Community and Affirmation

Even in a community where people are engaging in mutual self-disclosure, mutual hospitality, active and unconditional love, and honesty, there are bound to be challenges. Any time more than one human being is in the same place at the same time, the potential for conflict exists. No matter how loving and honest you're trying to be, there will be times that anxiety wins.

I still have old, well-ingrained habits to defend myself when someone challenges what I say, rather than just accept that they're entitled to their own opinions. Intellectually, I'm all about peaceful disagreement, and in practice I can be in that space most of the time. But when my personal vows get triggered, I go into this zone where I believe I have to prove I'm right in order to be worthy -- I have to defend what I say, because if I'm wrong, I'll be unlovable and unacceptable.

You've got your own set of vows that you made at an early age, in times of high anxiety, when you decided subconsciously what you had to do in order to be safe, accepted, and loved. Everyone does. And when all of those vows bump up against each other, it causes some emotional friction. Healthy community develops appropriate ways of handling that friction, and those healthy practices become part of the community culture. We'll explore those practices in coming weeks.

There's one fifth essential ingredient that plays a part in the health of a meaningful, authentic community. In addition to mutual self-disclosure, mutual hospitality, active and unconditional love, and honesty, meaningful authentic community requires mutual affirmation and celebration. I'm not talking about throwing parties for people, although you could do that. Mutual affirmation or celebration is about acknowledging what's awesome about the people with whom you're in community. This has a few functions for community, and it also has a couple of pitfalls to avoid.

Sincere affirmation is rare. People are constantly being told how they need to improve, or what they need to do differently. Even when it isn't explicit, we compare ourselves to more outwardly attractive, successful, wealthy, happy people and easily focus on what's wrong with us. Few people hear often enough that they are powerful, capable, beautiful human beings. Cultivating a culture of sincere affirmation may seem like overkill, but people need others to accurately reflect their positive attributes back to them.

You may have heard the equation that you have to say six positive things to balance out one negative comment. This means that -- just by the way our brains process things -- if you hear six positive comments about yourself and one negative comment, you'll have a kind of break-even average opinion of who you are. And we hear negative things about ourselves all the time. Sometimes it's specifically about us, and sometimes we personalize negative comments about a whole group of people. If we're in a marginalized group -- immigrants, people of color, atheists, transgender folks, and plenty of others -- we hear a lot more negative commentary about ourselves than positive. That's one big reason meaningful, authentic community needs to practice mutual affirmation and celebration of one another. We need to hear an awful lot of affirmation before we even consider believing it might be true.

In order for people to be meaningfully engaged in community, they have to believe something positive about themselves. If people don't believe they have something of value to offer, they wind up not offering anything of themselves. If people don't believe they can make a meaningful contribution, they wind up not contributing anything. When people believe they have value, they can be more fully engaged in creating wholeness with other human beings. And it takes a lot of reassurance for some people to start believe something positive about themselves. We've become convinced somehow that saying too many positive things is coddling, or that people will become egomaniacs. It's a crappy reason not to say something affirming about a person.

Incidentally, this is why some people find it easier to believe in a supernatural source of love and acceptance. People often do a rotten job of praising one another. Many religions cultivate a perspective that human beings are worthless, weak, and unworthy, and that it takes the perfect benevolence of a superior being to actually love human beings. So, people try to believe that a being who never communicates with them directly and doesn't make itself known in any verifiable way, loves them more than any human being could, and accepts them even though they are thoroughly unacceptable.

All this is great PR for whatever god you credit with being able to love the unlovable, but it perpetuates the view that human beings are essentially unlovable, unacceptable, and unworthy. And it perpetuates the view that human beings are incapable of providing sufficient love, acceptance, and affirmation to one another. This is patently false, and it's a cruel lie to perpetuate about yourself and other people. You are both lovable and capable of love. You are both acceptable and capable of being accepting. You are both worthy and capable of affirming the worthiness of others. This view of humanity -- of yourself -- is essential to meaningful, authentic community.

The reason this view is essential is simple. When we believe lies about our own unworthiness or incapability, we are not our authentic selves. Authentic community can't be built from false selves, and false selves can't persist in authentic community. The way to authenticity isn't to shame people for presenting a false self, though. People have been through enough without someone trying to shame them into being authentic. Sometimes, people just need to see the other side of the coin, and they need to see it presented to them consistently and sincerely. We've been told how worthless or unlovable or unacceptable we are so much that many of us think it's true. We need to be told something different about ourselves so it seems safe to be vulnerable enough to be authentic with a community of equally flawed and beautiful, challenged and capable human beings.

Now, none of this is to say that we should overlook problematic behavior or that we should pretend people's weaknesses don't exist. We all have things we can work on, and we all have growth areas or opportunities for improvement. One of the reasons we appreciate meaningful, authentic community is that we can grow into greater wholeness as individuals -- which we wouldn't need to do if we were perfect. So, healthy community offers feedback that helps people address areas of growth. But it does so in a way that doesn't shame or condemn a person for having things to work on -- or just being imperfect. And some areas of imperfection don't require work -- they're just areas of imperfection.

Holding up a mirror to someone and lovingly showing them where their actions may not be in alignment with their guiding principles is tough. It's also a really important feature of meaningful, authentic community. We need people who are willing to hold us accountable to the things we say we are going to be or do. Accountability isn't me holding you accountable to what I want you to do. When I hold you accountable to your own vision of a best possible version of yourself, though, that has real value to you. It's a lot easier to hear that sort of feedback from someone who habitually offers sincere affirmation. We can be more vulnerable with people we trust to see the best in us. 

You may notice I mentioned sincere affirmation. We still have honesty as a core ingredient, and that honesty still needs to be a part of our affirmation of one another. Saying things that aren't true about a person isn't loving or helpful, even if those things sound positive. Telling a person they're a great musician when they sound like a cat caught in a blender is only going to lead to embarrassment and possibly unnecessary shame down the road. Telling people what's true about them -- over and over again until they believe you -- allows them to see who they are more clearly.

We don't actually see ourselves very clearly. For instance, I'm afraid of being seen as confrontational or abrasive, so if I say or write anything that could be construed as hostile or unkind, I'm super self-conscious about it. When people tell me how tactful I am, I have to check to see whether they're being sarcastic sometimes, because I'm hypersensitive to coming across as confrontational. Now that an awful lot of people have told me numerous times that I'm a tactful person, I'm learning to trust that I can say things hearably, even when I'm saying something challenging to someone. I've been at this for years, and it's taken years of people saying affirming things to get through all the other noise inside my own head -- most of which has been rattling around in there since I was a kid.

