Everything is About You (But Not How You Might Think)
Only children have a reputation. It is said that they think that everything revolves around them. The reputation, or rather stereotype has a bit of truth in it. That truth is born out of the reality that, in the best of cases, only children get more attention than kids with siblings. This attention can cause at least two things to begin to form. They operate in an environment in which they know that what they do matters. Their actions bring immediate responses from the family (positive or negative), and there isn’t anyone else to ease the responsibility. There are no siblings to blame.
Take an only child and put them in a group and they might expect similar dynamics. Might.
This expectation has colored the reputation of only children often as a negative. They are selfish, or worse self-centered. It took me a while to piece apart the difference between being selfish and being self-centered. I even wrote about it in a Note last season. I bring this up because, if thinking about ourselves, or working on ourselves are seen as selfish acts, and selfishness is bad, then we may run into some issues when it comes to spiritual formation. Especially when a major part of spiritual formation is the matter of considering ourselves.
Spiritual formation is about you. It is you that gets one. You don’t get someone else’s, and someone else won’t get yours – although there is plenty of interaction and influence between folk. At the end of the day, you have your spiritual formation and that is the person you have become. There isn’t any getting around that. You are the central character, you have the leading role, and you are on the hero’s journey. Your spiritual formation is all about you.
This is the other side of the coin. No one lives outside of relationship. Whether with others, their environment, even with ourselves, relationship is at the heart of our individual lives. Now, it might sound like we have a problem. “Spiritual formation is all about the individual (you),” and “Relationship (that is interacting with someone or something) is at the heart of an individual’s life,” sound like mutually exclusive statements. If spiritual formation is all about me, shouldn’t that lead to self-centeredness? If relationship is at the heart of my life, how can spiritual formation be all about me?
Reconciliation here is found in two ideas. The first is that individuals require feedback. Self reflection only gets us so far in our consideration of ourselves. Here are a few examples from my own life:
A few years ago, I asked a group of friends to send me three words that came to mind when they thought of me. I still return to that list sometimes when I have days when I feel cloudy.
I have a dear friend who I call up every now and again to ask, is this true about me? In a world that consistently trying to tell us things about ourselves without consideration for us, this friend is a God-send (they know who they are).
The more intimate the relationship, the more that is true about us comes out. Every close relationship I have ever had has revealed things about me that I hadn’t realized before. The closer the relationship the deeper the thing is that is revealed.
With this in mind, there is a question about the kind of relationship that is conducive to the journey of spiritual formation. Given the ways and aims proposed by Jesus Christ (as I mentioned in last week’s note, ways and aims diverge depending on who you follow) that relationship can be summed up in one word: love. That is, the will to good for the beloved. It doesn’t matter whether we look at the individual (someone who gives and receives love easily) or the relationship (the expression of the easily given and received love), love is central to the kind of spiritual transformation I am describing here.
Spiritual formation acknowledges that at the center of the person is a spirit. You and I have a spirit. The Dallas Willard definition of spirit is unbodily personal power. This power is the part of us that enlivens us to action. It has a particular shape. It has been formed over the course of our lives, and therefore enlivens us to particular kinds of action. Whether directed towards goodness or evil, our spirit is what (literally at the heart of the matter) propels us into the world in a particular kind of way.
Here, the proposition of spiritual transformation – literally the changing of our spirit – is that how we show up, what we would want to do, what we ultimately do, and even how we leave any particular situation could change. If we look around the world, even our own corner of the world, we may find that there are quite a few things we might want to change. The process of spiritual transformation is different than other propositions. It is hyper local – you change, nothing else, really, until you think about everything that would change if you really changed. It is foundational – it is not behavior modification, something that always runs the risk of reverting. Because of love, it is not an imposition, unlike social pressure or legislation. Much good can come from the protection afforded through legislation and the changes made through behavior modification, but spiritual transformation is different.
One of the quirks of spiritual formation is that it may not be attempted directly and be successful. I will not get far waking up one day and saying, “I’m going to be more generous,” and expect a change in my disposition just from affirming my desire. I cannot change my will by force of will. I may give a little more in certain areas, maybe while still feeling resistant. After some time, I might snap back to being tight-fisted with my provision – a loss of will power will likely be to blame. It will take a deeper shift to make generosity an easy act – something I don’t think about.
Indirectly, becoming more generous might have something to do with feeling cared for, experiencing a sense of abundance, having more than one needs, or being relieved of the worry for provision. These may be addressed more specifically – addressing the development of generosity as a character trait indirectly. But how? There are four key relationships.
Teacher – those in our lives who guide us in a particular way of seeing, hearing, moving, touching, thinking, or believing. We take the role of the student and learn from them.
Friendship – those in our lives with whom we share a common vision and care for one another. We take the role of fellow practitioners in our endeavors of life, comparing notes, sharing resources, and encouraging one another.
Family – those we feel connected to particularly across generations. Our families are the ones who have played an intimate role in our earliest formation, and we may do likewise for those in our care. We take the role of shaper tasked with receiving wisdom from past generations and gifting those in our care with the revelations we’ve also been given and experienced throughout our own lives – all to the best of our abilities.
God/Reality – the underlying, absolute, and consistent nature of reality. We take on the role of explorer, seeking to know, and discovering bits of reality along the way – as they are revealed to us.
These are all formative relationships that shape us in ways much more profoundly than we might expect. The one that I’m going to focus on today is that of a teacher. The most intimate teaching context is that of an apprenticeship. It is just you and your teacher. They get to know you and you get to know them. We might assume this is a learning context for the sake of skill – as in, I apprentice with a blacksmith to learn how to blacksmith – but there is so much more. In learning the trade of blacksmithing we will also have to learn about the reality of the how metal works, the power of heat, what can and can’t happen to different metals at different temperatures. We may also have to learn about how to deal with clients, negotiating, how honesty works in the marketplace, and what it means to have a reputation (whatever that reputation might be). We might find ourselves in a community of blacksmiths who have a common view of the craft, and how it informs reality. We might even have come from or establish a family line of blacksmiths.
In this approach to learning we find a recognizable truth. The practice is inseparable from the people involved, who are inseparable from they’re spiritual formation. Change one’s spiritual formation and the entirety of the organization of life around which this craft exists, and even the craft itself, all shift. Infused with love both individually and relationally and the entire ecosystem becomes fundamentally different – and here the ecosystem is simply a group of individuals relating to one another.
The impact of a shift in a single person’s spiritual formation is immeasurable. It isn’t just around measurable metrics like number of times I did or did not do a particular thing. Rather it is about the kind of shift that shows up in one’s ability to endure, fortitude of thought, what they contend for and how, discernment in times of confusion, and effectively in their choices about the organization of their life.
No one else can live out such things other than the person being transformed. No one can engage in the process of transformation other than the person who wants to be transformed. No one can have the impact that such a transformation provides other than the person being transformed. It really is all about you.
Everything is About You