A kind mouth multiplies friends and appeases enemies,
and gracious lips prompt friendly greetings.
Let your acquaintances be many,
but one in a thousand your confidant.
When you gain a friend, first test him,
and be not too ready to trust him.
For one sort is a friend when it suits him,
but he will not be with you in time of distress.
Another is a friend who becomes an enemy,
and tells of the quarrel to your shame.
Another is a friend, a boon companion,
who will not be with you when sorrow comes.
When things go well, he is your other self,
and lords it over your servants;
But if you are brought low, he turns against you
and avoids meeting you.
Keep away from your enemies;
be on your guard with your friends.
A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter;
he who finds one finds a treasure.
A faithful friend is beyond price,
no sum can balance his worth.
A faithful friend is a life-saving remedy,
such as he who fears God finds;
For he who fears God behaves accordingly,
and his friend will be like himself.

I especially like the last sentence. I’ve heard it put this way: “We attract what we are.” I have found that to be so true, with both my romantic attractions and with my female friendships. Life has brought many new relationships to me in the past two years, and they all in some way have been mirrors in which I could see myself more clearly.

The wisdom of this is that if I want to change the way people treat me, I need to first change myself. As I grow, the users and abusers will likely fade into the background as long as I’m willing to let them go. This has been my experience so far.

On the flip side, as I become more faithful to myself, I have begun to attract other healthy, faithful people into my life. Their ways may have once been very distasteful to me; there was a time when I would have called them rigid, stuffy or judgmental. Now I see them as women and men who respect themselves and God. I take it as a sign of progress that they are in my life.

The main hero in both the original Avatar show and its sequel is “the Avatar,” who has the power to control the four elements – air, water, earth, and fire. Other characters in the show can control only one element, and some have no such power at all, but the Avatar (a playful yet powerful Dalai Lama-like figure reincarnated into each generation) must overcome his or her human tendencies and use this special power to bring balance to the world.

Avatar Korra is no great spiritual master; she is a teenager and a fighter at heart, and she struggles through episode after episode to grasp the basics of meditation and surrender to a power greater than herself, whether it be the city authorities, the monk who is her mentor, or the boy on whom she has a crush.

In the last episode, Korra faces her nemesis, who permanently disables her ability to bend the the elements, and she understandably falls into a deep depression, questioning her worth and very existence now that she has lost her unique talent. It is in this lowest of moments that she finally makes contact with her own spiritual nature, and the spirit of the previous Avatar, Ang, tells her that it is when we are at our weakest that we are most open to being transformed. Korra goes on to experience a miraculous healing and is then able to heal others.

I wonder if the good folks at Nick knew they were making a story about Pentecost.

Those of us who grew up in the Catholic Church connect the annual Feast of Pentecost with the Sacrament of Confirmation, in which we are “sealed with the Holy Spirit.” Like many cradle Catholics, I went through this sacrament in high school, and like young Korra, I was disappointed when it wasn’t the deep spiritual experience I was expecting.

I thought the ceremony would open my heart and mind in some tangible way and that I would experience the Holy Spirit in the same way I could taste the host and the wine at the Eucharist. I was a little disappointed when I felt exactly the same after the liturgy was over. The sky did not split open, and I did not hear the voice of God. I didn’t even feel so much as a shiver when the Bishop laid his hands on my head.

What I failed to understand at the time is that, like the sacrament of Baptism, Confirmation is a sacrament of initiation. It’s not the end if the journey, and for most of us it is not the spiritual awakening we think of when we read the story of the Apostles’ Pentecost. It is the only the beginning of the journey.

I like to think of it as a strong wind blowing the door open, or maybe just a slight breeze. I can choose to walk through the door into a new adventure, or I can choose to stay put. But the transformation will only happen if I cross that threshold and make the journey in which I lose myself to find myself.

At the first Pentecost, the Apostles had already made that journey. They were in many ways at their weakest and lowest. Their savior and best friend had been brutally persecuted and killed, unbelievably came back from the dead, only to leave them yet again. It must have been incredibly confusing and painful.

