Risking Life and Living Fully

It's taken me 40 years to get comfortable in my own skin. It's been a long process full of bad choices, dead ends, and stupid mistakes. Although there are some things I may regret, I 'm not sure I would change a thing.

When I first became a Christian I thought the spiritual life was additive. I needed to do more. More service. More church. More Bible. More worship. More knowledge. More thought. More tithing. More... Because these things, of course would make me a "better" person.

Looking back, I'm not sure what the "more" was fueled by. Perhaps illusions of perfection? Judging my insides by the outsides of others? Institutional standards and social expectations? Probably a combination of these and some issues to which I'm still blind. Nevertheless, while the intentions were good, the results were not. Underneath I maintaned a fairly constant low level of anxiety as I tried to be someone who I was not.

My take on spirituality is different these days. I see it and experience it as a subtractive process. Less trying and striving. Less organization. Fewer preconceived notions. Less social pressure. Less judgment. Less outside influence. As the minus signs multiply I find myself left with someone who is more authentically "me". Free to risk life, trusting God to work in all of my imperfections until, as Thomas Moore puts it, "they reveal the secret of my nature."

I'll finish with a couple quotes.

"He who would lead a Christlike life is he who is perfectly and absolutely himself." -Oscar Wilde

"A perfect person would be someone without blemish, but the perfected person is someone who has really lived. You can usually tell if a person has lived life fully, just as you can glimpse the hollowness in someone trying to be perfect. -Thomas Moore