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The Purpose Driven Life: Day 33

Posted on August 26, 2015 by Janet

In day 33, Warren tells us “how real servants act.” He says that “having the heart of a servant is…important…[because] God shaped you for service, not for self-centeredness.” He also says that “without a servant’s heart, you will be tempted to misuse your shape for personal gain…[and] as an excuse to exempt yourself from meeting some needs.”

Religion and spirituality aside, the notion of being “shaped for service” simply refers to our innate compassionate response to seeing someone (or an animal) in need. Where we see need, we instinctively want to help. If you doubt this, you need look no further than a child’s response to a person or an animal in need – unless the child has been severely abused or is literally sociopathic, the child will want to help someone they recognize as being in need. This, to me, is what it means to “have a servant’s heart.” There needn’t be anything religious or spiritual about it – it’s merely our inherent nature.

Seeing others in need can be painful, not least of all because we see our own neediness reflected back to us in their need and that scares us. Most of us are an illness, accident or layoff away from being in need of serious help ourselves. Just as we don’t like being faced with our own mortality, we don’t like being faced with our own neediness, either. Feeling helpless to do anything to address the need is even worse. Telling someone in genuine need of help that you literally cannot help them is heart-wrenching. To witness human, or animal, need (and be powerless to help) is anguish.

It’s so agonizing, in fact, that we’ve developed ingenious ways of distancing ourselves from those in need and avoiding seeing the need altogether so as not to feel the pain inherent in our compassion. We tell ourselves that the poor and homeless are weak, stupid, or lazy; that single mothers and adult victims of sexual assault should have known better; that drug addicts lack will power; and that those stigmatized as “criminals” get what they deserve. We tell ourselves that those in need of help are just taking advantage of those of us who made smarter life decisions.

Distancing ourselves in this way lets us see ourselves as different from them. This lets us blame them for their apparent lack and pretend we are not just as vulnerable to the same predicaments. “I’m not stupid, lazy or weak, so I never have to worry about being poor and homeless,” for example. “Look at what she was wearing – what did she expect?” “If they hadn’t broken the law, they wouldn’t be in jail.” “God helps those who help themselves.” By blaming those in need for their lack, we can express anger – a feeling we’re much more comfortable expressing – at the needy instead of sorrow at the lack.

How often do we respond to requests for help with anger and indignation, or perhaps arrogance and patronization, rather than compassion and sorrow? And then there’s the physical distance we create to avoid the pain of bearing witness to need, locking ourselves into gated communities where net worth is the greatest virtue, financial difficulty the greatest sin, everyone has enough money to buy whatever it is they need, and no one would ever dream of asking for help and being seen as needy or lacking in any way.

So, we’re torn between our compassion and our pain, our sorrow and our fear. Sometimes (or, perhaps, often), our fear and our pain win out as we seek to protect our self-image of being immune to such problems. But, our fear and our pain (and our anger) are merely testaments to the sorrow and compassion that lie at our core – to our “servant’s hearts.” The term “servant’s heart,” when stripped of its religious overtones, simply refers to our innate compassion toward others and our innate desire to help others in need. To respond to need with anything other than compassion – to respond with judgment, blame, or accusation, or to take advantage of another’s vulnerable position for personal “gain” (no real gain can be had by doing so – this is an illusion) – is to rob ourselves of joy. We make ourselves miserable when we look on those in need with anything other than compassion.

Again, it’s not about sacrificing personal desires today to get a divine attaboy when we die – it’s about whether we choose to create our own personal heaven or hell right here, right now, on earth. It’s about recognizing that, at our core, serving others brings us joy, and failing to do so brings us anguish.

If it brings us joy to serve others, why don’t more of us do more of it? Warren makes the astute observation that we fear we’re “not good enough.” We may feel that we can’t do enough, and so we choose to do nothing at all because what’s the point. We may feel overwhelmed that there is so much need and so little we can do about it – our ambitions and desires to help may exceed our resources. We may be afraid that others will ask for more than we can (or are willing) to give – if we offer an inch, they’ll push for a mile. And the reason that’s so scary is because it hurts to tell someone in need “I’m sorry, I can’t help you,” and we may even be afraid of their reaction if we have to say no, and so we avoid having to tell someone we can’t help them by avoiding them and their needs entirely.

Warren also reminds us, though, that “servants do their best with what they have.” No, I can’t solve the world’s problems. I probably can’t even solve the problems of needy person in front of me. But that doesn’t mean I can’t help them. A kind look and sympathetic ear may not pay the rent or bills, but if it’s the help you can offer, offer it for your own joy. And be grateful you have it to offer – not everyone does.

