Spiritual Hiccups - The Secret of Life

Last week an editorial by David Brooks entitled "It's Not about You" ran in The New York Times.  In it Brooks lamented how current graduates are sent out into the world with commencement speakers encouraging them to "find their passion" and "pursue their dreams." He notes, "Today’s grads enter a cultural climate that preaches the self as the center of a life. But, of course, as they age, they’ll discover that the tasks of a life are at the center."  He ends the piece with, "The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself."  Sounds familiar.

Brooks connects our current, cultural climate to "baby-boomer theology," and such baby-boomer self absorption often times works its way into to my generation's attempts to be "spiritual."  There is much fascination with going inward, deeper into the self.  And while I think this a vital component of the spiritual life, it is no end in itself.

One of today's morning psalms, Psalm 147, sings God's praises.  It does so by rattling off a long list of the things God does, and almost all of these are directed toward the care and nurture of others.  God heals the brokenhearted, lifts up the downtrodden, sends rain to the earth, and feeds the wild animals.  Even the negative activity of casting down the wicked is a way of caring for those who are oppressed and exploited.  In both Psalm 99 and 147, God's greatness is displayed in God's graciousness and God's love of justice.  Throughout the Old Testament, God is revered as one slow to anger, abounding in mercy and steadfast love. 

I had a seminary professor who used to speak of the difference between us and God being that we tend to be grasping and constricting.  (He would take his open arms and clutch them to his chest.)  But God, on the other hand, is always going out from Godself in expansive, self giving love.  (He would then spread his arms out as wide as they would go.) 

It seems to me that we become most fully human, that the image of God in us becomes most visible, when we discover this "secret" that my professor talked about and David Brooks writes about.  Only when life responds to the needs of others, only when it reaches out from self, only when we lose ourselves in our callings, do we find our deepest, truest humanity.

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