Posts Tagged: Thomas Merton

“The Contentment and Joy of Beginnership”

On April 24, 2023 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

Do you feel like a beginner in an area where you should be a master? Well, join the human race, dear heart! “Impostor syndrome” (which is often a result of feeling like a beginner) is something we all struggle with in one way or another, in one area or another. Feeling like a beginner is not generally a comfortable feeling.

However, at the ripe old age of seventy-two, I have realized that I can choose to be contented and even joyous with the feeling and the reality of being a beginner.

Here is an excerpt from my 12-step report to my sponsors and accountability posse this morning:

“Dear ___________________________________,

. . .

Today, by God’s grace, I am cultivating awareness of God. Good things for me and for others will come about as I consistently do this.

It was a good affirmation, but I am not sure how much I followed through on it. I am a beginner at cultivating awareness of anything. However, Thomas Merton said that God loves beginners. I hope Merton was right, and I suspect he was.

Today, by God’s grace, I am content and joyful to be a beginner. By the end of the day, I am planning to be a little further along on my beginnership.

Daryl”

I thought that I might be coining the word “beginnership”, but I was quickly disabused of that notion. While it is not yet an official word, it was used in an article in Forbes Magazine in February of 2022 (https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/02/09/the-power-of-beginnership-as-a-business-leader/?sh=1cfff9f17bf8, accessed 04-24-2023). So much for originality!

Some Buddhists also speak of keeping “a beginner’s mind”. This strikes me as being incredibly wise.

And why is it wise to recognize and cultivate beginnership? The answer is simple: Because we all are beginners. If we begin to think otherwise, we are already off the path of wisdom and into a thicket of bad results.

I had a fascinating exchange of emails with a student. He was responding to one of my comments on his assignment. His email invited me to think more deeply about the whole matter of biblical interpretation. I was able to encourage him, I think, by admitting that I myself am a beginner when it comes to interpretation. I also raised his grade a bit for his prompt and thoughtful response.

If the Bible is God’s Word, as I believe that it is, then we should not find it difficult to believe that we are beginners in interpretation. After all, if God is infinite (in other words, if God has no boundaries), then we ought to be humble beginners in trying to understand what God has said. We can be content and even joyful in our beginnership.

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“AFFIRMING THE PLEASURE OF GOD”

On February 10, 2017 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

Years ago, my twelve-step sponsor encouraged me to do daily affirmations.  It is a good discipline.  I usually do my affirmation early in the morning.  It helps to set the tone for my day.  Today’s affirmation is as follows: Today, by God’s grace and with God’s help, I will seek to make it a good day for God.  I will do this by trusting Him, by obeying Him, by enjoying Him, by praising Him, and by being kind to everything and everyone He has made.

One of the many ways that I sometimes go wrong is that I want God to make it a good day for Me.  Some of my worst days have been the result of that attitude.

Putting anyone first means that you want to make that person happy, as much as lies within you.  Of course, no one can really make another person happy unless the other really desires happiness.  Some people enjoy misery, and enjoy making others miserable as well.

But God is a God who is easily pleased.  Jesus said that even a cup of cold water given in his name did not go unnoticed (Matthew 10:42).  Now that is a God who notices and is pleased by very small acts of kindness!

The Apostle Paul wrote a letter to a church in which the (dis??)members were not getting along particularly well, the church at Corinth.  Actually, “not getting along particularly well” is a huge understatement.  The church was a massive mess!  One of their many problems was that they were focused on which of the apostles they liked the best, instead of focusing on what God had done for them and what God wanted to do in and through them.

Among other things, Paul wrote the following: “So don’t make judgments about anyone ahead of time– before the Lord returns. For he will bring our darkest secrets to light and will reveal our private motives. Then God will give to each one whatever praise is due” (1 Corinthians 4:5, New Living Translation).

God exposing our darkest secrets and private motives sounds pretty scary, at least to me.  But Paul ends on the note of God praising us.

What?!  God praising us!  That can’t be right!

Yes, that is exactly what Paul said.  And the God who praises us is most certainly a God who is infinitely capable of being pleased with our little attempts to please Him.

I don’t really know if I will please God today or not.  But I am comforted by a prayer of Thomas Merton.  I end with it.  (I have bolded three sentences that especially speak to this matter of pleasing God.)

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

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