I definitely struggle with feeling inadequate to help, feeling guilty about not being able to help enough, and fearing I may be taken advantage of and/or waste my limited resources attending to others’ greed rather than genuine need. This often leaves me paralyzed, unwilling even to try to help, especially when it comes to strangers. And then I wonder why the gray cloud of depression ever lurks overhead. I grieve all the joy I deny myself in withholding my service from others, in allowing my fears to dictate my behavior.

TL;DR: No tl;dr for virtual book club posts.

Hungary/Travelogue

Holy Relics, Ancient Baths, Modern Distractions

Posted on August 22, 2015 by Janet

Thursday was the biggest holiday in Hungary – St. Stephen’s Day (Szent Istvan, in Hungarian). St. Stephen’s Day is a big celebration of St. Stephen, the patron Saint of Hungary and the first King of Hungary, who brought Christianity to the Hungarians. Nobody works (except for the restaurants and such) and they have a big outdoor food fair along the Buda side of the Danube below the Buda Castle. There’s a procession through the city, and they march the Holy right hand of St. Steven (a 1000 year-old relic and the actual right hand of Istvan Kiraly) from Buda, across the Chain Bridge, and into St. Stephen’s Basilica, where it is permanently housed. There’s a large mass at St. Stephen’s Basilica in the early evening and fireworks all along the Danube between the four central bridges at night.

St. Stephen's Day procession. — The procession of the Holy Dexter outside St. Stephen’s Basilica. Photo from www.budapestbylocals.com

The festivities continued into the next day, with the food fair open and the chain bridge closed to vehicle traffic. A girl I met through couchsurfing told me about a free jazz concert that was supposed to be going on that night, and we agreed to meet up for that. Unfortunately, the jazz concert turned out to be more like a cover band – ManDoki Soulmates – playing old rock hits from the 70s and 80s. The crowd was huge, though – it was like one of the bigger summer concerts at the Del Mar racetrack. I guess the drummer, Leslie Mandoki, is Hungarian and was vocal in the student opposition movement in the 1970’s before fleeing Hungary for Germany.

After the concert, a small group of us headed over to the Rudas thermal baths. Budapest has dozens of different bathhouses, but Rudas is significant because it has the oldest thermal baths in the city – over 500 years old. It sits on the Danube, just beneath Gellért Hill and, in addition to the thermal baths, has several swimming pools, including a rooftop pool overlooking the Danube River, the Elizabeth and Green bridges, and Pest. This was the nighttime view from this incredible rooftop pool:

Rudas Baths — Rudas rooftop pool. Photo credit: www.rudasfurdo.hu.

This morning was an Escape Room excursion. I had never heard of an Escape Room before, but these are huge in Budapest and growing in popularity in Europe in general. An Escape Room is basically an hour long puzzle – in the original incarnation, a group of people is locked into a room and has to figure out how to get out. However, Escape Rooms have started to develop with different objectives – ours today required us to find the antidote to a deadly virus.

Photo of the Code13 Escape Room from TripAdvisor.

Basically, the room was set up like an old timey office, and we had to snoop around looking in trash cans, through books and other places for clues as to where we might find keys or codes for unlocking the various locks. We had to solve puzzles using chemical equations and the periodic table, a chess board, cryptic handwritten notes, color codes, coordinated power switches, and I don’t remember what else. It was so much fun! And the design of the room and the various safes and lock boxes was unbelievably creative. It was incredibly detailed and complex, with plenty of false leads and wondering whether we were paying attention to the right information. I told my friends it felt like something out of the movie “A Beautiful Mind” – trying to connect dots I wasn’t entirely sure were supposed to connect. It was fun. I highly recommend it. My teammate from Iowa tells me they actually have one of these in Des Moines now. Have you heard of this? Do they have these elsewhere in the States and I’m just behind the times?

TL;DR: Took in ancient and contemporary Hungarian culture on this long holiday weekend.

Virtual Book Club

The Purpose Driven Life: Day 32

Posted on August 22, 2015 by Janet

When you attempt to serve God in ways you’re not shaped to serve, it feels like forcing a square peg into a round hole. It’s frustrating and produces limited results. It also wastes your time, your talent, and your energy.