A community of people committed to offering honest affirmation of one another -- mutually celebrating each other -- can do a lot to create wholeness. People who aren't as worried about being lovable, acceptable, and worthy are better able to cast a vision of a best possible version of themselves. People who feel safe and acknowledged can live by their deepest values and guiding principles more easily. People can live more fully when mutual affirmation is the cultural habit of a community that also practices mutual self-disclosure, mutual hospitality, active and unconditional love, and honesty.

These five ingredients are not often found all together in communities. Keeping them all in balanced proportions takes intentional effort. Even having all five of these practices in place at all takes some intentional effort. If people are willing to allow these ingredients to define their relationships with one another in meaningful, authentic community, I'm confident that greater wholeness will be the outcome.

There will be challenges, though. While these five ingredients describe the consistent day-in and day-out intentional practices of a community, it's also important for the community to have a couple of pieces of infrastructure. One of these is clear boundaries within the community -- not defining who is an insider and who is an outsider, but defining safe and healthy behavior in the context of the community. Another is a clear shared purpose or vision. As you might imagine, these two topics will be next up on the docket.

Community and Active, Unconditional Love

One of the most challenging things about self-disclosure and hospitality is that we have so much fear about our actions being used against us. We've heard horror stories, or we've experienced in our own lives, that sometimes when we share things about ourselves, other people use that information to cause us harm. When we extend hospitality to someone else, sometimes others take advantage. Feeling betrayed is a part of many people's life experience, and this makes trust really difficult.

A community that practices mutual self-disclosure and hospitality addresses some of this threat. If you experience being served by others, it can be easier to serve without fear that others will take advantage of you. If other people are self-disclosing, it can be easier to trust that you won't be betrayed if you share something of yourself. None of this is a guarantee that someone won't take more than they give in a relationship, or betray a confidence out of anxiety. People don't always live in alignment with their deepest values. You and I are included in that. But intentional mutuality helps lessen our fear about being known and serving others.

There is another feature of meaningful, authentic community that figures into this equation, and that is active and unconditional love toward one another. Obviously, this is a mutual thing, too. Active and unconditional love informs why we would choose to know and be known by others -- why we would choose to serve and be served by others. It isn't enough that someone listens to us share something about ourselves, what we hope for is that we'll be understood and accepted. Mutual self-disclosure could still happen in an environment where people heap shame on themselves and one another, and this doesn't really help anybody. What makes a community meaningful is that we have our needs met, and part of what we need is a sense that we are valued and cherished by others. In other words, we need love.

Most of the adoration and value we extend toward other people and receive from others is conditional. We try to earn people's approval, or we make people earn ours. As children, many of us developed a sense of what we had to do or who we had to be in order to earn love and acceptance from others. For some of us, this has meant pretending to be something we're not. We hide our true selves because we believe at some level that who we really are is unacceptable or unlovable, and we show up in a more "worthy" persona that we think will fool people into loving or accepting us. "If they saw who I really am, I'd be rejected, but if they believe the mask I wear, I'll earn love and acceptance."

This impression gets reinforced in communities all the time. As long as you seem to conform to everyone else's beliefs and behaviors, you are given the message that you're acceptable, lovable, righteous, good. But if you veer away from the accepted beliefs and behaviors of the herd, there are consequences. Maybe you are given the message that you're unacceptable. Maybe love is withheld. In many cases, you are no longer treated as an equal participant in that community. In order to get your needs met, you have to do what the community demands. Being valued and loved is contingent upon following the rules -- even if that means pretending to be someone or something you aren't.

Now, healthy communities have boundaries. Behavior that harms people in any way can't be tolerated if a community is to provide safety. Enforcing community boundaries can take a number of forms, though. An anxious reaction to someone violating our boundaries might be to tell them that they are unacceptable -- that the boundary violator is unworthy of love and acceptance. A more intentional response might be to address the offending behavior, so that it becomes a matter of "This behavior is not acceptable" instead of "You are not acceptable." This kind of nuance can be a challenge to master, but it reflects a willingness to distinguish a person from their behavior. People have inherent worth and dignity, and behaviors can change.

It's loving to hold people accountable to a mutually agreed upon set of standards for a community -- a covenant, if you will. Members of a community can decide together, "These are the principles that are going to bind us together, and these are the boundaries that are going to promote us being in alignment with those principles." Then, when someone betrays a confidence or takes advantage of the community's hospitality or violates the community boundaries in some other way, the response can be  more loving toward everyone involved. Instead of a person being unlovable or unacceptable, the issue can clearly be, "This behavior doesn't align with our principles." It's even possible to say, "We love you and care about you, and this behavior isn't compatible with being part of this community."

This really isn't about controlling people's behavior. It's about giving people opportunities to grow into greater emotional maturity. Just about anything a person might do that would violate trust or harm another person is a product of that person's anxiety or emotional immaturity. When our decisions are informed by fears or false beliefs about ourselves or others, we're likely to cause some harm. But we have opportunities to alter our course. We have opportunities to learn and grow and do things differently. We have the potential to clarify our deepest values and guiding principles, and align our actions and beliefs with those values and principles. We have the potential to dismantle our irrational fears and give our word to greater integrity in our lives. We are capable of living into a best possible version of ourselves. Our decision to love others is essentially our willingness to see this same potential, this same capability, in them. So, it isn't about control so much as it is about hope.

At the same time, it's important for people to understand that their behavior has consequences, and that their actions have an effect on other people. None of this is a simple formula. It takes some commitment and some intentional work for a community to consistently focus on people's potential rather than their flaws. Hopefully, a community can establish a sense of active and unconditional love before it becomes necessary to enforce community boundaries. One way this can be done is by responding intentionally to the practices of mutual self-disclosure and mutual hospitality.

Love is apparent when people are accepted as they share who they are. We could respond to self-disclosure by trying to fix people, by judging them, by labeling them, or any number of ways that run contrary to valuing and cherishing a person. When a loving community practices mutual self-disclosure, that self-disclosure is followed by receptivity, acceptance, and validation. There are things that all of us could continue to work on. Validating and accepting where a person is doesn't equate to a declaration that they're done growing. It simply means that they are valued and cherished right where they are in their journey. The reason for growing isn't to gain love and acceptance. The reason for growing is to be more fully alive -- to be more consistently in alignment with a vision of a best possible version of yourself.

Likewise, love is apparent when service is met with gratitude. A community that practices mutual hospitality could come to expect that people will be of service to one another. People's acts of service toward one another may be overlooked or taken for granted if mutual hospitality is habitual for a community. Supplementing this commitment to a mutual sense of welcome with a mutual sense of gratitude and appreciation can foster deeper human connection. When people are willing to express gratitude, even when hospitality is expected, it reinforces a sense of value, care, and love for one another.

Meaningful, authentic community is more than incorporating a set of practices and behaviors into the community's identity. Self-disclosure and hospitality are wonderful, but they aren't enough in and of themselves. We all need to know that we are loved -- that we are cherished and valued. When we don't have this need met by other human beings, we invent sources. We imagine that something outside of ourselves cherishes and values us, even if we don't feel it from other human beings.

