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Holly Mueller invites you and me to contemplate our spiritual journey each week. This week she tweeted the theme: “Hypocrisy based on Matthew 7:1-5.” This verse is the one about taking the log out of your own eye before you notice the speck in someone else’s. Since I am already pretty good at beating myself up over the tiniest speck, I wasn’t looking forward to dealing with the proverbial plank.
I subscribe to a few inspiration emails. One is the Ennea-thought of the day which asks me to pay attention to the faults of my personality type. Some days this email just makes me mad. Others, I say “Oh, yeah, that,” and others days I carry the inspiration around with me. Especially when it is affirming. I liked May 11: “Remember, that at your best, you are profoundly creative and self-revealing.”
This one was not as affirming. “Remember that your key motivations are to be yourself, to find the meaning of your life, and to take care of your emotional needs before attending to anything else.” I like that I want to be myself and find meaning, but to meet my own emotional needs before anyone else’s seems a bit selfish. The speck is growing.
Then there’s this wonderful gift called Grace. God wants to be with us at every moment of the day. We cannot see this gift when our vision is clouded by specks. So I must not only be true to myself, but I must also be aware when myself is getting in the way of grace.
Holidays tend to be particularly difficult for my overly emotional self. I wallow in the should haves. Mother’s Day was becoming a sad day for me, and with no rhyme or reason. I am a mother of three beautiful young women. I have a mother who is healthy and wise and loving. I have a mother-in-law who claims me as her daughter and wants to spend time with me.
In the midst of my self-imposed sadness, I got a phone call from a friend who I haven’t talked to in a while. She’s been having a rough time. She lost her only son years ago and is currently going through a divorce. And here she was, calling me to wish me a happy Mother’s Day. I said, “This must be a tough day for you.”
She responded completely opposite of what I expected. (Who was I to call attention to that little speck?) She told me she was blessed to have been chosen to be a mother for 21 years. She was not mourning. She was rejoicing in God’s gift. May I be so wise as to rejoice in God’s ever-present grace each and every day.
From Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation
Reflections on the Teche 