Truth is truth, and you know it when you hear it. Take the notion of God out of the statement above, if you prefer: spending your days doing things that you’re not good at, don’t like doing, feel insignificant, and/or clash with your personality sucks. It is misery-inducing and produces a negative attitude in you that makes you toxic to yourself and others. How could you produce anything but limited results, whatever your measuring stick?

In day 32, Warren tells us to “discover your shape, learn to accept and enjoy it, and then develop it to its fullest potential.” He advises the best way to do this is to just try different things until you figure out what works – what you’re good at and what makes you happy. If you’re good at it and it brings you, and others, joy to do it, then you’ve discovered a calling.

This makes sense – who doesn’t want to spend their days doing what they’re good at and being joyful? And yet, as I observed in my last post, many of us turn away from what we’re good at and what brings us joy, or we never take up the search for these things in the first place. Why? What holds us back?

In day 30, I wrote about my own fear of not being good enough as something that has held me back in the past. Warren addresses this directly, advising us not to compare ourselves to others: “You will always be able to find someone who seems to be doing a better job than you and you will become discouraged.” Rather, we’re encouraged to take heart in knowing that God made us exactly the way we are to serve Him, so that comparisons are not only pointless (God made us different, and he did so on purpose) but illusory – faulty human judgment of the perfectly Divine.

Warren also warns us that those “who do not understand your shape for ministry will criticize you and try to get you to conform to what they think you should be doing. Ignore them.” Note that while we usually associate the term “ministry” with specifically religious activity, such as preaching and proselytizing, Warren uses the word to mean anything you do – dance, sing, write, write code, write music, play music, build robots, develop drugs, teach, coach, counsel – anything at all. I’ve written before, as well, about how deeply fearful I am of criticism and how much of my energy has been spent trying to evade or undo others’ criticism of me.

He draws on various stories and quotes to reinforce both these points about comparing and criticizing:

In all this comparing and grading and competing, they quite miss the point.

-Quoting 2 Corinthians

If my life is fruitless, it doesn’t matter who praises me, and if my life is fruitful, it doesn’t matter who criticizes me.

-Quoting John Bunyan

The salient point I see in Warren’s words and selected quotes on comparing and criticizing is staunch personal conviction in one’s purpose and works. Their conviction cannot be shaken by comparisons and criticisms because they know those judgments – whether they originate externally or within their own minds* – have no merit and no bearing on them. Comparisons and criticisms simply don’t matter.

This – conviction, belief in one’s works, invulnerability to what others think, confidence – wins every day of the week (regardless whether it is justified by real capability, competence or knowledge). There are healthy and unhealthy, productive and unproductive ways to express one’s confidence, but the old adage is nevertheless true that you have to believe in yourself before others will believe in you. Warren and those from who he draws his examples have this in spades.

And where does this unshakable personal conviction come from?

From their belief in God. Which perhaps makes “personal conviction” an inaccurate description of what they display – maybe a better term is “divine conviction.” In the case of Warren, the apostle Paul, and Warren’s other examples, they are invulnerable to human criticism because they believe their works are serving a higher purpose. They measure their success by the fruits of their works, not by the criticism or praise of others. Now I understand why so many of the early chapters of this book were devoted to emphasizing faith in the idea that we were created by God on purpose to serve Him – because this belief is what Warren’s conviction in his own purpose and works rests on.

Whether you share his religious beliefs or not, you have to be impressed by the strength of Warren’s conviction, his personal invulnerability to criticism by others. I am, at any rate. I’m always impressed by people who exhibit such unshakable strength and confidence in their path because I simply don’t have that. I never have. I am the proverbial dinghy, aimlessly listing about at sea, tossed hither and thither by every wave.

If believing that you were created by God to serve a higher purpose gives you the conviction to do what you’re good at and what brings you joy regardless what others think of you, then good for you. I envy you. Of course, I also know atheists who pursue what they’re good at and what brings them joy with equal strength and confidence and zero fucks given about what the haters think. I love these people.

Belief in God and in serving a higher power can provide one with the same conviction demonstrated by Warren and others of his ilk, but it is by no means a prerequisite. Regardless your personal religious beliefs, Warren’s advice for developing that conviction is sound:

Discover what you’re good at by trying out lots of different things
Do the things you’re good at and that bring joy to you (and to others)
Don’t compare yourself to others
Ignore the criticism of others

Again, nothing too groundbreaking in this advice. It’s all stuff I’m sure I’ve heard time and again in my life…and yet never really heard at all. Old truths breathe new life into us when we become receptive to knowing them.

