Advent 4 Loving Yourself; Giving Yourself

The qualities of love proposed by Erich Fromm in The Art of Loving, are giving, care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.  I am exploring these themes during Advent to see what they mean when applied to loving ourselves.  I believe that we need to love ourselves before we can truly love others.   In Advent 1, I explored caring for yourself.  In Advent 2, I explored knowing yourself.  Advent 3, I explored respecting yourself. Today I will explore giving to yourself.

Gifts come in all sizes and types to Forward Movement–from stocks and bequests to stamps purchased from the prison commissary. One donor sends us wrinkled dollar bills, never amounting to more than $5, with a return address from a residential healthcare facility. These gifts usually come with a note of thanksgiving, reminding me that generosity often comes from a deep well of gratitude. We give the gifts first given us out of joy, appreciation, and an understanding that nothing we have in this life comes of our own merit.  God has blessed us with garlands and gladness to share with the world.  -Lindsay Barrett-Adler

When we think of gift giving at Christmas, we can think of the materialism that has become the hallmark of the cultural Christmas.  I often wonder what the wise men, I sometimes blame for the frenzy of materialism that seems to overtake the Western World, would think if they could see the world today.  The above quote gives an alternate approach to gift giving which is more closely related to the actions of the wise men.  They are more related to the widow giving her mite, whom Jesus held up as an example.  However, what does it mean to give to yourself, which is the topic for today's part of the Advent journey?

 Giving to yourself seems to be a strange thing to do for Christmas.  We give gifts to others.  To give a gift to yourself seems to be selfish, doesn’t it.  Definitely not in the spirit of Christmas.  But if we ask ourselves what it is that we truly need for ourselves what would we say in response?  I know I do not need more things.   I do not need a roof over my head or more food, despite the high cost.  There are many people in Canada, much less the world, who do need these things.  I feed my body quite adequately (and sometimes more) in a very comfortable home.  However, what I do need is to feed my soul.  Despite my good intentions, I don’t always spend time with the divine in my life.  The divine is the manifestation of God as I experience it.  I do spend time in prayer and meditation.  However, that seems to be the thing that I forgo when life gets in the way. 

Like the little Shepherd Boy, I ask what can I give him, poor as I am - perhaps rich in many ways but not poor enough in spirit?  I can give my heart.  That is giving what I need to give myself.

As Advent draws to a close may you have been blessed and may you continue to be blessed in giving yourself what you truly need. 

Advent 3 Loving Yourself; Respecting Yourself

The qualities of love proposed by Erich Fromm in The Art of Loving, are giving, care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.  I am exploring these themes during Advent to see what they mean when applied to loving ourselves.  I believe that we need to love ourselves before we can truly love others.   In Advent 1, I explored caring for yourself.  In Advent 2, I explored knowing yourself.  Today I want to explore respecting yourself.

The first things that comes to mind when I think about respect, is the great song by the great Aretha Franklin:

R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Take care, TCB
Oh (sock it to me, sock it to me
Sock it to me, sock it to me)
A little respect (sock it to me, sock it to me
Sock it to me, sock it to me)
Whoa, babe (just a little bit)

We all want to be respected by the people in our lives - those we encounter and especially the people that we love and who love us.  I have certainly had the experience of not being respected by people in my life, usually not people who I am close to.  I have also not always shown respect to everyone I have encountered in my life.  That has led to many regrets that are the ghost that visit me at 4:00 in the morning. I am sure that most people, if not everyone, has had that experience. 

That being said, what does it mean to respect yourself?  After all, that is the topic I am exploring this morning.  I believe that the basis for respecting myself and yourself is to know yourself.  Each person has aspects that he or she does not want to acknowledge or doesn’t even know is part of themselves.  Carl Jung called these aspects of ourselves as, the Shadow.  They can be most easily recognized in dreams as a dark, shadowy person who is behaving in ways that are not acceptable or even nice when assessed by our conscious selves.  They can also be recognized when we have an overreaction to someone, we take an instant dislike to.  We see aspects of ourselves in them that we have denied. 

If we are to respect ourselves – all of who we are we must acknowledge the whole package.  We all have our strengths and weaknesses but we are called to become those strengths that we embrace and celebrate do not come without those parts of ourselves that we do not embrace.  To love who you are, who God created you to be is to acknowledge all of who you are.  It does not mean you have to live out those aspects of yourself which you find it difficult to accept but you need to first be aware of them and to accept yourself as you are.  If you do that you may be able to understand yourself and decide how you want to live with all of who you are.  That will enable you to come to know what it means to respect yourself.  As Aretha says, you will be able to show yourself respect - just a little bit; Whoa, babe (just a little bit) and then even more.

May you be blessed to know and respect yourself on your journey this Advent. 