Some communities even foster this sense that something supernatural is the source of love. Meaningful, authentic communities recognize the truth that valuing and cherishing people is the responsibility of human beings to one another. We are responsible for expressing love and hope in one another's lives. When we abdicate this human responsibility to something we invent in our imaginations, we rob ourselves and others of full, satisfying human relationship. We miss out on being fully alive and fully human when we pretend that there is some other supernatural source for acceptance, value, and love.

Loving other people isn't safe, and it often isn't easy, but it is the task of human beings in meaningful, authentic community. If we aren't taking this responsibility seriously, we aren't creating authentic community. We're pretending to be less vulnerable and interdependent than we actually are. For this reason, honesty is another key component to meaningful, authentic community. Obviously, we must be honest in our self-disclosure if we expect to be truly known. And as we see here, active and unconditional love requires our honesty in recognizing love as the responsibility of human beings. We'll explore honesty further next week as we continue to consider the essential ingredients to meaningful, authentic community.

Bold Honesty, Part 3

Just as it's important to be boldly honest about what you really care about, it's important to be boldly honest about our answers to some other questions, especially the questions Where do I find a genuine sense of belonging? and Where do I find authentic community? When we aren't honest about what we really want from community, we wind up in places that aren't authentic for us, where we don't feel like we genuinely belong. When we adopt other people's ideas about what we should want, we aren't likely to get what we actually want and need.

It may be that what you really want from community is to be told what to think and believe so you don't have to think for yourself. If that's what you want, be honest about that. Other people may criticize you -- hell, I may criticize that desire -- but it's better for you to be honest about what you actually want rather than pretend someone else's expectations are your own. There are plenty of places where you can be told what to believe and where you'll be discouraged from thinking for yourself, so one advantage is that your desire for community will be easily satisfied.

There's a challenge even in those communities, though, because many times people want to pretend that they are being intellectually honest when they're actually being quite lazy in their thinking. Some people feel some shame about just wanting to be told what to think and believe, so they pretend that they are making rational, well-thought-out decisions. Some people don't want to be seen as stupid or foolish, so they pretend to have rational reasons for believing irrational things. People even make up evidence (read: lie) in order to make the irrational seem rational.

People say, "Prayer works!" instead of saying, "I just prefer to believe that my prayers have some effect on my relative's illness because otherwise I would feel powerless and grief-stricken. By pretending that I'm doing something useful and meaningful, I feel less anxiety." It's tough for one person to keep up the pretense that prayer has an effect on external reality, but when an entire community repeats an irrational assertion over an over again, it can almost seem rational. OK, not "almost". People literally brainwash themselves into believing something irrational. Despite documented research that suggests that prayer has either no effect or a negative effect on the health of a patient, many people still prefer to pray rather than feel helpless. 

Bold honesty can come into play at so many different points in this process. And the outcome doesn't even have to change just because people are boldly honest. People could be honest about their community and admit, "What we say here doesn't actually line up with reality, but it makes me happy, and I prefer being happy." Or people could say, "I don't really believe this, but I like the people here, so I'm going to pretend that I agree with them." That level of honesty would probably stop inside a person's head, but imagine the effect on a community if just one person came out and said, "What we say here doesn't actually make any sense, but I feel happy when I say it. So I'm going to pretend that it makes sense." If what you want from community is for people to reinforce an unreasonable belief that you have the power to alter reality through your intention and words (or your "faith"), be boldly honest that that's what you really want.

When we listen to the rhetoric of some political and religious spokespeople, we hear blatant lies about public figures, about history, and about supernaturals. Many people are fine with those lies, because the lies match the way they choose to see the world. I know that it's a lie, for instance, that LGBT people are going to hell. For one thing, hell isn't real. For another thing, a lot of LGBT folks are already going through hell just to exist. Some people prefer to believe that their imagined supernatural hates gay people, and is going to punish them for eternity (loving supernatural that it is). 

They may say trite things like, "Love the sinner, hate the sin," and they may say that their love for the LGBT community is why they fund the psychological torture known as conversion therapy (now, reparative therapy). The truth is that they prefer to pretend certain things about reality, and they prefer to indulge their fear of people who aren't like them. Say so. If you want to participate in a community that either overtly or subtly rejects, persecutes, and marginalizes people who identify as LGBT, be honest. Just say, "I don't understand gay people, and I don't want to take the time to understand them. I prefer to think that they're going to burn in hell than think that they are human beings with inherent worth and dignity." Don't make things up about what your supernatural thinks, because you couldn't know that even if there was supernatural to know something about. Be boldly honest about what you actually know and want, and own it.

Now, I know you probably read all of that as being a bit of a rant, and that's fine. The point is that there's no reason to pretend to have noble reasons for wanting what you want. There's no reason to pretend that there's evidence for something just because you want to believe it. Some people may see this as a postmodern nightmare of making truth so relative that it has no meaning, but let me be clear: I'm not saying that just because you want prayer to work, that means it's true for you. The true part is that you want prayer to work, and you're willing to pretend that it does even though you have no falsifiable, replicable evidence. I'm not saying that for some people it's true that LGBT folks are evil. I'm saying that it's true that some folks prefer to believe that LGBT people are evil. If we can get to that level of honesty about the difference between what we know and what we prefer to believe, we will have made great strides forward as a species.

This all works the other way, too. If you can be boldly honest about what you actually want from meaningful, authentic community, you'll be more likely to find it. A community that lies to you is not authentic, and you won't find a genuine sense of belonging there, unless you honestly want to be lied to. If you want to be in community with people who allow you to express what you believe and accept you openly as your authentic self, be boldly honest about that being what you want. Don't settle for a community where you have to hide who you are just to be around people who seem nice and treat you kindly. It is not nice or kind for people to insist that you believe as they do and encourage you to hide who you are. Keep looking. Now, perhaps more than ever before, there are places where you can find genuine belonging -- not just a sense that if you play by the rules and pretend to be just like everyone else, you can get a false feeling of acceptance. Acceptance is not the same as approval for doing what someone else wants you to do.

I spent years of my life pretending to be something I wasn't because Christian churches paid me well as a musician, but I couldn't safely say, "I don't believe most of this stuff you sing about and teach, and I actually think a lot of it is harmful." People thought I was wonderful, as long as I pretended to believe what they believed. Their acceptance of me shifted sharply when they learned otherwise. If I am boldly honest, I sometimes even wonder whether my level of atheism and Humanism is welcome in a Unitarian Universalist context. There are so many options for atheists and Humanists to find community now -- authentic community where they are not only accepted as they really are, but encouraged to be even better versions of who they really are. So many churches encourage people to be better versions of who the church says people are supposed to be. Don't settle for that unless it's what you actually honestly want.