*I would add a side note that many spiritual traditions do not distinguish between what originates externally and what originates internally – it all originates internally, and anything we see as external is something we first created in our own mind and then projected onto the world. In this particular case, if we perceive criticism or judgment from someone else, it is because we first criticized or judged ourselves, then projected our own criticism and judgment onto the world, which reflects it back to us. If that concept is too abstract to be palatable, it can effectively be reduced to the idea that the criticisms and judgments of others only have power over us if we believe them to be true ourselves – we become immune to the criticism of others immediately and only when we have become immune to our own self-criticism.

TL;DR: No tl;dr for virtual book club posts.

Virtual Book Club

The Purpose Driven Life: Day 31

Posted on August 20, 2015 by Janet

In day 31, Warren continues his discussion of how God SHAPEd us to serve Him with Abilities, Personality, and Experiences.

Warren asserts that God gave us our SHAPE – our spiritual gifts, affinities and passions, talents, personalities, and experiences – for a reason and that we will be most fruitful, successful, and fulfilled (in serving God) when we do things that draw on, and adhere to, our SHAPE. It turns out that Warren lumps the talents I talked about in day 30 – what you’re good at – into Abilities, so I’m still clueless as to what a spiritual gift is (though it’s clear you only get them when you “become a believer”).

So, using our gifts and talents to do things we like doing in service to others as befits our personality and draws on our experiences…Well, that’s downright logical. He makes it sound so easy. And yet so many people, myself included, are languishing in existence rather than thriving in life. Why? Are we not chasing our passions? Do we even know what our passions are? Are we not using or developing our talents? Are we not serving others? Are we in jobs that conflict with our personalities? What are we allowing to hold us back?

For me, it’s been loads of fear: fear that I’m not good enough and fear of destitution. I see such fear in many others – people who have traded what they love (or the pursuit of finding out what that is) for what someone else is willing to pay them (handsomely, in most cases) to do. We exchange life for an existence of creature comforts and the illusion of financial security. Then we develop what a friend recently described as ennui – that luxury psychological ailment to which anyone who has satisfied their basic security needs is prone. Not knowing what’s wrong with us or how to fix it, we turn to self-medication to either stimulate excitement or numb pain – alcohol, food, drugs, illicit sex, shoes, etc.

But, I digress…

Warren promises to show us how to discover and use our SHAPE in the next chapter, so maybe he’ll be able to answer some of these questions there. Maybe we’ll also find out what a spiritual gift is.

TL;DR: No tl;dr for virtual book club posts.

Virtual Book Club

The Purpose Driven Life: Day 30

Posted on August 19, 2015 by Janet

It would appear that we have begun a 3-day series in which Warren describes what it means to be SHAPEd (SHAPE is an acronym Warren created) by God and to use and discover our “SHAPE.” In day 30, Warren talks about the Spiritual gifts and Heart God gives us to serve Him.

Candidly, I don’t know what Warren mean when he says “spiritual gifts.” He never explains what a “spiritual gift” is, he only says that we each have them and they’ve been given us to “fulfill the purpose God has for us.” Maybe this is merely a talent – something we’re good at.

Heart refers to what we like, what we’re passionate about, what gets our motors running, where we find our flow.

Take out all references to God and Warren is basically saying: look at what you’re good at and look at what you like to do to find your purpose. Nothing too controversial here. Whether you believe these things come from a higher power or not, doing what we like and doing what we’re good at seems like pretty sound advice for figuring out our purpose. Warren adds that we must apply our affinities and abilities in the service of others and I agree with that – anything else is merely ego gratification and gets old fast.

Warren observed two phenomenon with regard to “gifts” that I really appreciated – gift-envy and gift-projection. Gift-envy is about wanting what someone else has – facility with language, connection with music, comprehension of advanced math, excellent memory, sophisticated palate, grace, etc. – and feeling lesser as a result of undervaluing our own gifts and talents relative to others’. Gift-projection is effectively about looking at someone else and thinking “I can do it, why can’t they?” You see this all the time in group projects at work and school – we resent and judge others for not having or demonstrating our own capabilities.

I thought these observations were wonderful reminders that our gifts are unique and we should neither squander them wishing we had someone else’s gifts, nor devalue our gifts by assuming others (should) have ours. (Nor devalue others’ gifts just because they are not our own).

I’ve never properly valued my own gifts. Growing up, I assumed everyone was smarter than I was. I assumed that if I could do it, anyone could do it – it couldn’t be that hard. I assumed there’d always be someone better than me at whatever I did, so I didn’t bother to pursue anything too seriously.