“You’ll never know that God is all you need until God is all you have.” I know I’ve written about that quote before, but it bears repeating. It’s what Pentecost means. I must be empty and open before I can be filled. The tighter I cling to what I have or the more I fill myself with what cannot satisfy me, the less room in my heart for the gifts of the Spirit.

There are multiple readings for the Feast of Pentecost, some intended for the Saturday night vigil mass and other different ones intended for the Sunday masses. Most of the stories are familiar to us: the Tower of Babel, Moses on Mt. Sinai, apocalyptic visions from Ezekiel and Joel, and New Testament stories of the Last Supper discourse, Jesus appearing to the disciples after His death, and the coming of the Holy Spirit documented in the Acts of the Apostles. We hear of the many gifts and one spirit so familiar to us from Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, and lots of description of what it means to be a spiritual being having a human experience in his letter to the Romans.

The singular thread running through them all is hope. “For in hope we are saved,” Paul tells the Romans. In the Avatar series, the main character represents hope for the powerless. In my life, it is hope that gets me up in the morning and keeps me moving through the low days, and it is hope that I strive to give to others on the days when I’m overflowing with life. For the Apostles, the manifestation of the Holy Spirit gave them hope to carry the message of Christ to all the corners of the world.

There is no more powerful force than hope.

There’s an interesting interpretation of tidal wave dreams that I found here: http://thedreamwell.wordpress.com/2008/10/24/dream-symbols-tidal-wave/

Although my tidal wave dreams lack the “fear and anxiety” element within the dreams themselves, I do find that I often struggle with the circumstances said to trigger them: procrastination, sticking my head in the sand, or being on the verge of some kind of life transition. Rather than creating anxiety, my wave dreams are very healing and reassuring to me during these times. They give me the courage to face my fears and go with the flow.

When I first heard this Brian Littrell song, Over My Head, I immediately thought of my tidal wave dreams.

I also thought of the negative connotation we tie to being “in over your head.” It’s often about taking on a task that is too large to handle, or having overwhelming life circumstances. This is something that I was taught to avoid, although I have to admit that I haven’t followed that teaching very well.

I’m not afraid to get in over my head. Well-meaning folks have occasionally criticized this trait of mine, but perhaps it is not such a defect after all. Whenever I find myself in over my head, I must rely on a higher power to get through it. I have learned to trust God by getting in over my head.

I don’t know why that should be so difficult, but it is. I sometimes will say positive things out loud. More often than not, my thoughts when I look at myself are affirming. But the whole sticky note affirmation thing has met with deep resistance.

I have enough clutter in there; I don’t want more.

I would feel silly.

What would my kids think if they saw.

Yeah, I know they are pretty lame excuses.

I saw this graphic on a friend’s Facebook page and thought, this may be the kind if affirmation I should put up on the mirror:

I did not think of myself when I first saw that. I thought of a man I know (of course, it would be a man!). I would totally put that on his bathroom mirror. And if any man I love ever put that on my mirror, I would melt. I would not be thinking about clutter. I’d be thinking about leaving all my clothes on the floor.

So why shouldn’t I love my stubborn self that way?

After spending time with the risen Jesus, whose crucifixion and very real death and burial they had witnessed personally, the Apostles were excited about the prospects for the repressed cultural minority to which they belonged. At one time the nation of Israel was a force to be feared and revered, but at the time of the Gospel, the Hebrews were little more than just another troublesome sect crushed under the foot of mighty Rome. But if their beloved Jesus could defy even death, surely He could and would restore God’s chosen people to their former glory.

Jesus’ response to them was twofold and probably not what they wanted to hear. First, He said, “It is not for you to know the times and seasons that the Father has established by His own authority. But you (emphasis mine) will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.”

The power Christ promises just before He leaves them is not the power to change political structures or institute utopia on earth. It is a power promised to each one of the Apostles (and each one of us) personally. Although it is not described in yesterday’s readings, it has been touched upon in the other Easter Gospels. The power is the peace of Christ. Not world peace. Inner peace. There is nothing more powerful on earth, as it is in heaven.

But in order to receive this peace, we must follow Jesus’ direction to His Apostles. Stay in Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit comes.