If you want to find a genuine sense of belonging, be boldly honest about who you are and find the people who receive you without reservation. They exist. If you want to find authentic community, be boldly honest about what you want. Some folks may want to echo Kennedy and say, "Ask not what your community can do for you; ask what you can do for your community," but I've found that people who are nurtured by their community wind up giving back to that community. It really is alright to start off by asking, "Where do I find community that actually meets my needs?" 

And please, please, please: be boldly honest about what you prefer to believe. Don't shore up your irrational preferences with false data or made-up anecdotes. Just be boldly honest about your biases and prejudices. Be boldly honest about what makes you feel safe and happy. Too much time is spent arguing nonsense with one another, when we could just be honest and say, "This is what I prefer to believe, despite any evidence to the contrary." At the very least, it will make for a more honest world. 

Selfishness 2

We're in the midst of examining a criticism that "good" people don't focus on their own wants and needs, but focus on the needs and wants of others. Previously, we acknowledged that shame can cause us to think that we are not worthy of having our needs and wants met, and we asserted that if we want to be fully alive human beings, it's important for us to recognize the worthiness of our own vision for our lives and the world around us.

There are a couple of other points we need to consider from critics, however, including the belief that we harm other people by focusing on what we want -- essentially, that everyone cannot simultaneously have their wants and needs met. We should also address the argument that Jesus or some other legendary spiritual leader offers a model of self-sacrificial living. In fact, let's tend to that last point first and then move on to the idea that it costs someone else when we focus on what we most deeply want.

Throughout the history of some religious traditions, suffering has been equated with righteousness or worthiness. This began because the people who engaged in those religious practices were marginalized in their particular society, and they had to do something to explain their suffering in the face of a belief that they were set apart -- "chosen" by their god. Either their god was malicious or powerless, or there was some greater reason for their suffering as marginalized people. Even though some such religious traditions have become more powerful -- even oppressive -- practitioners often still cling to the idea that they are persecuted. Their persecution makes them like a beloved spiritual leader of mythology, and thus their suffering marks them as more holy -- chosen or set apart by their loving god who values their suffering for some reason.

The fact of the matter is that this coping mechanism creates tons more harm than well-being. Liberal and feminist theologians especially have written quite a bit on the damage done by the belief that suffering makes one more acceptable, lovable, or worthy in the eyes of a deity. Self-sacrifice can be a powerful gesture, but only when it is an intentional choice that one makes to nurture a system toward wholeness. Giving up one's personal safety, in and of itself, does not nurture anything. Choosing between what feels safe and what one actually wants for the world -- a personal creative life dream -- can be worth the risk. There is a big difference.

Even when one looks at the example of Jesus, for instance, the model of behavior is not self-sacrificial. There is an abundance of examples in the gospel narrative of Jesus going off by himself for solitude. He chooses to fast on occasion, but he never goes hungry when he actually needs to eat. He reprimands people who don't behave the way he wants them to, and he thinks highly enough of his own ideas that he challenges the rationale of religious authorities. He even chastises his disciples when they don't meet his needs or wants. There are moments in which the Jesus of the gospel narratives is downright arrogant, and there is no reason for us to criticize the self-assurance of someone who has conviction about what will bring wholeness to the world. The lessons of the teachings attributed to Jesus have little to do with self-sacrifice and lots to do with being aware of one's own power to transform one's own life and the lives of others.

Too often, believers seem to focus on one episode at the end of the story, in which religious and political leaders abuse their power with violent retribution toward a person who upsets the status quo. They invent in their heads a Jesus who could have resisted such power, making him a willing sacrifice rather than a victim of oppressive and fear-filled authorities. Yet this behavior is in contrast to the rest of the stories told about the life and actions of a bold and self-confident Jesus who is consistently willing to express what he wants people to do and how he wants people to think.

Anyone who includes self-sacrifice into their religious values is choosing to imagine that their own wants and needs are inconsequential, which is the same thing as denying their inherent worth and dignity. Some religious traditions thrive on telling people lies about being unworthy, unacceptable, and unlovable -- perhaps making their invented deity look all the more magnanimous for deigning to love such wretches. Do you know how people create wholeness when they think of themselves as inherently unworthy, unacceptable, and unlovable? They don't. Why would they? Their self-image is dominated by weakness and powerlessness. This image of humanity is flawed, fear-driven, and useless, except to those that like having an easy time manipulating the masses. That's the one thing to be said for teaching people that they are weak and worthless -- it makes them a lot easier to control.

Contrast that with people who believe in their own inherent worth and dignity -- who believe in their own capability and beauty and creativity. People who recognize personal responsibility in their lives ought also recognize that they have the power to wield that responsibility thoughtfully. This means taking the consequences of one's action into consideration. Powerless people don't have choices, but people who are willing to recognize their own power also recognize the ability to choose actions that nurture wholeness in their lives and the lives of those around them. Really, it's the people who live into an identity of being weak, unlovable, powerless, and unworthy who are harmfully self-indulgent.

There is something that gets in the way of creating wholeness, though, even for those people who recognize their own worth and power and responsibility. Fear. Just as shame convinces us of lies about ourselves, our fear gets in the way of living life as fully as we could. Our fear convinces us that we need certain things in order to be safe, or to prove how lovable or acceptable we are. And we wind up doing the things that placate our fear rather than doing the things we actually want most deeply. Most people don't ever think about what they want for their lives and the lives of those around them because they never get past thinking about what they have to do to be safe, or heard, or respected, or loved, or successful. We don't really know what we want more deeply because we never get past wanting to be free of our anxiety.

From this perspective, the criticism is absolutely true: Everyone cannot go about alleviating their fears without hurting anyone else. Focusing on our anxiety and trying to make it go away as quickly as possible almost always means we hurt someone else in the process. We also hurt ourselves. Letting fear control us is not the same as tending to what we most deeply want. We don't actually get what we most deeply want by indulging our fear. We need a way to get past our fear and anxiety, and get to the heart of what we really want for our own lives and for the world. And we need a way to know when it is our fear talking and when it is something deeper within us that longs for wholeness.

The criticism of selfishness really doesn't hold up when we consider the full implication of intentional people living with integrity to their deepest values. Certainly, when we think of the typical fearful behavior of human beings on reactive autopilot, self-indulgence is harmful. That isn't what we're talking about when we encourage living into a best possible version of oneself, or developing a meaningful creative life dream. If our passion is nurturing the world toward wholeness, we have to be competent at nurturing wholeness in our own lives. Respecting our own needs, valuing our own vision, caring for ourselves -- these are behaviors of personally responsible human beings, and it takes personally responsible human beings to create wholeness.