Which isn’t to say I didn’t excel, because I did – not in high school, but certainly in college. I was good at academic learning and I enjoyed the intellectual challenge. If one could get paid to be a professional student, I would be both happy and wealthy. Still…

I had chosen a narrow career field based on both my aptitude and my affinities. I believed there was a niche I could exploit, but faced discouragement early in my pursuit. In addition, the perceived pressure to take the first paying job I was offered led me into work which was neither what I liked nor what I was good at. 11 years later…

The pendulum has swung back hard in the other direction. One might call my decision to quit my job and hit the road an “over-correction.” Right now, I’m doing what I like. And, if you consider that I’m a decent dancer, then one might also say that I’m doing what I’m good at, though I haven’t been doing as much of that as I expected to when I embarked. Service? Not so much. Certainly, there’s a service aspect to this blog – I’m obviously not writing this for glory – but the intangible nature of the service aspect leaves it feeling a bit…incomplete.

So, I have a lot of work to do. This chapter was actually a great reminder of things to consider focusing on. Thanks, Rick!

TL;DR: No tl;dr for virtual book club posts.

Hungary/Travelogue

Good News/Bad News

Posted on August 18, 2015 by Janet

Good news: The oppressive heat that has gripped Budapest for the last 2 weeks has finally given way!

Bad news: The oppressive heat that has gripped Budapest for the last 2 weeks has given way to torrential downpours that have flooded streets, metro stations and basements, collapsed roads, and led to electricity outages lasting upwards of 24 hours so far. People have had to be rescued from stranded cars and one person was even electrocuted to death from the water flooding his basement. They’re saying Budapest received the equivalent of 1.5 months of rain just in yesterday’s storm.

My apartment building is one of the few along Andrassy Ut. that lost power. They say the power outages are due to basements being flooded and tripping the emergency “off” switch on the power supplies. This doesn’t surprise me, given that the courtyard my apartment sits in was flooded with up to two inches of standing water in some areas due to insufficient drainage. I was worried the apartment was going to flood. Fortunately, it did not. The power went out last night around 6:30-7pm. It’s not back on yet, nearly 24 hours later.

The rain was coming down in torrents when my power went out and the courtyard was flooded with standing water. At the time, I was getting ready for the weekly swing dance event here in Budapest. I was especially looking forward to getting out and dancing once the power went out, not wanting to sit alone in my dark apartment. The dance was, of course, cancelled. Still not wanting to sit alone in my dark apartment, I walked downstairs to the Georgian restaurant next door for some dinner. I’d been avoiding the place along the clearly logical argument that, since it’s so close to me, it can’t possibly be as good as the restaurants further down the street. At least the rain was good for something – the meal was amazing!

Since the power was still out, I walked across the street to a coffee shop for some coffee, dessert, and FREE WIFI! But alas, ‘twas just a pipe dream as only half of the wifi was functional – the internet was down due to the storm. I avoid using my data plan abroad because it’s highway robbery, but made an exception to check couchsurfing.com for anyone getting together in the area. I headed over to a bar where there was a group getting together and realized I recognized the place – I’d walked through here a few nights prior. It wasn’t a bar as much as collection of several bars in one area, with an upstairs and downstairs and several hundred people standing, sitting at tables and couches, hidden in nooks and crannies… All I had to go by was a guy wearing a hat with an “M” on it and “one girl in a jean jacket!” Imagine!

I surrendered to the craptacularness of it all and went home to bed. This morning, the power still being out, I took a shower by the light of a tiny flashlight (thankfully the hot water heater is gas-powered!), got dressed and headed out to a café for breakfast. I ate and studied my Hungarian notes before heading off to my lesson. Now I’m sitting in a coffee shop writing this post in Word because, though their wireless router is working, their internet is not! At least they have ample power plugs for charging my electronics…

I’m headed home soon and keeping my fingers crossed the power is back on. There’s another couchsurf meetup tonight, as well – maybe 2^nd time’s the charm?

Ooh look, the internet’s up for a minute! Publish, please!

TL;DR: Heat gives way to what the Hungarians are calling a “pokolvihar” – hellstorm!

