The Slow Way: Nurturing the Good That Grows in You
This world, which runs on ego and fear, does its best to prevent us from honoring the bright spark of our true selves, the part of us that God has always dreamed we would become.
“Who has helped you love the good that grows in you?” -Fred Rogers
There’s an old story in the Jewish and Christian traditions, one we’ve told over and over to one another for thousands of years. It’s the story of a Divine One who created something when before there had been nothing, who was lit up with a creative energy that exploded into suns and moons and solid mass spinning in a gravity-free, oxygen-free, spacious place. That Creator spun the cosmic dust into solid rock mass, and lifted atmospheres into their gaseous places. And in one of these spinning masses of land and sea, that Divine Spirit sparked life – one-celled microcosmic creatures, then larger creatures. More and more complex and beautiful they became. Amphibians and Fish. Reptiles and Mammals. And finally, in this story, in a flourishing garden, where all was right and good, the Creator breathed life into human beings. Our bodies stood straight, exposing arms and legs and genitals. Hair sprouted from the tops of our heads, our necks sturdy. Our lips puckered. The thin curtain of our eyelashes fluttered up and down. We used tools and spoke words. We were curious and capable. We were relationally driven. And the Creator Spirit called us good.
There’s another story two chapters later in Genesis. In that story the good ones find themselves deceived by the idea that their Divine friend might have been withholding something from them. They discover in themselves a nugget of doubt in the goodness of God. Which is where their breaking begins. Once we humans got our minds filled up with the idea that God may not be good, that God may not have told us the truth, the garden we’d been safe in appeared dangerous. When we’re afraid we try to control. And the humans were afraid. As the story goes, they chose “knowledge of good and evil” over relationship with their Creator. Fear will trick you like that, so who can blame them?
What happened then? A popular telling of the story is called “original sin,” that our moral DNA was utterly mutated the day we chose knowledge over relationship. And now, no matter what we do, we can’t save ourselves from the evil that swirled into us, diluting the goodness that had once flourished inside our ancestors. Over time, only the darkness remained, passing itself from human to human, generation to generation.
I used to believe this. But I don't anymore. I don’t think sin is a birthright. I don’t think it is original to us at all. Don’t get me wrong, this world is a dumpster fire of hate and violence, greed and arrogance, exclusion and self-harm. Evil is in the air we breathe. But, that’s the thing. It’s in the air, not in us. God made us and called us good. Everything else — the evil, the hatred — is a lie we buy into from our earliest moments. Our egos tell us to be something we were never made to be. Our self-protective coverings insist that we can make ourselves into something valuable by rejecting the value of those around us. But none of that is true to the sacred center of us.
I think the story of the first humans is a story of our daily choices as much as it is a story about our origin. We were created with “original goodness.” That’s the first story we’re given. Every other choice away from the goodness of a shared relational connection with our Creator is a step away from the goodness that is our birthright. We are made for the good life, and this world, which runs on ego and fear, does its best to prevent us from honoring the bright spark of our true selves -– the part of us that God has always dreamed we would become.
Last week I went back to Matthew 5 with my middle and high school students at our church. What could Jesus possibly mean when he blesses those who are mistreated for doing good, when, as The Message says, “people put you down or throw you out or speak lies about you to discredit me. What it means is the truth is too close for comfort and they are uncomfortable.” This willingness to be mistreated for holding tight to the story Jesus is an invitation back to that original goodness, an invitation to radical love. That’s what Mark Scandrette teaches in his book The Ninefold Path of Jesus. He says that when Jesus invites his followers to die to themselves, to suffer the kind of mistreatment that brings the Beatitude-blessing, it is an invitation to let the small, terrified part of us die. Scandrette quotes 1 John 4 when he says that there is no fear in love. “Perfect love drives out fear.” It’s that kind of love — the perfect, radical love that Jesus is offering us — that allows us to let that small, fearful self in us die, so that the truer self can flourish.
I carried that conversation with me into this past week. On Instagram I saw somewhere (I can’t find it now) a quote from our friendly childhood neighbor Mr. Rogers: “Who has helped you love that good that grows in you?” And I’ve been dipping back into Parker Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you,” Palmer writes. “Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.”
Before you shrug that notion off as some sort of self-aggrandizing naval gazing, I wonder if you’ll consider what Palmer is actually saying. I think it’s close to what Jesus was getting at in his final blessing in his sermon in Matthew 5. Underneath the layers of what is often called “sin” — our ego, our hatred and violence, our belief that we must live by the world’s manipulations of power — is our original goodness, a sacred seed that tells us who God has always intended we be, the gifts and ways of being we have to offer the world.