What does it mean to stay in Jerusalem? For the Apostles, it was a place of conflict, corruption, and crucifixion. It was also a place of hope, joy and miracles. It was a place of upper rooms – of suppers shared with friends, of doors locked in fear, of foreshadowing and revelation.

Each of us has our own Jerusalem, a place of earthly contradiction and spiritual paradox, of death and resurrection. And like most earth-bound beings, we don’t feel comfortable staying in such a place for very long. I may be able to accept the fullness of my Jerusalem for a few days, maybe even a few weeks. But while I’m there, I’m longing for God to redeem and make everything the way it “should” be, or rather, the way I think it should be. And when that doesn’t happen on my time schedule, my instincts tell me to move on, now.

Yet Jesus told the Apostles to wait. And he gave them no indication about how long.

The mother figures in my life are continually telling me to do the same. The woman who gave birth to me is forever encouraging me to think twice, nay, three times, before taking action. I don’t like it one bit, but the Bible tells me to honor my mother, so I swallow my pride. I know her prayer for me is not unlike the prayer Paul had for the early Church at Ephesus – wisdom and enlightenment.

I have other mother figures whose wisdom and enlightenment I trust. And they, too, tell me to wait. To sit with my feelings. When I ask how long, they tell me I will “know” when the time is right.

In the mean time, I am called to do what the Apostles did after they watched their savior float away. They “returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God.” I don’t plan to follow that literally. However, my body, mind and spirit is the temple I tend. I need to sit with myself and praise God with every small act of love toward myself. I’m not sure what I’m waiting for, but it promises to be more than I could ever imagine.

I say “for real” because I’ve done a little dating on and off for the past year, and that distraction in my life has precluded me from being truly single. After taking a good, hard look at my relationship history and my current wants and needs, I made the decision to quit the dating business for now and just learn to love myself.

It shouldn’t be so hard. I’ve always been an independent kind of girl. I don’t like to be smothered or tied down or trapped by a relationship. I don’t mind traveling by myself and have always enjoyed solitary activities like horseback riding, photography, crafting, reading, gardening. There are only two aspects of being truly single that I really don’t like – mowing the lawn, and not having physical intimacy.

I realize I have choices. I could pay someone to mow my lawn, and when my budget allows, that is definitely something I’ll consider doing. Can’t really use the same solution for my other problem, though, can I?

I’m just grateful that I can admit I have that need at all. Some people can’t, and (ironically) I couldn’t while I was married. I’ve finally accepted that wanting sexual contact doesn’t make me a slut – it makes me human. On the flip side, not wanting sex unless it’s with someone who wants all of me and only me forever doesn’t make me a prude, either. It means I love myself enough not to settle for less than what I know is best for me.

I’m not saying that to judge those who have “casual sex.” It’s just that I have no idea how that works. I can’t even kiss a man I like without it forming a powerful attachment that scares the living daylights out of me and hurts when it ends, even when I’m the one ending it. The only way I’ve “successfully” managed to have a physical relationship outside of the context of an exclusive, committed relationship is to turn my emotions off or to lie to myself and say that I don’t really want anything serious. Neither of those choices is healthy for me. I want more, and I want my partner to want more, too.

So it’s Saturday, I’m single, and I’m missing sex. I know lack of physical intimacy never killed anyone, and I hope the time invested in myself will pay off in the future. I’m blessed to have several female friends who’ve gone through divorce and solid singlehood only to find the love of their lives when they were finally ready for it. I find it very difficult to trust God with this area of my life, but I do trust their example. They tell me it will be worth the wait. I hope so.

Most days, reading and meditation are a part of my morning routine. But before I crack open the daily readers, before I turn on the light, before I even get out of bed, I say good morning and thank you to God, even on the mornings I’m not ready to be awake. Especially those mornings.

One of my favorite prayers is an oldie but goodie – the Lord’s Prayer. The danger with this prayer is that it’s so familiar, I can easily forget what the words mean.

Most of the time, we pray this as a prayer of petition. We say, “Thy kingdom come,” when the kingdom is all around us, closer than the air is to our skin. We ask that God’s will be done (as if His Will didn’t already trump the worst self-will that we could throw out into the world when Jesus died and rose from the dead).