Uncategorized

Rick Warren’s Ted Talk

Posted on August 16, 2015 by Janet

…is actually fantastic. You can watch it here:

And an equally compelling rebuttal:

(Glad to know disagreeing with Rick Warren is grounds for a TED speakership, btw :))

Here’s the entire playlist on spirituality which I am currently enjoying and in which these two talks are found:

http://www.ted.com/playlists/14/are_you_there_god

It seems I’m bound to give a play by play here. Lesley Hazelton’s talk “On Reading the Koran” is especially beautiful.

“…our minds are like sieves. So, religions are cultures of repetition – they circle the great truths again and again and again…” Alain De Botton, Atheism 2.0.

I’ve never heard Billy Graham talk before, but oh my God, how I cried…

Richard Dawkins:

So we’ve reached a truly remarkable situation: A grotesque mismatch between the American intelligentsia and the American electorate. A philosophical opinion about the nature of the universe which is held by the vast majority of top American scientists, and probably the majority of the intelligentsia generally, is so abhorrent to the American electorate that no candidate for popular election dare affirm it in public. If I’m right, this means that high office, in the greatest country in the world, is barred to the very people best qualified to hold it – the intelligentsia. Unless they are prepared to lie about their beliefs. To put it bluntly – American political opportunities are heavily loaded against those who are simultaneously intelligent and honest.

Dawkins, in his Ted talk, says “I suspect that the word ‘atheist’ itself contains, or remains, a stumbling block far out of proportion to what it actually means, and a stumbling block to people who otherwise might be happy to “out” themselves.” I feel the same way about the word “God” – we invest too much in this word, which is nothing more than a signpost.

Hungary/Travelogue

Gellért Hill

Posted on August 15, 2015 by Janet

I’m convinced that not only was Budapest built to be beautiful, it was constructed so that one might enjoy its beauty from every possible angle.

On Wednesday night, I went dancing at Gellért Hill. Gellért Hill is a big outdoor area/park where the Citadel and the Liberty Statue are located. There was a folk dance event being put on at an outdoor terrace there. There were probably 80-100 dancers plus 2-3 musicians. The dances were mostly all dances I had learned the week prior, which was nice. It was a good time.

The venue was about a 35 minute walk from my apartment down ritzy Vaci Ut. (upscale pedestrian shopping street) and across the white Elizabeth suspension bridge to the Buda side. Walking back down the hill toward home, I was graced with yet another gorgeous view of the city at night. I thought I would just walk straight home, but was tempted up the white stone steps that lead up the steep Danube face of the hill to the St. Gellért statue, thinking “what a beautiful view I would get if I only went a little higher…”

And I was right – I went a little higher and the view was amazing:

And I thought “but if I just go a little higher…” And I was right again. Every step up the hill brought another, unique view of this amazingly beautiful city.

So, up I climbed. Up and up and up until I hit the Citadel and the Liberty Statue at the top of the hill.

Liberty Statue at the top of Gellert Hill.

The paths were dark and I had to use the flashlight on my phone to light my path. This is the kind of thing my dad would kill me for – walking around alone in a park at night in the dark trying to get myself killed. There were plenty of other people out doing the same thing, though, and I ran across more than a few couples who were looking for privacy.

I was not disappointed when I got to the top of the hill:

Even though that shot represents the pinnacle – in both senses of the word – of the views I got that night, new gorgeous views kept assaulting me the whole way down the mountain. I would take a turn and be arrested by the beauty that struck me. For example, I turned my head to look down a dark staircase toward the Danube and was stopped in my tracks by this gorgeous view of the Green bridge framed by the trees lining the stairs:

Even when the tree-lined paths prevented a clear view of the city, just seeing the lights peaking through the trees alone was beautiful:

The paths were steep and the hike would have been challenging even during the day (and even if I hadn’t already been dancing for 3 hours), but it was so unbelievably worth it.

TL;DR: Seduced down a dark path to enjoy Budapest’s beauty once again.

Virtual Book Club

The Purpose Driven Life: Day 29

Posted on August 15, 2015 by Janet

This book…

I hate this book some days. The emphasis on fear and guilt and unworthiness and obligation – despite all protestations by the author to the contrary – all but obscure any nugget of truth or value that might be found here. I have to work so hard to dig through the layers of nonsense and purposefully and intentionally search for the gems of truth buried there…

Why does he makes it so hard?

In day 29, Warren says we are called to serve God. I am going to focus on three statements he makes that I found useful and thought-provoking.

We don’t serve God out of guilt or fear or even duty, but out of joy…

Take the idea of God out of it – this statement says that we are to be joyful. If we’re not joyful, we’re doing something wrong. That’s a matter of belief, and I’d like to believe that that’s true – that we’re meant for joy. Warren says that service – helping others – brings us joy. This has definitely been true for me in my life. What about in yours?

