I have wrestled with the dilemma of being a dreamer, a
visionary, a goal oriented purpose driven individual.
The dilemma exists in understanding my life in Christ in
terms of my goals and purpose, perhaps even “my calling”, which OF COURSE (said
with a tinge of sarcasm) are for Christ’s Sake……right?
This is sticky….I get it….I wrestle with this….but, I
believe there lies something deeper that penetrates beyond the seemingly good
intention, to the very core of our soul.
We long to fill what has often been called a “hole in our
heart” with something.
For those of us dreamers, I have become convinced that we
seek to fill that “hole in our heart” not WITH Christ….(dramatic pause)….. but
with Our Goals, Our Dreams, Our Purpose, Our Calling which we truly and
sincerely believe we are doing FOR Christ.
If I have lost you….perhaps you don’t have this sickness,
and thank God….if you are hanging with my struggle, than tarry a bit.
There is a message that has been acquired and thoroughly “Christianized”
in our American Culture.
Perhaps the following slogans summarize it:
1 1. Be all that you can be
2. Follow your Dreams
3. Live a Purpose Driven Life
4. Believe in Yourself
5. Make the World a Better Place
Please let me interject that the work ethic and discipline
of those who strive towards such mantras is honorable and necessary….
But many of us
dreamers have become strugglers.
We have begun to realize that the aspiration to “follow our
dreams” is an insatiable appetite, The
need to pursue “my calling” an avaricious desire, and the need to “accomplish
our goals” a 2 mile train that rolls over anything and anyone in its path.
“For, after all, you do grow up, you
do outgrow your ideals, which turn to dust and ashes, which are shattered into
fragments; and if you have no other life, you just have to build one up out of
these fragments. And all the time your soul is craving and longing for
something else. And in vain does the dreamer rummage about in his old dreams,
raking them over as though they were a heap of cinders, looking in these cinders for some spark, however tiny, to fan it into a
flame so as to warm his chilled blood by it and revive in it all that he held
so dear before, all that touched his heart, that made his blood course through
his veins, that drew tears from his eyes, and that so splendidly deceived him!”
- Dostoevsky
And to those
of us who struggle, we struggle because we long to be satisfied, and we can’t
rest till we find satisfaction. Something
innately in us needs to keep searching and fighting because we know that there
is more and something within us cannot rest.
So “like a
dog to his vomit” we return again and again to our dreams, our goals, our
vision, our calling, to warm our “chilled
blood” and find satisfaction……..and we exhaust ourselves only to find we’ve
been deceived again.
“There
is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.”
-
Proverbs 14:12
The difficulty of the deception is equaled only by the paradoxy
of the solution for we cannot simply wrap our minds around the solution.
For the struggler, we need to “Know”, not just “Know About”,
and therefore we must try again and again……..but there is a path that we don’t
want to believe is true, because frankly, it means to give up control.
"The
goal of human freedom is not in freedom itself, nor it is in man, but in God.
By giving man freedom, God has yielded to man a piece of His Divine authority,
but with the intention that man himself would voluntarily bring it as a
sacrifice to God, a most perfect offering."
- St. Theophan the Recluse
- St. Theophan the Recluse
We wander about lost and searching when all the time Life is
offered to us…right here, right now, in the midst of this very moment. In fact the only place we will ever find life
and Life to the Full, is in this moment.
If St. Theophan is right, and I would say that he is right,
then the path to life may just lead us to offer Our Dreams, Our Goals, Our
Vision, Our Perceived Calling, Our Plans to God as…. “ a most perfect offering”.
It goes against everything we have thought to be true, and
yet if we can muster the courage to attempt this path we begin to develop a
taste…. as taste developed by experience and patience, through hardship and rocky
paths. A taste hard to describe in words,
and yet very real, and for the first time we are satisfied.
One of my favorite quotes from Fr. Thomas Hopko, was given
at the commencement address he gave at St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Seminary in May
of 2007. Speaking to the graduating
seminary class he says;
in language befitting a commencement
ceremony at an Orthodox graduate school of theology -- we come to see that true
theologia is always stavrologia. And real orthodoxia is always paradoxia. And that there is no theosis without
kenosis.
Theology is stavrology and Orthodoxy is
paradoxy: the almighty God reveals Himself as an infinitely humble, totally
self-emptying and absolutely ruthless and relentless lover of sinners. And men
and women made in His image and likeness must be the same. Thus we come to see
that as there is no resurrection without crucifixion, there is also no
sanctification without suffering, no glorification without humiliation; no
deification without degradation; and no life without death. We learn, in a
word, the truth of the early Christian hymn recorded in Holy Scripture:
If we have died with him, we shall also live
with him;
if we endure with him, we shall also reign with him;
if we deny him, he will also deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful -
for he cannot deny himself (2 Tim 2.11-13).
if we endure with him, we shall also reign with him;
if we deny him, he will also deny us;
if we are faithless, he remains faithful -
for he cannot deny himself (2 Tim 2.11-13).
According to the Gospel, therefore, those
who wish to be wise are constrained to be fools. Those who would be great
become small. Those who would be first put themselves last. Those who rule,
serve as slaves. Those who would be rich make themselves poor. Those who want
to be strong become weak. And those who desire to find and fulfill themselves
as persons deny and empty themselves for the sake of the Gospel. And, finally,
and most important of all, those who want really to live have really to die.
And it is
in this dying, that we strugglers become believers, because finally we “KNOW”
“If any man would come after me,
let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
Matthew
16:24