We ask God to give us “daily bread” (without acknowledging that if we are alive today to pray to Him, He has given us everything we need for today).

We ask God to forgive us, perhaps without realizing that the forgiveness we request is not unconditional, but directly proportional to the forgiveness we give to our worst, most unrepentant enemies.

We ask our heavenly Father not to lead us into situations that tempt us, as if it were even possible for God to lead us away from His presence and into His absence (which is the very definition of “sin”).

These petitions make no sense to me. The only real request in the Lord’s Prayer is, “Deliver us from evil.”

I don’t think the Lord’s Prayer was ever intended to be a petition. I pray it as a bold declaration of my faith:

God, you are my father, my creator. Your name – I AM – is holy, sacred and powerful.

Your kingdom is here inside me and all around me.

Your will is more powerful than any earthly power, reaches into every corner of this world and uses every good and bad choice we make for your ultimate glory. Even if I don’t like it, my present circumstances and even the evil I face are allowed by that Will, if only to draw me and others closer to you.

I trust that you will give me everything I need to be useful to you for this day only. Tomorrow will take care of itself.

I believe the only thing standing in the way of Your forgiveness is my ability to receive it, and the only thing blocking me from receiving Your forgiveness is my anger and resentment of others.

I know that if I am separated from You, it is because I was the one who moved away. Please protect me from and relieve me of anything that would come between us.

For the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory are yours, now and forever.

Amen.

For King & Country is one of my new favorite groups, and their song Middle Of Your Heart just started playing on Pandora, as if on cue for the soundtrack of my life. This is a great little lyric video:

I literally had just gotten off the phone with a friend of mine after a chat about the transitional state I’m in right now. I’m letting go of 20 years or more of self-rejection and the accompanying sadness that goes along with feeling those feelings before finally releasing them. The last 24 hours have been filled with enlightening revelations: first, that I cannot and no longer want to replace the people I’ve loved and lost. I’m sure most “normal” people understand this intuitively, but it has taken me a quarter of a century to learn this simple lesson. My tactic for relief had always been using one relationship after another to fill a void, or using volunteering, work, politics, video games (yes, video games!), and “drama” to keep me distracted from my feelings. I’m not beating myself up about it, but I do have to call a spade a spade; I was doing the best I could at the time. But today, and for the past several weeks, I’ve just felt so SAD, missing people that I’ve loved, mourning the mistakes I made with people who loved me that I completely misinterpreted and even rejected. But I can’t change the past, and there are no takebacks. And for the first time in my life, I don’t want to try to “fix” it by getting into something or someone new. This is progress! I’m maturing!

Another revelation is about the nature of the hole I’ve been trying to fill. It’s not a hole left by a relationship with someone else. I had always assumed that my pattern of serial monogamy was about the fear of being alone, or not being able to handle when a relationship (or even a job or a stage in life) met its natural end. No, the hole in this holey heart of mine is the emptiness that has been left each time I rejected myself, little by little over the course of my life. I’ve stubbornly refused to accept myself as I am and offer that self to God. In refusing to accept myself, I have rejected and lost myself. I’ve withheld myself even from the God in whom I profess to believe. The person I’m mourning is the perfectly imperfect me that I’ve tossed away, minimized, controlled, tormented, abused, hidden, and hated.

Today’s most recent revelation is that other people are noticing what a funk I’ve been in. When people who barely know me ask if I’m okay, I know it must be bad. And I’m not someone who wants to walk around with my heart on my sleeve. I want to pull myself up by the bootstraps and look strong, capable, happy, and “together.” Apparently, you all can see through my ruse. I do not feel comfortable with this. I feel naked. I feel vulnerable. But when I took this feeling to God in prayer, He very plainly told me that this is a good thing, because it means I’m being authentic.

So here I am with my bag of revelations – the truth about my self-rejection, the grief I’m finally allowing myself to feel (instead of self-medicating it away with people, places and things), and the vulnerability of knowing you are seeing me at my messiest right now.

I’m entirely ready. I know. And those who understand what this means know that everything I’m experiencing right now is cause for great joy. They know I’m on the journey into the very heart of the power that can save me and restore what is lost.

