Life of the beloved (1)

Just finished rereading Nouwen' s"Life of the Beloved". And in order to remind myself how to live in that posture of belovedness (more and more often), i summarized his thoughts in my journal.

Being the beloved is the origin and the fulfillment of the life of the spirit. It expresses the core truth of our existence; it is our deepest truth. The temptation for us is that of self-rejection. Even pride is a form of self-rejection, where we use self-inflation to mask our feelings of self rejection, unable to accept our real selves (with all our weaknesses and limitations) as loved by God.

Becoming the beloved is the great spiritual journey we have to make. Becoming the beloved means letting the truth of our belovedness become enfleshed in everything we think, say or do. This is a long and painful process of appropriation....that is, if we desire to become the beloved in the commonplaces of our daily existence. How do we live life as an increasing "Yes" to the truth of that belovedness?

Nouwen suggest that we grow attentive to the movements of the Spirit of love as it manifests in our daily struggles. The Spirit comes to us in the process of our being "taken, blessed, broken and given". We need to develop spiritual disciplines to identify these movements and respond to them....

Being taken (chosen)

"God's eyes of love have seen you as precious, unique, as of infinite beauty, as of eternal value." His is a compassionate choice, not one of comparing and competitiveness. He chooses each one, as special, not based on any merit of ours, but out of his gracious choice to love. To reclaim this truth we have to : keep unmasking the world about us for what it is, the world that compares and competes such that it is each one fighting for special recognition. We need to keep looking for people and places where the truth of our belovedness is spoken, where we are reminded of our deepest identity (now, this is easier said than done - in a world that identifies people based on performance, and even religious culture does this!) Another discipline is to celebrate our chosenness, responding to gratitude for all God's gifts, rather than growing bitter in enumerating our lacks and losses.

Three related spiritual disciplines - that I set before myself and hope to practice more and more often. I usually get trapped in the third area, where gratitude eludes me just because things are not as perfect as I think they should be.......may the Lord grant me freedom in this.