Study without service leads to spiritual stagnation.

This is where I’m at right now, and perhaps where I’ve been for a long time. Lots of study, no service (even working in a “helping” industry). To say I feel stagnant is an understatement.

Service is the pathway to real significance.

A bold assertion. Can you honestly say you’ve felt significant doing anything other than helping others?

Of course, all of this has a flip side – when was the last time you allowed anyone – anyone at all: your spouse, sibling, parent, pastor, friend – to help you? When was the last time you asked for help? Real help, with something you needed but couldn’t handle on your own or pay someone to do for you?

I almost never ask for help. I don’t even want to admit I need help, let alone ask for it. Most of the time, I don’t even know what help I need, that’s how disconnected I am from myself let alone my family and friends. The thought of asking for real help and being pitied or, worse, considered a burden or, even worse, told to “get a grip” or something similar are too devastating to consider. I’d literally rather suffer in silence.

When we’re ashamed to need help, when we don’t feel we deserve help (because, as I suspect is true for most of the people reading this blog, we’re educated, we make (well) above average salaries, and we’re white – what more help could we possibly need?!), when our financial success (and the independence it enables) leads to a lack of compassion for ourselves and others, that’s when it becomes the source of our own disconnection. And then we fill the hole with food, no food, exercise, TV, alcohol, drugs, sex, shoes, you-name-it.

How can you help anyone if you can’t accept help yourself? Trick question – you can’t. You can’t even really know what help is if you can’t receive it. You may know what charity is, and pity, and sorrow, and judgment, but not help. Not compassion. Not empathy.

The joy we deny ourselves when we cannot give help to, and receive help from, others is tragic.

TL;DR: No tl;dr for virtual book club posts.

Virtual Book Club

The Purpose Driven Life: Day 28

Posted on August 12, 2015 by Janet

In day 28, Warren tells us “there are no shortcuts to maturity.” You don’t become infinitely patient, compassionate, loving, faithful, honest, what-have-you just by deciding one day that you want to be. Before you can become what you want to be, you have to understand why you’re not that today. A lifetime of ingrained fear, shame, a sense of unworthiness and of incompleteness feed and make it difficult to give up our bad habits of defensiveness, self-pity, controlling, manipulating, anger, abuse and shaming others. It takes time, and it takes practice.

For example, I would like to be infinitely non-judgmental, but I am not that today. When reading this chapter, I got a great deal of satisfaction out of judging Warren for drawing an analogy between how Christ works in our lives and wartime tactics. He says “Christ invades our lives” at the time of conversion to Christianity and describes the pre-conversion experience as “Jesus saying, ‘Behold, I stand at the door and bomb!’” I had such a visceral reaction to this description. Who talks about a “God of love” then describes his tactics as war tactics? Who associates Jesus with bombing people, even figuratively? Who does this?! Can you even call yourself a Christian? And I know that sounds harsh, but don’t forget the Pope just recently said that if you work in the weapons industry in any capacity, you cannot call yourself a Christian.

On top of it, Warren had previously described God and Jesus thus:

God is not a cruel slave driver or a bully who uses brute force to coerce us into submission. He doesn’t try to break our will, but woos us to himself so that we might offer ourselves freely to him. God is a lover and a liberator, and surrendering to him brings freedom, not bondage. When we completely surrender ourselves to Jesus, we discover that he is not a tyrant, but a savior; not a boss, but a brother; not a dictator, but a friend.”

Not only was Warren describing Jesus as a warmonger, which I saw as absurd, he was contradicting himself, too. And I loved judging him for it.

Why?

Because we hate in others what deny in ourselves. Because we shame others for what we are ashamed of in ourselves.

What do you do when someone says something that doesn’t make sense to you? What if they openly contradict themselves? If you’re like me (or like most people, in my experience), you immediately dismiss that person as not knowing what they’re talking about. The logic goes something like “what you said doesn’t make any sense to me, therefore you don’t make any sense, therefore I’m not going to take you seriously.” In reality, dismissive behavior is less about the person being dismissed and more about the dismisser – dismissive behavior simply says “My mind is closed – I’m not open to hearing what you have to say.” It’s a defense mechanism from having to face your own shame and fear of being exactly that for which you are dismissing the other person.

