Claim It

7 Aug

“There is something wonderfully bold and liberating about saying yes to our entire imperfect and messy life.”  ~ Tara Brach

I am a child of the 60’s and a teen of the 70’s.  There was much about “becoming who we are” when I was growing up.  We were just past the hippie generation of free love. “Sex, drugs, rock and roll” was still the mantra for many.  Phrases were kitschy back then.  One of the sayings that was a part of the kitsch culture of the college seminary when I first began my studies had to deal with spiritual direction.

We were all required to be involved in spiritual direction so that we could identify the parts of our lives that needed to be addressed as well as to strength the parts of our spiritual lives that were benefitting us.  Our directors worked hard with us to get us to see who we really were and to accept who we were “warts and all” so that we could address issues and come out stronger.  The phrase that was predominant in spiritual direction of that generation was “name it, claim it, tame it.”  That pretty much sums up today’s quote.

What is bold and liberating about saying yes to our entire imperfect and messy life is that we name it and claim it.  There is no way that we can improve our lives if we cannot name what it a part of us: our strengths, our weaknesses, our growth, and our failures.  Once we name those realities, we have to claim them.  We have to acknowledge that yes, indeed, those elements are who and what we are.

Once we say yes to our entire imperfect and messy life — name it and claim it — we can set about doing the work that needs to be done.  That is, we can begin to tame it.  All of us have rough edges, all of us have things in our lives that displease us, worry us, frighten us, or alarm us.  However, if they are part and parcel of who we are, we do ourselves more harm trying to deny them.  Rather, we need to admit and embrace who we are so that we can go about changing what needs to be changed.

No one can do it for us.  In order for anything positive to happen, we must be the ones to say yes to our entire imperfect and messy lives.

FAITH ACTION:  Don’t hide from who you are.  Instead, embrace it so that you can make the changes that you deem necessary.