Driven
when I would crest that hill of West Seattle and descend right into that Puget Sound. Breath-taking. Driving was heaven- and a perfect metaphor for how I was living my life.
My spiritual director asked me once, “So, where is God?” “Right here,” I’ld say, “by my side.” “Can you let go of the wheel and let God drive?” I tilted, imagining my swerve, rolling into a ditch. I had no idea that I had a death grip on that wheel. “So,” she said, “What’s underneath that grip?”
My grip was driving me anywhere and everywhere I wanted to go, avoiding my own crash and burn, evidently- NOT.
It feels like the drive for bigger, better, more in the Gospel today. Gripping, hoarding, possessing, obsessing, addicting – the “disordered attachments,” Ignatius calls them, the personal entrapment designed for each one of us.
Riches, pride, honor: those are the big ones, according to Ignatius, who names them in the Exercises themselves. They must have been big for him, too. As well as in Jesus’ day, when power and prestige were more important than food itself. It’s a human condition: creating a sense of separation and independence, of doing things FOR ourselves and others, keeping us from being poor and away from the poor, from being dependent on, relying on anything and anybody. And it’s so easily understood in this hard-wired culture of being upwardly mobile. Money-power-prestige – it talks to us all the time, pulling us into the center of things.
It’s a voice that has a grip on me: “You’re the one!” “Success, for me, my husband! My daughters!” “Facebook followers!” “More likes!” …“Be like the rest of us!” “Then you’ll eat, drink and be merry!”
You can feel it, I bet. For me, the grip can be a short, anxious breath. Sometimes, it comes on like a heavy, suffocating blanket of social shame. (Where do you feel it? Or, is it just me) To never get enough, have enough, be enough or pile up enough: It drives my anxiety, possessed me, I am enslaved.
And it blocks me from seeing myself as Jesus sees me: the REALS! ME: vulnerable, doubting, dissatisfied, (at times) miserable – (at times) needy, incomplete, unable to care for myself, holding onto everything I have, at risk of being downwardly mobile. We are called to re-wire.
And inheritance? That shields me and my loved ones from their suffering?
In his wonderful little book, The Poverty of Spirit. Johannes Metz teaches that at the center of our beings, in our very selves, lies a “secret dowry of our existence.” Our relationship, our innate treasure, our only treasure, our inheritance.
And becoming ourselves, more and more of this intangible mystery of being who we really are? It is difficult. Being open-hearted? It comes with costs of being vulnerable and suffering. But what it means to be human, to be rich with what matters? Now THAT is heaven: that is, being with God, forever and right now.
To forget about ourselves, to let go of the wheel and get out of the way? Letting God do what God wants, in us? NOT so easy. But in prayer, we grow aware of someone else, a God that wants to bring us so close that we glow with greatness– who says bring it, all of it, even that poverty of yours, that unworthiness, neediness and misery. It belongs with me. Lemme drive! Take a load off, enjoy your freedom, and Rest.
Each time we feel that tug, notice our grip and drive, experience the struggle – when our heart loves, hurts, or breaks open; when we name our intentions or our deepest and most earnest desires, we hear the Call of Jesus that reminds us of our inheritance- to listen, to let go, make room for ourselves and our beating, living, loving hearts - to be freed up from our grip and drive so we can become more of our living, loving selves.
Someone in the crowd said to Jesus,
“Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me.”
He replied to him,
“Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?”
Then he said to the crowd,
“Take care to guard against all greed,
for though one may be rich,
one’s life does not consist of possessions.”
Then he told them a parable.
“There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest.
He asked himself, ‘What shall I do,
for I do not have space to store my harvest?’
And he said, ‘This is what I shall do:
I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.
There I shall store all my grain and other goods
and I shall say to myself, “Now as for you,
you have so many good things stored up for many years,
rest, eat, drink, be merry!”’
But God said to him,
‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you;
and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’
Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves
but are not rich in what matters to God.”