Asking the Right Questions -- Community

Another question that religion often seems to answer has to do with people's search for community -- a sense of belonging. Religion answers the questions, "Where can I find community? Where can I feel like I belong?" with caveats. You can find community here, if you believe the things we tell you to believe, or at least claim to. Religions are largely based on a set of beliefs, beliefs that often run counter to reality, and in order to be part of the community, you have to at least pretend to buy into those beliefs. Some people are so desperate for a sense of belonging that it seems like a pretty good deal.

A person looking for a sense of belonging enters into religious community and is told what to hope for in an afterlife, how to find a sense of purpose in service to an imaginary supernatural, and what to believe about the way the world works. It's very convenient to have someone tell you what to think, because then you don't have to go through the trouble of thinking for yourself. Some people appreciate that. So, we wind up with entire communities of people who have stopped thinking for themselves, willingly participating in a joint delusion that their emperor is wearing the latest high couture, because it's easier than wrestling with the messiness of reality.

The relationships people develop in these kinds of religious communities often wind up falling short of authentic connection, because the delusions offer easy responses to any concern that might be raised. People say, "I'll pray for you," because it's easier than actually diving into the muck of someone's pain. People say, "Trust God and it will all work out," because they have given up the capacity for taking personal responsibility in their lives. People say, "Those evil people who don't believe the same things we believe are going to hell," because it's easier to write off people who don't conform than it is to engage with people and learn from different perspectives.

And it's no wonder that people opt for easy, quick-fix answers. If they started trying to figure out the nuances of their religion's beliefs, they'd only confuse themselves. Out of one side of their mouths, religious leaders speak about infinite love, and out of the other side of their mouths, they speak with contempt for other human beings. It's more about power and influence than it is about helping people take personal responsibility for their lives, but because people have what seems like a reasonable substitute for community, they don't question it.

Of course, there are some religious leaders who say exactly what I'm saying here. They see possibilities for their tradition to take a different path that focuses on authentic connection and personal empowerment. Yet, they want to hang on to the same delusional foundations in order to create something different. They still want their communities to believe that prayer changes reality, and that a supernatural can take care of things that people are too weak to handle for themselves. It's hard to build a community of personally responsible human beings when you reinforce the belief that there is ultimately a supernatural who is in control.

Even in liberal religious communities, gaining a sense of belonging often requires conformity. It may not even be about belief in a supernatural or the power of prayer. Some religious groups require that their participants be passionate about fighting back against oppressors -- their version of "evil" people. Some religious groups expect people to use non-judgmental, politically correct language. In order to fit in and find community, people have to meet certain belief standards. While the motives may be noble, the end result is often just another set of trite phrases and pat answers.

Whether a religious community leans toward fundamentalism or liberalism, there is a tendency for individuals to stop thinking for themselves and go along with the herd. Those that don't, leave. This isn't just a feature of religious groups, of course. Groups of human beings tend toward homogeneity and mindless conformity. Religious communities amplify the issue by insisting that they know things that they don't actually know -- and often just plain aren't true. A homogeneous, mindless herd of people who believe that an all-powerful supernatural is on their side and is directing their actions can do a lot of damage.

At the same time, communities need clear identities. It's appropriate for a group to make a claim like, "We are people who first and foremost believe in shaming oppressors and fighting back against oppressive systems." Or even, "We are people who believe that prayer is an effective means of changing reality." If you share that belief in common, then you might find a sense of belonging with like-minded folks. Some groups even claim to be welcoming to everyone, but what this claim of hospitality actually means is, "We welcome anyone to come and be like us, and believe what we believe, and do things the way we do things."

Unlike the question of hope in an afterlife (which is better focused on hope in what we can do in this life), and unlike the question of purpose (which is better framed as one's decision rather than a destiny prescribed by a supernatural), the question of community and belonging is an appropriate question for people to ask. "Where can I find a genuine sense of belonging?" and "Where can I find authentic community?" are important searches that everyone engages in. Too often, though, religious communities require people to take the words genuine and authentic out of those questions, and people settle for a less than authentic community because they fear that there isn't anything else for them. People give up their own sense of personal responsibility, their own sense of self, in order to have a sense of community, because there are plenty of places that say, "You're welcome here, if you believe what we tell you to believe. You can belong here, as long as you do things the way we do things."

This question of community is worth a great deal more exploration, but for now it can suffice to say that the right framing of these questions doesn't leave out the most important words: Where can I find a genuine sense of belonging? Where can I find authentic community? We need connection with other human beings that empower us to live into a best possible version of ourselves, not restrict us to living into a best possible version that someone else imagined for us after reading an ancient text through a particularly warped lens. We need community that affirms the inherent worth and dignity of every person and allows for people to deepen their own connection to their deepest, most noble selves. Our sense of belonging is most meaningful when we are able to bring our whole selves into that community and find resources to grow and develop as individuals.

As we'll see moving forward, meaningful community includes five important characteristics: (1) mutual self-disclosure, (2) mutually expressed active and unconditional love, (3) mutual hospitality -- or willingness to be of service and to receive from others, (4) mutual honesty in communication, and (5) sincere affirmation. Healthy communities also have the ability to set clear boundaries and to define a central shared purpose or vision, but boundaries and purposes that create wholeness aren't based on delusions. Meaningful community does not require belief in anything beyond humanity. Meaningful community does not need to involve a supernatural. Meaningful community is possible if a group of people chooses to be intentional about putting these ideals into practice.

Before we look more deeply at how we might locate our hope realistically, take personal responsibility for our sense of purpose, and find a sense of belonging and create meaningful community without buying into mass delusions, there is one more basic question that religious pretends to answer. We'll take a brief look at the problem of evil next. In the meantime, don't leave out the most important words in your questions. Finding meaningful answers requires asking the right questions:

How do I live in such a way that I'll be satisfied with how I influence the world around me?
What am I passionate about? What is my personal life dream that creates greater wholeness in the world?
Where do I find a genuine sense of belonging? Where do I find authentic community? 

John 4:1-42 Conquering Shame with Truth and Inspiring Others

In John 4, we proceed with what may be a familiar story about Jesus' encounter with a Samaritan woman at Jacob's Well. A seemingly editorial feature can be seen in the parenthetical explanations about various details in the story. Some things apparently required more explanation than others, but we can imagine that the original audience would have known that needing to go through Samaria was culturally distasteful. If the Jesus character speaks freely to people who are culturally unclean, or "less than" people, then either this behavior is unique to the Jesus character or it serves as a model for human behavior.

The text itself paints a picture of Jesus as a fairly unique individual. He apparently has some psychic ability, to be able to know specifics about the woman's life that she had not shared, and the authors imply that he does not require physical food but is rather sustained by spiritually-motivated action. In the text, the Jesus character claims a unique identity for himself as the Messiah. If we were to leave things there, however, there would be little value in our lives. If we adopt the perspective that Jesus is used here as an exemplar of human behavior, we must get past the obviously unique characteristics the authors grant him. So, we should not try to emulate psychic powers, and we should not claim a unique position for ourselves in a spiritual hierarchy.