Have you ever been dismissed out of hand like that? It’s a horrible experience. The person or group of people you’re talking to don’t bother to try to understand you or to help you understand them, they just write (and often laugh) you off. It makes you feel small and disrespected. At least, that’s how it makes me feel. I know some really amazing people who give two shits about being written off by others – the closed mind of others is their problem, not a reflection on the target of their derision.

Somewhere along the line, I developed a strong fear of, and aversion to, being dismissed by others. I have prided myself on my logic and rationality, and I have gone to extreme lengths to communicate better, more clearly, more exactly so that others will understand me and take me seriously (of course, there’s also the matter of whether they want to understand me, which is another issue entirely). The idea that someone might dismiss my thoughts and observations as illogical, absurd, or nonsensical is paralyzingly terrifying. The reason it’s terrifying is because a part of me believes that I deserve to be dismissed. That’s what shame is.

I don’t know why I belief that I deserve to be dismissed, but I’d bet money it starts in my childhood. That fear is what makes it so difficult to give up my judgmental habit. Because I believe that I deserve to be dismissed if I do or say something absurd, illogical or nonsensical, I project that onto others and I dismiss them as a way of distancing myself from their absurdity – by pointing out and dismissing someone else’s logical flaws, I can paint myself as perfectly logical and avoid the shame of being dismissed myself.

And it’s not just me. I see this behavior in so many of the people I know. If you’ve ever spent a lot of time with academics – especially in sciences or maths – or with engineers, you’ve definitely seen this dynamic play out over and over again. It’s a dog-eat-dog world we’ve created, y’all. And we do it to ourselves.

We shame others for what we are ashamed of in ourselves. Remember that the next time someone tries to make you feel ashamed about something (or the next time you try to shame someone else).

So, it takes time. It takes time to recognize the drivers behind our had habits – our fear and our shame. It takes time to get comfortable with confronting that fear and shame. It takes time before we can start to see that fear and shame at work in us in the present moment and to take back control. And it takes practice. What I just wrote above was an active practice in facing my fear and shame because what I really wanted to do was indulge (in the comfort and familiarity of) my judgmentalism.

Warren writes “While we worry about how fast we grow, God is concerned about how strong we grow. God views our lives from and for eternity, so he is never in a hurry…You can only give God as much of you as you understand at that moment. That’s okay.” I love this quote because it echoes every other spiritual guidance out there that tells us to be here now, to be present in the moment, not to worry about the past or the future but to focus on right now. When we get down on ourselves for be slow, for making the same mistakes over and over again, for having to learn the same lessons over and over again, it can be comforting to remind ourselves how far we’ve come. But it’s better to leave the past behind us and, instead of worrying about how many times we’ve failed, or congratulating ourselves on our progress, focus on who we want to be, and how we want to be, right here, right now, in this given moment.

Some other observations I found insightful:

We have a lot to unlearn.

Think about that statement – do you understand the gravity of it? All that stuff you learned growing up, but didn’t realize you learned it because no one “taught” it to you, it was just there, like air, and just like air, you breathed it all in without even realizing it – yeah, you have to unlearn that. A family member once said to me “the higher you climb, the harder you fall” in a well-intentioned effort to caution me against reaching too high. It was clear it had never occurred to them to question that belief. Maybe you learned that you had to be the best, and if you couldn’t be the best then you should quit. Maybe you learned that being wrong means being bad. Maybe you learned that men don’t cry. Maybe you learned that women shouldn’t compete with or challenge men. This is the kind of stuff we have to unlearn.

We are afraid to humbly face the truth about ourselves.

We all know this to be true, and if you don’t know this to be true, then you don’t know the truth about yourself and you’ve never tried to find it. Why are we afraid to face the truth about ourselves? Because

Growth is often painful and scary. There is no growth without change; there is no change without fear or loss; and there is no loss without pain. Every change involves a loss of some kind: You must let go of old ways in order to experience the new. We fear these losses, even if our old ways were self-defeating, because, like a worn out pair of shoes, they were at least comfortable and familiar.

I have felt this acutely in my life. I have been so afraid to let go of things I hated holding on to because I was afraid of what would come in to replace it. It’s scary. It’s irrational, but it’s really scary. This is one of those things you take on faith – you let go of something you just can’t hold on to anymore and you hope it works out for the best. And it does. Now you have a positive experience to refer back to the next time you’re confronted with making scary change. But it still takes faith. It always takes faith. But, little by little, it does get easier. Little by little.

TL;DR: No tl;dr for virtual book club posts.

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