Advent 2 Loving Yourself; Knowing Yourself

The qualities of love proposed by Erich Fromm in The Art of Loving, are giving, care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge.  I am exploring these themes during Advent to see what they mean when applied to loving ourselves.  I believe that we need to love ourselves before we can truly love others.   In Advent 1, I explored caring for yourself.  Today I want to explore knowing yourself.

“I linger in the mirror and I don’t look away.” Cole Arthur Riley. To see yourself and not look away is, I believe, key to self-knowledge.  It can be a challenge to see yourself clearly.  I remember reading a definition of humility that really grabbed hold of me.  To be truly humble is to see yourself clearly.  This was a bit of a puzzle initially, but on reflection, I realized that if you see yourself clearly you will realize that you are not the self-image that you have constructed for yourself – this is sometimes called the persona.  To look in the mirror and not look away is to see yourself clearly with all the wrinkles and spots - age spots and a hairline which seems to be receding each day.  Of course, that is the physical part of myself.  It is also true for the soul and spirit as well as the body.  The impulse is to look away or at least not look too closely at any of these parts.

Author Judy Cannato speaks of an alternative way of looking at yourself in all your imperfections.  It is to take a long loving look at the real:

She speaks of the approach to contemplation by “Dorothee Sölle [1929–2003] who maintains that radical amazement is the starting point for contemplation. Often, we think of contemplation as a practice that belongs in the realm of the religious, some esoteric advanced stage of prayer that only the spiritually gifted possess. This is not the case…. The nature of contemplation as I describe it here is one that lies well within the capacity of each of us. To use a familiar phrase, contemplation amounts to “taking a long loving look at the real.”

God knows – literally and figuratively – that there are aspects of myself which I wish I didn’t have.  They are the ghosts that visit me at 4:00 in the morning – things I have done I wished I had done or had done differently and the things I had not done I wish I had done – it is tempting to complete this with the line form the prayer in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, ‘and there is no health in me’.  But no matter in what way my reality of myself does not live up to my self-image, I know that there is health in me because I am created by a loving God. 

However, what I have learned over the years is that I am loved despite, or perhaps even because, of who I am.  I can love myself because this is the way that I was made with my strengths and weaknesses.  I can love myself because God created me this way and God loves all that God created.  I have not learned this easily and am still learning it.

May you have the blessing of knowing and loving who you are on your Advent journey.

 

Advent 1 Loving Yourself; Care for Yourself

The qualities of love proposed by Erich Fromm in The Art of Loving, are giving, care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. What I would like to do is to explore these themes during Advent to see what they mean when applied to loving ourselves.  I believe that we need to love ourselves before we can truly love others.  Today I want to explore ‘care’ as an aspect of loving yourself.

 First, I want to recognize that the first challenge in loving yourself is that it may seem to be selfish and self-centred.   Many of us grew up with the belief, transmitted to us either directly or indirectly, that we should put others first.  We should not put our own wants and needs ahead of others.  We are to love one another forgetting that the rest of this is Jesus loving us.  The question before us today is, how do we care for ourselves as part of loving ourselves?

The first step to do this is to realize in the depth of our being, that to care for ourselves is not selfish.  We might say that we understand that.  However, to understand with our heads, is not the same as understanding in our hearts – in the depth of our beings.  That is not easy and to truly know this in the deepest sense can and probably does not come quickly.  It requires attention over time. 

To be honest, I am not sure what the next step should be – or rather- I think there may be different steps for different people.  One possibility is to find something which resonates with you and tells you that you are cared for by God.  To resonate with you it is likely to be on a non-intellectual level. What comes to mind for me is the hymn, Jesus Loves Me – you know the one:  

Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to him belong;
they are weak, but he is strong.

Refrain:
Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me! The Bible tells me so.

It can be anything that resonates with you on a deep level and has the message that you are loved and cared for by the person or being that truly matters for you.  This can become your mantra which is repeated as a prayer which you use regularly.  I was going to say daily or even more frequently.  However, that would not be caring for yourself.  An important part of caring for yourself is to cut yourself some slack.  It is okay - and even expected by the creator – that you are not perfect and are not called to be perfect.  Just do it whenever and however, and see what happens.   I guess that is the third step – sorry for not being well organized in laying out the steps, but I’m not perfect either.

Finally, I suggest that we need to create space within ourselves for us to care for ourselves.  I won’t say anything more about that with the hope that it will be addressed in the other aspects of my Advent musings. 

In summary (my attempt to be well-organized) , here are the four steps that I hope will help you to care for yourself.

1.       1. Recognize that caring for yourself is not selfish or self-centred.

2.       2. Find something which resonates with you and tells you that you are truly cared for.

3.       3. Cut yourself some slack.

4.      4.  Create space within yourselves

Have a blessed Advent and take care of yourself on your Advent journey.