"Maybe our failings slow growth down, maybe they don’t. Maybe our failings are mysteriously a part of a deeper kind of growth happening below the surface of our life." I appreciate this. I have this memory that when you taught the Rule of Life at the Renovaré Institute, you said something like "failure is learning," and it stuck with me, because I so dislike failure.
Yet here again, a gentle and rich-in-mercy view of it. I certainly see myself becoming more like Jesus when I see my own failures this way, because then I turn around and can be gentle and rich-in-mercy towards another. Thanks for this!
The first is keeping repentance short. Francis de Sales returns to this often in his letters: a quick turn of the heart, and then back on the journey. It's easy to assume we need to beat ourselves up for a while to repent properly. He suggests the opposite.
The second is learning to see myself as a child in the spiritual life. Not expert ... barely an apprentice. Just a child, still figuring it out, still carrying plenty of misguided ideas about how things work. When I hold that picture, I can be gentler with my own mistakes, even the chronic ones.
"Maybe our failings slow growth down, maybe they don’t. Maybe our failings are mysteriously a part of a deeper kind of growth happening below the surface of our life." I appreciate this. I have this memory that when you taught the Rule of Life at the Renovaré Institute, you said something like "failure is learning," and it stuck with me, because I so dislike failure.
Yet here again, a gentle and rich-in-mercy view of it. I certainly see myself becoming more like Jesus when I see my own failures this way, because then I turn around and can be gentle and rich-in-mercy towards another. Thanks for this!
So true ... when I can meet my own failures without raging :), I have so much more mercy and compassion to offer others. A huge illumination for me.
Without raging! So apt. And how do we do this? I have experienced the rage...
Honestly? Slowly, and badly at first. 😀
But two things have helped me here:
The first is keeping repentance short. Francis de Sales returns to this often in his letters: a quick turn of the heart, and then back on the journey. It's easy to assume we need to beat ourselves up for a while to repent properly. He suggests the opposite.
The second is learning to see myself as a child in the spiritual life. Not expert ... barely an apprentice. Just a child, still figuring it out, still carrying plenty of misguided ideas about how things work. When I hold that picture, I can be gentler with my own mistakes, even the chronic ones.
Thank you. This is very helpful!