What human behaviors can we see at work in the story, then? To start, there is the blatant issue of prejudice. Samaritans are obviously undesirables, based on the context of the story. There are complex historical reasons for Jewish animosity toward Samaritans. To begin with, Samaritans were not of pure Jewish lineage, but had intermarried with people of various ethnicities, which made them inferior people in the eyes of the Jews. The Samaritans had their own temple and their own religious tradition that had branched away from "proper" Judaism, influenced no doubt by the Samaritan propensity for being conquered by foreign powers. Samaria was synonymous with impurity and sacrilege in the eyes of many ancient Jews.

The Jesus character cares nothing for these prejudices. Human beings are human beings. There is no judgment for the lineage or the religious practices of Samaritans (suggesting that the authors had a more virtuous position as well). Yes, Jesus does make a snide comment about salvation coming from the Jews, but his general demeanor is not judgmental. Instead, the Jesus character looks ahead to a time in which spiritual identity will not be connected to geographic location. Indeed, the book of John was written after the Roman destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, and apparently the authors interpreted this upheaval as an opportunity to redefine the center of spiritual identity. One need not go to a particular mountain to find divinity; one need only look within oneself.

There are essentially two things taught in this passage. The first has to do with spiritual identity. Whatever you call divine, divinity is not a physical thing. Personal identity is first and foremost about honesty. Identifying with a particular tradition frivolously is of no real value. To connect your identity thoughtlessly to a particular place or even a particular culture is to give away some of your personal responsibility. Taking appropriate responsibility in your life requires telling the truth about who you are. You cannot bring your authentic self forward if you are pretending to be someone you aren't.

For the Samaritan woman, there were plenty of untrue things that she could have believed about herself -- things that others most likely had claimed about her. As a Samaritan, she was "impure" and potentially "blasphemous." She also had a string of relationships that had the potential to imbue her with shame. What is wrong with me that I have had five husbands and am now in a relationship with someone else? After things went badly in my first relationship, I'm 'damaged goods.' No one will want me now. I am lucky with whatever I get at this point. In fact, the profound shame with which she lives is implied by her late-morning trip to the well, after all the "respectable" women have already come and gone. There are plenty of lies she could be telling about herself, plenty of things on which she could base her identity that would not reflect her authentic self.

We do very similar things. Sometimes we adopt identities that are handed to us by society, and sometimes we just make things up about ourselves. We feel shame because of the things that have gone differently than we would have liked, and we often blame ourselves for things that were not entirely ours to control. This is not a true reflection of who we are. Shame does not create anything worthwhile; it only keeps us from bringing ourselves forward fully.

The message here is that you know better. You know that there is more to you than a failed relationship, or a whole series of failed relationships. You know that there is more to you than getting fired from a job. You know that there is more to you than what other people say about your ethnicity or religion. You might know what it would be like if you showed up as a best possible version of yourself. It's wise to acknowledge the circumstances of your life honestly, but they don't have to define you. When you are willing to be honest, the truth about you is that you are enough. You are capable of being your authentic self without all the false pieces of identity you've accumulated over the years.

Here is the second thing taught in this passage: If you look around you, you'll see an awful lot of people wrestling with the same things you wrestle with. You'll see a sea of people who are living with shame and anxiety rather than honestly showing up as themselves. It's good to feed yourself -- to develop your own integrity and intentionality. When we enter into other people's lives with the ability to tell the truth about ourselves, we can influence others toward greater well-being. When we are willing to stop allowing shame to govern how we see ourselves, we can influence others to do the same. Not everyone will get it. Not everyone will be willing to tell the truth about themselves, because sometimes it's easier to give up personal responsibility to a false identity. Some people will see your way of being and take notice, though. Some people will recognize that they could be engaging in life differently -- defining themselves by their values and guiding principles rather than the labels other people put on them.

So, spirit and truth. We can look within ourselves to define our deep values and guiding principles, and we can be honest about our authentic selves. We are not restricted to identities derived from shame. And we are influencers. How we show up has an influence on other people's lives. What we do for ourselves cannot be just about us, because human beings are relational by nature. Because of our connection with others, what we create in spirit and truth will have meaning for people beyond just ourselves.

There are three things that are exemplified in Jesus' behavior here that can offer some guidance about how we can be living water -- or manifest a best possible version of ourselves more often. First, he is non-judgmental. He is unwilling to allow shame to be a part of how he sees others, just as he does not allow shame to define himself. Even as he is honest about the Samaritan woman's home life, he does not deem her unworthy as a result. He engages with her as a human being of worth and dignity. It doesn't matter what color people's skin is, what ethnic or cultural background they demonstrate, what religious identity they embrace, or what sexuality they embody. No human being deserves our derision or shame. When we judge other people, we reinforce our own self-judgment. When we are willing to see the inherent worth and dignity in others, it is easier to see our own.

Second, the Jesus of this story is willing to engage. He does not simply look kindly upon the woman and smile. He engages with her about her life and suggests some possibility about her identity. He offers her hope. Likewise, we can express what we see of value in other people, not to force on them a positive false identity to replace a negative one, but to open the door of possibility. We can sincerely express what we appreciate in others. In this story, Jesus does not demand that the woman see things the way he does; he states his perspective and allows her the freedom to define herself.

Third, the Jesus of this story speaks about what is important to him. When he is offered food by the disciples, he seizes on the opportunity to express what he cares about most -- his values and his passions. It is as if he is saying, "This is what feeds my soul." Of course, Jesus is made to suggest that the disciples should care about what he cares about, but this is a characteristic of their relationship. We don't have to insist that other people be passionate about the things that feed our souls. When we are willing to let people know what we value, though, it has the potential to bolster our own commitment, inspire others, and perhaps even find collaborators in building the kind of world that we most want to live in.

We see two layers of possibility in this tale, then. First layer: Use introspection to define your deep values and guiding principles, and let these things define the truth about your identity. Be aware of the multitude of people around you, wrestling with the same issues of shame that you wrestle with and just as in need of hope as you. Second layer: All of those human beings have inherent worth and dignity. It doesn't matter what their lives or circumstances have been like. If you are willing to engage, you can grow in connection and live into your authentic self more easily. When you engage, speak about the things that matter most to you -- your values and guiding principles, your vision for yourself, your creative purpose and personal life dream. This is how we build a better world.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

A Little Experiment: Be aware of your shame. Notice the next time you find yourself thinking or saying something prejudiced about a person based on skin color, ethnicity, sexuality, or religion. Consider, to what fear is that prejudice connected? What judgment about yourself is connected to your judgment of that person? What would it take for you to see the inherent worth and dignity of that person?