There is no magic way to unpeel the onion layers of our false selves. But there is hope in knowing that underneath the unhealthy and hurtful patterns of behavior we often follow mindlessly, is a goodness planted by our Creator. That is where our life wants to speak to us about who we are, and who God dreams we will become, where Jesus invites us to let the parts of us that no longer serve us or our relationships die. Because underneath the untruth is a life that is beautifully, mysteriously good. What if recovering it is the journey of our lives?
A Slow Practice
In John Chapter 7, when Jesus is speaking in the Temple to a crowd that is not thoroughly convinced that he is up to any good, he says this: “ If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Rivers of living water will brim and spill out of the depths of anyone who believes in me this way.” (The Message)
Do you notice anything interesting about the waters in this verse? They’re flowing from inside the depths of the thirsty person. Jesus is saying he wants to heal our thirst by causing the water already within us to flow.
Today I want us to practice coming to the presence of Jesus, believing that the rivers of living water want to flow, that this promise of Jesus is a gift available for us now.
In her book Mindful Silence, Phileena Heurtz describes a prayer that I think will be helpful for us in the process of examining both our original goodness and what the writer of Hebrews called “the sin that so easily entangles.” (Hebrews 12:1) If Jesus says that somehow faith in him will open our deepest selves to the flow of living water, then maybe the darkness, hatred, and anti-love that entangles us is all an add-on, something we’ve breathed in, but not something that has to remain.
Heuertz invites her readers to practice welcoming prayer, something she attributes to Mary Mrozowski, of the organization Contemplative Outreach. Heuertz describes the prayer as “consenting to God’s healing presence and action in the ordinary activities of daily life.”
I want us to practice this act of consenting to God’s healing presence. There are three steps to this practice. First we feel. This might be easier for some of you than others. When I say feel I don’t just mean your emotions, I mean your body as well. Yesterday, as I moved from task to task experiencing overwhelm and refusing to stop to process that emotion, I felt a migraine spark in the back of my neck. I continued working. What I didn’t do was stop to feel what I was experiencing. The migraine took over. My natural inclination has always been to push through stress, but my body is inviting me to a better way, and I hope I will learn to listen.
What about you? What would it mean for you to stop and feel what you’re experiencing? To unpeel the onion layers of your ego or fear in order to sink down toward the living waters?
To practice this first step of feeling, sit still. If you can, allow yourself to feel your feet on the floor, your back against your chair. Breathe in and out. Now let yourself sink into the emotions, thoughts and sensations in your body. For our purposes today, I want you to pay special attention to the negative emotions, thoughts and sensations. The things that move through you that prevent you from experiencing peace or clarity or light.
Now, welcome God in the sensations, feelings, and thoughts. Do this by naming each of them and saying, “Welcome,” out loud.
Finally, you’re invited to let go of these layers in you that aren’t serving you. Name them one by one by praying, “I let go of the desire for ____.” Maybe your prayer is “I let go of the desire for security.” Or, “I let go of the desire for power and control.” My prayer after reflecting on yesterday’s stress-induced migraine was, “I let go of the need to prove myself good enough.”
After you work your way through these three steps, take some time for silence and reflection.
A List of Things:
I’ve been fascinated watching the outpouring of love and disdain for Queen Elizabeth on Instagram these past two days. I’ve never been an anglophile, my interest in the royal family not moving any further than fascination. But I do know the loss of the queen matters to a lot of people. My 80-year-old next door neighbor who moved to Jersey from England 55 years ago is one of them. She is heartbroken, which she told me on her walk around the neighborhood yesterday. I don’t know what that feels like, but I recognize it’s real. It’s also real that seeing this outpouring of love for the English monarchy is painful for those whose ancestors were abused by colonialism. That feeling has been shared strongly as well. I felt grateful to see Marcie at Black Coffee With White Friends address this yesterday with gentleness and wisdom.
This article in The New Yorker is about how the author’s late-in-life studies of mathematics led him to wonder about the reality of divinity. Fascinating.
This week on Instagram I read a poem from Natalie Diaz called “If I Should Come Upon Your House Lonely in the West Texas Desert,” and I can’t stop thinking about it.
Also, isn’t Mr. Rogers wonderful? Here’s the whole quote when he talked about the “good that grows” in us.
I will never forget, as a child, going to Catholic catechism class and being shown a picture of a black, dead rose, and told that was what my soul looked like, due to "original sin." I'm so grateful that my spiritual path has led me away from that concept.
Thank you so much for this beautiful piece. Many gems here!
I love how you challenge this creation story and state: We were created with “original goodness.”
How true it is.
This reminds me of Elizabeth Lesser’s book, Cassandra Speaks, where she explores how this story and others sets us up, especially us women, to be in a position of inferiority based on a false belief that we are inherently bad.
Your reframe is refreshing and so appreciated!