Mtr Taylor Devine

Dear Friend,

I was reading one of those books that made me think, "I have heard most of this before, but I am glad I am hearing it again." It is rare that I read a book about Christian practices where this isn't a thought, but I rarely put them down in favor of something I've never heard of. You may have a genre that is the same for you, that is refreshing, re-aligning, recommitting. Perhaps especially with Christian practices, the sameness emerges. There may be new things to worry about but humans are still sinful, God is still God, and we still seek each other. The practices that have supporting Christians in community have not altogether changed, there is no "hack" for this work. Prayer, worship, and service are still our callings.

But you are always the same,
and your years will never end.
-Psalm 102: 27

Despite the sameness, I would not call any of this boring. On the contrary, it seems that everyday there is a new occasion where we need a reminder of who God is and who we are. The author of this book, Christopher Martin, reflects on a time when he could sense something wasn't right in the way he was relating to others, and the knowledge he had to relearn, and I am sure, relearn again:

I hadn't yet learned that I am lovable just as I was made. As a result, I was often driven to try to be the person others wanted me to be. I held onto the idea that others wished I was someone else: more charming and sociable, less intellectual and passionate. I believed my rival had those qualities, and it ate me up that I lacked them. My envy led me to believe things that were simply false. I was caught in a trap, too dependent on what others thought of me. The primary sin in all this sprang from my unarticulated expectation that I was going to be loved by others as though I was the most important person in the world. I believed I needed to be superior, assuming all possible gifts, in order to be fully loved. Words from the poet WH Auden capture so much of what drove me at the time. He says that the error in each man and woman "Comes from what it cannot have/not universal love/but to be loved alone."

His experience of this particular kind of self-involvement is probably not foreign to you, I know it is not foreign to me. You may have different patterns than the author, where you must again realize where you are and try to return to that place of the love and peace of God. Knowing this and finding ways to turn again is part of that same work all of us must do. Relearning from where our dignity comes, "embracing our own humble yet beautiful identity as an ordinary human being," is part of this returning, beginning again to seek God from where we are and as the people we are.

In Christ,
Mtr. Taylor

(Christopher H. Martin, The Restoration Project, p.106-107, 108)