Another Little Experiment: Be more aware of your shame. Notice the next time you limit yourself or pass judgment on yourself. On what is this self-critique based? Are you being honest? How does your personal shame prevent you from living out your deepest values (or how does it prevent you from being a best possible version of yourself)? Are you OK with that?

One More Little Experiment: Be living water. What feeds your soul? What is it that nourishes you emotionally or psychologically? How does this nourishment reflect your guiding principles? Tell someone in your life. Ask them what nourishes them.

Mark 14: Giving and Receiving Authentic Hospitality and Celebration

An interesting legend appears at the beginning of Mark 14 that becomes transformed as the Jesus myth evolves in the first and second centuries. A woman approaches Jesus while he is staying in Bethany with Simon the leper, and she anoints Jesus with expensive perfumed oil. This is the kind of thing that must have implied extravagance, based on the incredulous reaction of others present, but within the context of the narrative, it is also interpreted as a harbinger of death. Corpses were anointed with perfumed oils (if the family could afford it) to keep the stench from overwhelming people who would perform burial ceremonies and rites of departure. The indignant people witnessing the extravagant display claim that a lot of poor people could have been helped if that perfumed oil had been sold, and Jesus reprimands them, saying that they would always have poor people to help. Between the lines, he may have been implying that they didn't really seem to be overflowing in compassion for the poor as a general characteristic, so their attitude was not only misplaced, but was also dishonest. In the story, Jesus makes the display of affection about his imminent death, and the reader is told that this is the straw that broke the camel's back for Judas, who determines to give Jesus up to the Pharisees (which is a bit odd in that everyone seemed to know where Jesus was, especially since he always had crowds pressing in on him).

The author(s) of Matthew copy the story fairly closely from Mark, but a few details get embellished. Here, instead of it just being "some people" getting indignant, it is the disciples themselves who are upset by the woman's action. This fits with the trend of how the disciples are often portrayed in Matthew, as never quite understanding what's going on. When Judas decides that he's had enough in this version, he asks what's in it for him, and the authors of Matthew give an exact payment: thirty pieces of silver. This is probably a misreading or flawed contextualization of an Old Testament passage, but this too is typical of Matthew.

In the gospel of Luke, the story of the woman is detached from the prelude to the passion narrative; the opening verse of Mark 14 flows right into Judas' decision to betray Jesus. Since there is now apparently nothing to prompt this sudden decision on the part of Judas, the authors of Luke attribute it to Satan. Some people still seem to prefer this explanation for harmful human behavior, and we've discussed at length how this compromises personal responsibility. Suffice to say that, if there was a historical Judas who committed a historical act of betrayal, he probably had very human fears that prompted him to do so, not some supernatural possession that overpowered his own will.

The story of the woman who anoints Jesus still appears in Luke, it's just much earlier. In the Luke version, Jesus is not at the home of Simon the leper, but at the home of a Pharisee. The author of Luke takes the opportunity to have the Jesus character offer a teaching about forgiveness and grace, and we'll explore that more when we properly make our way through Luke.

Even the gospel of John has a version of this legend, once more in the context of the approaching Passover celebration during which Jesus will be arrested and executed. However, in John, although he is back in Bethany, Jesus is not in the home of Simon the leper, but with Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha. This story may be an amalgam of the story of the woman who anointed Jesus and another story of this Mary, sister of Martha, that is told in Luke. In John, the only disciple who seems upset by Mary's actions is Judas, and his character is directly maligned by John in a way that the synoptic gospels only imply. At least we see here that he isn't compelled by a supernatural agent.

Incidentally, the value of the perfume begins at over a typical worker's annual wages in Mark, is just "a large sum of money" in Matthew, is not even mentioned in Luke, and is reported again as worth almost a year's wages in John. Just a detail, perhaps of some significance in the transmission of the tale. The extravagance of the gesture is probably more useful to keep in mind.

This legend is often made to be about elevating the character of Jesus, and it is sometimes used as encouragement for making sacrifices that might seem extravagant, for the sake of religious service. If the word "God" is acknowledged as a way that we talk about a part of ourselves, then perhaps serving the values of our deepest most noble selves is worthy of a bit of extravagance. At least in the Marcan narrative, the major idea seems to be about generous hospitality and a willingness to celebrate and be celebrated.

The tendency to think of the Jesus character as a historical figure who was beyond the ken of mortal human beings has been one of the most damaging perspectives of Christianity. If Jesus were seen as an exemplar of genuine human characteristics, there might be something toward which people could aspire. When concentration is placed on mythical miracles and a deity-demanded god-man sacrifice, there is little in that portrayal of Jesus to emulate, which makes the gospel narratives only as useful or useless as any other mythical tale. If there is something to Jesus' behavior and attitudes that can be seen as characteristically human, though, this story tells us a few things about how we might examine our own lives, even as people who have no interest in supernaturalism. After all, this story just has people as characters.

First of all, there is a bit of hypocrisy in the reactions of the onlookers. They probably aren't spending extravagant amounts of money on the poor, yet they are willing to tell this woman how she should have used her resources. Thus, the lesson here is, clarify your values and bring your own actions into alignment with your values. Don't try to force other people to live by your values, especially if your own actions are incongruent with your beliefs. It's one thing to be righteously indignant about another person's driving on the road when you obey every traffic rule and keep other people's safety in mind; it's another thing to insult other drivers who are behaving exactly as you typically behave on the road. Except that this woman was even going above and beyond what the devoted followers of Jesus did.

Which is a second lesson. This woman acknowledged something praiseworthy in the Jesus character. She was generous in her display of affirmation, and honestly she was extravagant in her celebration of this admirable person. She didn't seem to be expecting anything from Jesus, and he was willing to be celebrated and appreciated. Certainly, there is a balance to be struck in our lives, but experiencing wholeness in life involves being willing to both served and to be served, to celebrate others and to be celebrated by others. We often err on one side or the other out of fear about what it might imply about ourselves or about other people. The woman in this story was fearless -- at least in her actions. No one really knows what she might have been feeling.

A third lesson in this story is about how we judge other people's behavior. When we see other people being completely authentic in their celebration and hospitality, or in their reception of other people's celebration and hospitality, sometimes we feel ashamed that we aren't that authentic. Maybe some of the other people at this gathering weren't wealthy enough to buy perfume that cost a year's wages. Yet, instead of being inspired or delighted by this person's authentic affirmation and affection, they were critical.

For whatever reason, fear sometimes causes us to hate it when other people succeed and to love it when they fall. We love to point out people's faults, but we are reluctant to praise their strengths. This has nothing to do with other people and everything to do with how we see ourselves. We cannot live authentically by our deep passions or intentionally by our guiding principles if we are caught up in lies about ourselves. When we feel shame, we often like to think other people should feel shame too. Shame is not useful, particularly when it is based on lies about who we are or who we are supposed to be. And it certainly isn't a useful means of helping others be the best possible versions of themselves.

