But I see that, several days after I've written this, he has not done so.
Now, I have to say: This kind of behavior is really all too common in the Catholic clergy - and not merely about relatively trivial issues such as this. Their handling of the problems of child abuse - not just in the US but around the world - is a recent example of the lack of anything resembling integrity and truth telling in the Catholic hierarchy.
I could give countless other examples of this, but I only get 250 words.
When I placed myself in God's hands, He led me to Catholicism through a very dear friend. The peace of change is indescribable.
Sorry... couldnt let your comment go so easily. The journey is just as much a part of you as the solution. I feel you have regrets in your comment. Please Dont! The peace you have found is wonderful.
I needed every drink I ever took. I can not say alcohol was the root of my evils. It was my own mind that took me to some deep dark places.. alcohol was merely the vehical I chose. Without going through EVERYTHING I went through, I would not have the peace of mind I have today. I can wish things were different.... but that would not change a thing. I was blessed with the path that was able to take.
http://www.cacradicalgrace.org/richard-rohr/dailymeditations
good luck, hariaum