Sacred Becoming
Today I’d like to explore the idea of sacred becoming. “The spaces of becoming” is a phrase I first read in Sue Monk Kidd’s book “When the Heart Waits,” a book that was transformative to me when I read it last year. The truth is that we are all becoming every day. We can choose to simply let life unfold and make us what it will or we can intentionally approach becoming as the art that it is meant to be- a magnificent unfolding of the image of God that we uniquely mirror.
Becoming can feel scary because it forces us to take off all that is artificial. It is often uncomfortable, if not downright painful. It pushes us out of what we have known and pulls us toward a new beginning. Becoming challenges our assumptions and calls us into greater imagination.
Listen to these words by Sue Monk Kidd, “I’m scared, God. Make me brave. Lead me into the enormous spaces of becoming. Help me cease the small, tedious work of maintaining and protecting so that I can break the masks that obscure your face shining in the night of my own soul. Help me to green my soul and risk becoming the person you created me to be.”
How do we break the masks that obscure the face of God shining in the night of our own souls? First, we have to surrender to the reality of the night in our lives. We need to simply and wholly be there. Many of us work very hard to deny the night, to numb the night, to overcome the night. But, the truth is that night lasts as long as it lasts. Night goes through its’ own cycle. Light does come, but not until night is finished.
Second, we need to recognize what our masks are. Mine tend to be some version of projected perfectionism, both in what I expect of myself and in what I want others to see. The problem is that if we are always living inside of a mask, then who we really are is never seen. And if who we really are is never seen, then we never truly know the joy of intimacy. Intimacy is all about seeing and knowing what is real.
Our current, daily lives are a great illustration of this. People-watching is a new experience in our COVID-19 experience. We can’t really see each other anymore because masks cover most of our faces. That is what they are designed to do- to protect by covering. This is very effective in protecting us from disease. However, if we live this way emotionally and relationally, we protect ourselves from some hurts, but we also hinder the beauty of intimacy.
Third, we need to learn to see God as He really is and not our own created images of Him. One of the most offensive things that the people of God have done over the course of time is to create false images of God. This can look like creating an idol or it can look like believing in a God whose character looks nothing like Jesus, a God that looks a lot more like our own self-condemning critic. If we want to truly see God, we need to look at Jesus because He reveals Him. And oddly enough, when we look at our truest selves and start to live from that place, we find we see God more clearly too.
Let’s seek to break the masks that obscure the face of God shining in our night. Let’s risk the sacred work of becoming.
Take heart today in this strange and long season of isolation. Choose to see it as a season of transformation.
Many blessings, my friends.
