Poverty of Spirit
Ten years of Franciscan education left me with the concept of poverty deep in my consciousness. It was, to great extent, exactly that, a concept.
"Blessed are the poor"
"Holy indifference"
"Live simply that others may simply live"
All those words have swirled around my spiritual and practical adult life. Now in my seventieth year I find myself returning to them again and again and wondering if I ever understood the idea at all.
In Light in the Darkness Elizabeth Leseur writes eloquently about silence, humility, and renunciation in ways I've never heard them before. Perhaps I wasn't listening. Perhaps as age takes its toll and losses mount, as they inevitably do in life, I understand them better. She even had me with "mortification," an old-fashioned word that would have made me cringe at twenty, but which begins to make sense in marriage or in any life with others when you look at the things life actually sends you.
It comes down, I suspect, to letting go. We can learn to let go of ego, of greed, of the need to win, to be right, to be powerful. We can do it without losing sight of our own great value as children of God. We empty ourselves out in order to be filled. The extent to which we can do that is the extent to which God can take over and do His work in our life and use us for the sake of those he sends our way.
Various writers and various saints have used different words to describe the same process. "The Little Way" of Therese of Lisieux is not that different than holy poverty. Maybe I'm beginning to have an inkling of what the great ones understood utterly. I hope so because the one thing I know for sure is, I have a long way to go and am unlikely to have too many years in which to do it.
I gave up trying to be a hero for God long ago, seeing it for the foolishness it was. Maybe it is time to let go of my life completely and let God have it. My dearest Franciscan mentor once wrote to me, "In your passion for truth and justice, don't neglect poverty and humility." I should have listened then.
"Blessed are the poor"
"Holy indifference"
"Live simply that others may simply live"
All those words have swirled around my spiritual and practical adult life. Now in my seventieth year I find myself returning to them again and again and wondering if I ever understood the idea at all.
In Light in the Darkness Elizabeth Leseur writes eloquently about silence, humility, and renunciation in ways I've never heard them before. Perhaps I wasn't listening. Perhaps as age takes its toll and losses mount, as they inevitably do in life, I understand them better. She even had me with "mortification," an old-fashioned word that would have made me cringe at twenty, but which begins to make sense in marriage or in any life with others when you look at the things life actually sends you.
It comes down, I suspect, to letting go. We can learn to let go of ego, of greed, of the need to win, to be right, to be powerful. We can do it without losing sight of our own great value as children of God. We empty ourselves out in order to be filled. The extent to which we can do that is the extent to which God can take over and do His work in our life and use us for the sake of those he sends our way.
Various writers and various saints have used different words to describe the same process. "The Little Way" of Therese of Lisieux is not that different than holy poverty. Maybe I'm beginning to have an inkling of what the great ones understood utterly. I hope so because the one thing I know for sure is, I have a long way to go and am unlikely to have too many years in which to do it.
I gave up trying to be a hero for God long ago, seeing it for the foolishness it was. Maybe it is time to let go of my life completely and let God have it. My dearest Franciscan mentor once wrote to me, "In your passion for truth and justice, don't neglect poverty and humility." I should have listened then.
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