The Practice of Acceptenness II

In the practice of acceptenness we need to let aside our egos and prejudices, somebody said to me that is better to accept them than mitigate them; but in reality the only way to let aside these feelings is when we are able to know and recognize that we have them.

First thing to remember is that I am a self-center, selfish person in my nature as a human being; one person once told me that I was a very selfish person, and she was absolutely right.I can not deny it and the moment I do not recognize this ego, is the moment I am not willing to let aside this and learn to think about others. But let’s be honest here, when we call somebody a selfish person, we are reflecting our own selfishness into them. Most of the time we will see others weakness without being able to see our own. So how can we accept our ego if we can not recognize is there?.

Second, I need to let aside my prejudice towards the ones who are so different, think so different and act so different than myself. According to the dictionary prejudice means a partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation. When I close my mind to consider others lifestyles or opinions, age or ideologies, standards of life or education as a barrier to listen and learn from them; I can easily become a prejudice person.

I have a good example for that, for the last years my Christianity has been changing in many ways. I have become more relax about some issues that used to cause a lot of controversy in my life, specially in my believes. For example there was one time in this Christian journey that I was against dancing, YES!! believe it or not I thought that dancing was evil (Today I laugh about that because now I love to dance) I was against drinking a beer with friends or listening to the good music of Police because it was not to glorify God. There was a strong division between my “Christian Life” and everybody else. So every time I saw this patterns in others I will always over reacted and call them “unworthy” of the same grace I was into. The irrational of all these is that I was judging others without judging myself. Today I have become open to accept everybody just as they are, except really hard to tell you this, the ones that have a close mind and who think the same way I used to be. Most of the Hispanic pastors are in this category and I feel a strong repulsion to relate with them. In other words I became prejudice against them and unable to relate to them at all.

So yes I have accepted my own prejudice, but in the same way I have opened myself to some, I have also closed to others. So practicing acceptenness is for me not something I have already accomplished but a continuous reminder that I still have a lot to learn, a lot to grow and a lot to exercise and practice.

” The downward mobility of God, becomes our way not because we try to imitate Jesus, but because we are transformed into living Christ by our relationship with his Spirit. The spiritual life is the life of the Spirit of Christ in us, a life that set us free to be strong while weak, to be free while captive, to be joyful while in pain, to be rich while poor, to be on downward way of salvation while living in the midst of an upward mobile society”– Henry Nouwen

The Practice of Aceptenness

I just had one of the best times ever with my brother Luis. He is nine years older than me and because he left home in a early age, I always felt a big separation between us, even though I had a strong admiration for the way he has handle the battles and valleys of his life. Because of that distant between us, it was hard to find common ground, so most of the times our conversations were vague and not very profound. So when his son, also named Luis decided to come to the USA to play Football and improve his English; I knew this will be a good opportunity to find closeness with my brother and my nephew.

The practice of aceptenness (may be another word that I have invented) is something we need to do in our daily living. It is when we decide to let aside all our egos and prejudices about others and see beyond any differences finding the true beauty in others. It is changing our preconceived concepts we have, and see the humanity in each one of us. When we are able to do so, then life becomes simpler. When my friend Jacob told me that I was beloved by the Beloved, I realized this was a quest I needed to do not only for myself but for every person I encounter in this journey, then aceptenness will come easily.

Henry Nouwen said, “Prayer is, above all, acceptance. A person who prays is someone standing with their hands open to the world”,

If we, as followers of the one who opened the arms for everybody, realize this idea; let me tell you life will be easier and people will start to know the real love and not the fake desire to reach out. Evangelism is not reaching the lost soul, but it is according to my own understanding, the moment we can see everybody else as the one who has been beloved by the Beloved in the face of an African American, a Hispanic, a gay or lesbian, a small kid, a drunker, a homeless and even to the one that in ignorance become racist toward others. It is making room in our heart to the one who gossip against us, who criticize us and wants to see our lives destroyed. This in reality when we can become people with open hearts, open minds and open doors.

May your prayer and lifestyle be a way into embracing everybody and to exercise the practice of acepteness that many of us have forgotten

The Journey of Shatterness

“The more I think about loneliness, the more I think that the wound of loneliness is like the Grand Canyon–a deep incision in the surface of our existence which has become inexhaustible source of beauty and self-understanding…The Christian way of life does not take away our loneliness; it protects and cherishes it as a precious gift” Henry Nouwen

When i get home after a full day of socialize with people, there is an empty silence in my soul that starts to arise from the emptiness of the walls. It is the sound of the nature of my life, like the song of the crickets and frogs outside; an inner beauty that creates, but at the same time leaves me in awe and contemplation of the greatness and deepness of my wounds. My only companion are the many concerts and symphonies that played in the background trying to fill with joy these walls. My voice, silent as the night, wakes up and tries to speak words of encouragement to my soul, but the noise and voices that surround my life scream at me making of this space, that should be a place of rest, irresistibly annoying.

In The Way of Simplicity there are many journeys, the first one is the journey of shatterness. The first one and last one are the hardest to deal with. The first one because we come into a moment in our life where everything else is thorn apart, it is broken, it is shattered in many small pieces and there is nothing we can do about it. The last one–The Journey of tender belovedness– (that I will talk about it latter on) is the one who seals all the journeys before and help us move forth to our inner love.

The Journey of Shatterness take us to recognize the darkness in ourselves when we face all our ideologies, concepts, believes and standards of life and we realized that there could be a possibility that we could be wrong. It is the realization of a our raw humanity, Like the beautiful clay vessel that has been smashed and there is no way to put it back together, that is exactly what this journey lead us: to a place of dust. Carl Jung said, “Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.” It is the hardest one because we need to be able to enter into a place of restructure what we have wrongly built. I know, it look beautiful from outside; magnificent block walls painted in the most wonderful colors, a front lawn that welcomes every person to the fellowship of our own home, two nice cars who can show the rest of the world the good we are doing, a wife, a couple of children, may be a dog and two cats, ah! and every Sunday we are involved in some kind of religion.But when we step into this journey suddenly everything is destroyed and wherever we thought the source of our happiness was, is gone becoming just dust. I am not talking just about what material things we own, it is also about our preformed ideas of religion, concepts of what life should look or not look, the way we see others or even ourselves. It is to come to a moment of pure dust. This is just the begging..
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“only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy”–Thomas Merton