For
some reason, I used to think that as I got older, I would make less
mistakes. As it turns out, it seems I actually make MORE mistakes than
ever! Part of the reason, I realize, is because I currently put myself
"out there" into the world more than I used to. I have a greater number
of social connections, which results in a higher chance of making a
verbal blunder, "sticking my foot in my mouth," doing or saying
something that gets misinterpreted, hurting someone's feelings, or
misjudging what is needed in a situation, and then doing the exact
opposite instead.
Although it is tempting to try escaping ownership of the blunder by placing the blame elsewhere, when it comes right down to it, I know that I am the one who is at least partially in the wrong. However, today I received fresh light on the fact that admitting my fault is not necessarily as depressing as it seems at first to be. Lying on the ground while taking pictures, I recalled that many thinkers have noted the link between the word "humus" and "humility." When we admit that we did indeed make a mistake, we become "grounded" in the truth of the situation. And when that occurs, then our Source - the Beloved - is able to seed that ground with fresh opportunities for growth and goodness. When we finally admit our error, then a negative situation is transformed into one that can become fruitful in the good. This is, of course, something that can never occur when we decide instead to cycle endlessly around in the groundless "air" of self-justification and rationalization.
Thomas Merton puts it this way: "The victory of contemplative humility is the full acceptance of God's hidden action in the weakness and ordinariness and unsatisfactoriness of our own everyday lives. It is the acceptance of our own incompleteness, in order that He may make us complete in His own way. It is joy in our emptiness, which can only be filled by Him. It is peace in our own unfruitfulness which He Himself makes immensely fruitful without our being able to understand how it is done."
Merton reminds us that we "live then as a seed planted in the ground. As Christ said, the seed in the ground must die. To be as a seed in the ground of one's very life is to dissolve in that ground in order to become fruitful. But this fruitfulness is beyond any planning and any human understanding. To be 'fruitful' in this sense, one must forget every idea of fruitfulness or productivity, and merely BE. One's fruitfulness is at once an act of faith and an act of doubt: doubt of all that one has hitherto seen in oneself, and faith in what one cannot possibly imagine for oneself. The 'doubt' dissolves our ego-identity."
In fact, it sometimes seems that God even NEEDS our mistakes as a necessary condition for the revelation of SURPRISE at the fact that such blunders can turn - yet again - into something good. Meister Eckhart says that "God likes forgiving BIG sins more than small ones," perhaps because the big blunders contain the highest potential for a sense of awe, wonder and surprise to occur when we - together with God - watch spellbound as some new opportunity arises unexpectedly out of the very ground into which our own mistakes and shortcomings also dissolve!
Photo: Cottonwood leaf, red grass and ruddy cliffs at sunset, Lory State Park, CO, January 22, 2015
Although it is tempting to try escaping ownership of the blunder by placing the blame elsewhere, when it comes right down to it, I know that I am the one who is at least partially in the wrong. However, today I received fresh light on the fact that admitting my fault is not necessarily as depressing as it seems at first to be. Lying on the ground while taking pictures, I recalled that many thinkers have noted the link between the word "humus" and "humility." When we admit that we did indeed make a mistake, we become "grounded" in the truth of the situation. And when that occurs, then our Source - the Beloved - is able to seed that ground with fresh opportunities for growth and goodness. When we finally admit our error, then a negative situation is transformed into one that can become fruitful in the good. This is, of course, something that can never occur when we decide instead to cycle endlessly around in the groundless "air" of self-justification and rationalization.
Thomas Merton puts it this way: "The victory of contemplative humility is the full acceptance of God's hidden action in the weakness and ordinariness and unsatisfactoriness of our own everyday lives. It is the acceptance of our own incompleteness, in order that He may make us complete in His own way. It is joy in our emptiness, which can only be filled by Him. It is peace in our own unfruitfulness which He Himself makes immensely fruitful without our being able to understand how it is done."
Merton reminds us that we "live then as a seed planted in the ground. As Christ said, the seed in the ground must die. To be as a seed in the ground of one's very life is to dissolve in that ground in order to become fruitful. But this fruitfulness is beyond any planning and any human understanding. To be 'fruitful' in this sense, one must forget every idea of fruitfulness or productivity, and merely BE. One's fruitfulness is at once an act of faith and an act of doubt: doubt of all that one has hitherto seen in oneself, and faith in what one cannot possibly imagine for oneself. The 'doubt' dissolves our ego-identity."
In fact, it sometimes seems that God even NEEDS our mistakes as a necessary condition for the revelation of SURPRISE at the fact that such blunders can turn - yet again - into something good. Meister Eckhart says that "God likes forgiving BIG sins more than small ones," perhaps because the big blunders contain the highest potential for a sense of awe, wonder and surprise to occur when we - together with God - watch spellbound as some new opportunity arises unexpectedly out of the very ground into which our own mistakes and shortcomings also dissolve!
Photo: Cottonwood leaf, red grass and ruddy cliffs at sunset, Lory State Park, CO, January 22, 2015
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