Thus, if we are to put something from this legend into practice in our own lives, our goals might be to draw on something from each of the characters featured: the woman, Jesus, and the onlookers. From the woman, we learn that we can be extravagantly authentic in our celebration of other people and in our hospitality (service) toward others. From the response of the Jesus character, we learn that we can be celebrated by others and receive hospitality from others without getting caught up in shame or obligation. From the reaction of the onlookers, we learn that some of our habits in judging others and ourselves get in the way of our being the people we most want to be in the world. We can celebrate and serve alongside others, or we can genuinely appreciate their actions without participating in them, when we are more at peace with ourselves.

All of these goals of being require that we spend time with ourselves, recognizing what is really most important to us and growing in our capacity to dismantle the fears that keep us from living into those values. The more we are willing to keep these things in mind, the more we might notice opportunities to celebrate and serve, and the more we might gracefully receive celebration and service. When we are able to bring our actions and attitudes into alignment with our deep guiding principles, our experience of the world becomes altogether different.

Mark 9: Being Transfigured

The transfiguration narrative found in Mark 9:1-13 is quoted or adapted by the authors of Matthew and Luke, and it is referred to by the author of 2 Peter. While this seems to be impressive evidence for the event, we have already seen that the authors of Matthew and Luke used the Gospel of Mark as a source when composing their own Jesus narratives. Also, many biblical scholars believe that the Second Epistle of Peter was written several decades after Peter's death, making it a piece of  pseudepigrapha (meaning that the actual author of the work attributed it to a famous person of the past for purposes of symbolism or, less ethically, legitimacy). Since the author of 2 Peter also refers to other New Testament texts as scripture, it is quite likely that the author had access to the Gospel of Mark and/or other gospels. So, what we have is essentially a story recorded by the author of Mark and repeated by other authors.

This idea of a person shining with divine light or being otherwise transfigured is also not unique to Christianity. In the Hebrew scriptures, Moses shone with divine radiance after his meetings with Yahweh (which would certainly be a conscious connection within the context of a first century Jewish sect), and there are clear parallels in Hinduism and Buddhism, not to mention numerous tales in Greek mythology of gods turning mortals into other things and, on occasion, elevating them to divine status. There is something about the connection between our mortal reality and the divine ideal that has found its way into the stories of many cultures, so perhaps we too can find something useful in this imagery.

Some believers are content to look at this account, conclude that Jesus was divine, and smirk or shake their head with a bit of superiority at Peter's misguided suggestion to build shelters on the mountain for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. We miss something, though, if we interpret from the story that "normal" people are somehow unworthy or incapable of tapping into what we call the divine. We all want someone to say of us, "This is my beloved, with whom I am well-pleased." Some people have such a hard time hearing that from anyone in their lives that they can only hope to hear it after they die and arrive into an eternal, sacred, supernatural existence. Sometimes, we spend our time around people who don't support and encourage us. Sometimes, we fail to listen to the voices of acceptance and encouragement that actually speak into our lives. Sometimes, we make it challenging for people to acknowledge us because we fear the vulnerability of self-disclosure. Sometimes, we decide that the acknowledgment we receive doesn't count because it doesn't come from the "right" people.

Approval from people we respect and trust is important. If we base our identity on approval from other people, though, we abdicate power that is actually our own responsibility to wield. When we are children, we are understandably emotionally immature; we rely on the adults around us to understand that we are acceptable or to understand what we need to do to become acceptable. When we grow into adults, though, some of those lessons need to change if we are to become more emotionally mature. As more emotionally mature people, our understanding of ourselves as acceptable or worthy is not based on what other people think of us; it is based on what we think of ourselves. We must be able to say to ourselves, "You are my beloved, with whom I am well pleased," if we are to hear it effectively from other people in our lives.

This means a couple of things. If we don't see ourselves as acceptable, it's important for us to figure out why. Is there something we want to do differently in our lives? Something for which we need to take personal responsibility? Or have we bought into a lie -- a false belief about who we are that isn't actually based in reality? What do we think it means to be worthy or acceptable? What would it take for us to be well-pleased with ourselves? If we can address these questions honestly, then we can take some steps toward being who we want to be in the world. Other people can serve as valuable sources of feedback as we identify the many ways in which we are acceptable, as mirrors to point out positive things that we might miss about ourselves.

On the other hand, people can also be mirrors to show us how we miss some opportunities for growth, too. Once we reach a point of determining that we are acceptable, we sometimes get the impression that we have to stalwartly defend that position. We don't. We are acceptable not because we are flawless, but because all people are, at their core, acceptable. Our behavior may not always be acceptable, but that's different. Behavior is not identity. Once we understand that we are -- by virtue of our humanity -- acceptable and worthy, we can address the criticisms of other people with honesty and care. So, our willingness to pronounce ourselves as beloved paves the way for us to hear both acknowledgment and criticism in a meaningful way, because we are not allowing ourselves to be defined by what other people see, but we are allowing what other people see to speak into our own sense of identity.

The other thing that the voice from the cloud said was, "Listen." We must learn to listen to ourselves, not the self-critical thoughts or the predictions of doom and failure that often go on inside our heads, but our deepest, most noble selves -- the self that lives in a deeper part of us than our accumulated lies and fears about ourselves. The transfiguration story is about the communion of the earthly with the divine. For many Christians, Jesus represents that intersection. Even throughout the history of the Christian church, however, there have been theologians who have suggested that the divinity within Jesus (as he is represented in the gospels) is no different from the divinity within every person. The difference, as proposed by some of these thinkers, is that Jesus knew it and accepted it.

Whatever we believe about an authentic historical Jesus, the Jesus presented to us in this transfiguration story is a model of self-acceptance, a person who understood who he was at his core and embraced that identity. He was not surprised to hear a voice from the cloud call him beloved, because he knew this about himself already. We might imagine that it was still encouraging and moving for him to hear, but the impression we are given is that Jesus knew himself and didn't spend much time on lies or fears about himself, other people, and the world.

If we accept that we likewise have some inner quality of fearless truth, undeniable beauty, and inspiring creativity, we too can embrace that identity and bring our most noble selves forward in the world. We can pay a little less attention to the false beliefs and fears we have developed over time and pay a little more attention to our deep guiding principles, our values, our visions of what the world can be and who we can be in it. We can become different people from the versions of ourselves that are wrapped up in whether other people approve of us or not. We can engage in different behaviors than the versions of ourselves that place artificial limitations on who we can be and what we can accomplish. Although we may not glow or sparkle, we can be, in a word, transfigured.