I don’t know why I’ve needed to spend so much time and energy to “discover” this about myself. Ten years ago my then-husband bought me one of those new-fangled iPod thingies, and one of the first tracks I loaded onto it was this one:

I knew even then that I’m a little bit of everything, light and dark. But I wasn’t ready to admit my dark side, much less accept it. I wanted to hide it, from myself especially.

A while ago I posted one of those silly Facebook statuses like, “Use the second letter of your first name to come up with one word to describe me,” and this guy who barely knew me at all nailed it when he called me “livacious.” Spellcheck insists that it’s not a real word. Spellcheck obviously hasn’t met me.

I AM livacious! I laugh loud, cry hard, fall fast, love passionately. That’s who I see when I look in the mirror every day, and I love her. My biggest regrets in life are when I was too scared to embrace my livaciousness.

Today, I’m not ashamed to be my best, and still fail. I’m not ashamed of my inner bitch, and I’m no longer scolding my inner child. I still have a ways to go before I can say that I’ve “arrived,” but I’m freer every day thanks to those friends who loved me when I couldn’t love my livacious self. Who have loved me even when I’m a bitch. I love you!

But God planned ahead in love when He put that thirst for unity and purpose in my heart, and like most of my sincere and honest desires, He fulfilled it in His own time. Just last year, without having to exert any effort on my part, I stumbled upon the common thread. I was at an exhibit about Pope John Paul II at the Richmond holocaust museum, and at the end of the exhibit there was a wall of “scriptures” from nearly every major religion you could imagine, all saying the same thing in their own way:

“Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

In Christianity we refer to it as the “Great Commandment,” and even the secular, non-religious world embraces this precept as the “Golden Rule.” It is so simple, yet so full of depth. It harkens to a psychological truism that we can’t truly love others without first loving ourselves. We cannot give what we do not have.

Therein lies the dilemma. I follow the Great Commandment well. I often give people exactly what they say they want, even at the expense of my own well-being and peace of mind. I do love others as I love myself, which on most days is not much. Let me clarify this – I have no trouble at all being selfish, meeting my own needs and wants, and doing everything I can to allay my fears that I’m not good enough to deserve love. But that’s not really self-love; that is self-centeredness.

So my best case scenario when following the Great Commandment is to allay someone else’s self-centered fear (which is an effort in futility, as we can’t receive the love we’re offered if we’re steeped in the fear that we don’t deserve it).

Before I even have a chance to beat myself up about this, the still, small voice of my God cuts through the circular thinking in my “brilliant” mind and reminds me that humanity had thousands of years to figure out how to follow this one command, and failed. Even after generation after generation experienced God loving, relenting and redeeming, time and time again, from the flood through the escape from Egypt to the end of the Babylonian captivity, humanity failed to grasp that they were loved and could be just as loving.

The problem isn’t with the commandment that every culture embraces as its moral foundation. The problem is in our flawed human application of it. We fall short.

We need a new commandment. One without loopholes. And we receive this new commandment only from Christ in today’s Gospel from John.

“I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.”

Behold, God really does make all things new. Even the Great Commandment.

Loving my neighbor as I love myself falls short even when I apply the formula perfectly. But loving others as Jesus loves me is fail proof. Not easy. But fail proof. It is also uniquely Christian, found in no other world religion or culture, because it is centered not on self, but on Christ.

Love unconditionally. Forgive them when they don’t know what they are doing. Accept them even when they reject you. Feed them when they are hungry. Teach them simply. Be present to them even when you are tired. Be calm in the midst of the storm. Do not condemn them even when they are caught in the act; condemn only their hypocrisy. Heal with words of life and encouragement.

There is only one thing that Jesus did that we can’t do. We cannot save people from their sins. Funny, I see an awful lot of Christians trying to do just that, and only that, when it comes to loving like Jesus did. No wonder so many people reject the Good News. We are miserable failures at saving people from their sins, because that’s not our job, or our calling, and trying to “save” people just makes me look like an ass. Jesus did it once and for all, and doesn’t need any help from me on that one. As He said as he hung from the cross, “It is finished.”

“This is how all will know that you are my disciples,” Jesus said, “If you have love for one another.”

It doesn’t get any simpler than that. Brilliant.