Meditation for July 24, 2014

As it turns out, the topic of this first weekly meditation is ... that I'm having a really hard time starting these weekly meditations. It is a bizarre sort of fear or self-judgement that takes what should be a very simple thing for me (I have training and practice in writing religious things!) and turns it into an ordeal in my mind. A meditation every week? What if every single one is not brilliant or deeply spiritual? What if I write something downright silly or boring? Staring at my blank computer screen, I find myself fretting and wanting to put off starting this thing until I am sure I am ready, sure I will have the time and energy, sure it will be good enough. No, not just "good enough," but absolutely amazing!

My guess is that this line of thought is familiar to many of us. How often are we prevented from starting something new or trying something different because we are afraid of not being "good enough," not measuring up to some standard, or making a fool of ourselves? We are so quick to judge ourselves, so quick to move into a place of fear, so quick to assume that we will not measure up. And even worse, we so easily take this self-judgement, fear, and the self-condemnation and turn it outwards towards others.

God is not nearly as quick or eager to judge or condemn us, or others, as we are to judge or condemn ourselves and the people around us. The God of Love is not particularly interested in our human standards of "brilliant" and "amazing." God's ways are not our ways, and God does not calculate our achievements or our worth with the standards of measurement that we use to calculate our value and the value of others. God's ways - the ways of Love - defy our calculations and assessments, all of our "good common sense." They seem upside-down and foolish to us. God hardly seemed amazing - some would even say God made a fool of himself - in his birth as a vulnerable human infant, his life spent hanging around with the fools and outcasts of his community, and his shameful, disgraceful and demeaning death.

If we really trust in this God of Love, then we are freed to live into new possibilities without fear. We are free to be "holy fools," or "fools for Christ," as Paul put it. Not afraid to trust that what seems crazy, preposterous, silly or even impossible is in fact not only possible, but part of God's hope for us. Trusting that if we do screw up (as we humans often do) God "has our back" and we will not be crushed. The new possibilities opening before us could be something as simple as a little weekly writing project. Or, it could be something as amazing and incomprehensible as being freed to love - to love abundantly, fully, creatively and generously - without being held back or blocked by harsh, human measurements of value, freed from all of the fear that such calculus brings. Can you imagine?

The Rev. Amanda K. Gott

Grace & St. Peter's Episcopal Church

#meditation