con·sti·tu·tive

"the heart of it is this: to make the Lord and his immense love for you constitutive of your personal worth. define yourself radically as one beloved by G-d. G-d's love for you and his choice of you constitute your worth. accept that, and let it become the most important thing in your life."
[John Eagan]

i picked this quote up out of the rabbi's heartbeat by Brennan Manning; it is an amazing little book, let me know if you want to borrow it sometime.

this quote brings up a common theme that has (thanks to Donald Miller and his newfound celebrity status) seemed to quietly penetrated the Christian community. That theme being: "who do you get your approval from" or "is G-d's love truly enough? are you acting like it is?" etc. etc. these are great thoughts, and i am thrilled to see these ideas are becoming a hot topic. i love that word: constitutive. he uses it twice which means either it's important, or that Eagan was stuck in a word-rut...i like to think of the usage as stressing great importance on the word.

con·sti·tu·tive [kon-sti-too-tiv, -tyoo-]
–adjective
1. forming an essential element of something.
2. having power to establish or give organized existence to something.

G-d's love is constitutive of my personal worth. do we understand how huge this statement is? he is saying that this love should be the essential element, the organizing existence of my personal worth. if this statement was to ring true in me what kind of differences would become apparent? the core of my being, everything about me (inside and out) is completely held together by this love, i would have everything that i am invested in this mysterious undefinable love. sounds great, doesn't it? to be at peace, to have G-d and His love the most important thing in your day to day life. that sounds great to me. but what is preventing me from making this the most important thing to me? is it my desire to be loved in a terrestrial sense? have i become so addicted and reliant on human love that i am blind to the true beauty of G-d's love? now, this is an important question, if my worth is being upheld by something as higgledy-piggledy as human, judgmental minds then there is something radically wrong. not only radically wrong but that puts my complete being in extreme danger. i understand that this isn't ground breaking...i know that this is the same message we have heard since sunday skool. but it seems like that is all we have done, heard it. a very few people are living as if G-d is their essential element (myself included)- so I'm going to (re)begin my journey to making G-d's love constitutive to my personal worth (or at least closer to that than i am now).

next wednesday (feb. 21) is Ash Wednesday, thus beginning lent. this idea of defining myself as one radically beloved by G-d has successfully penetrated my head and i have been itching for change. so this lent season:
1) i will refrain purchasing clothes of any-type.
2) i will have my mirror covered at all times.
3) i will only log into facebook once a week.
3 1/2) rather than virtual and impersonal messages, i will hand write and deliver a note each day to a different person encouraging them, etc. (except for kyle, i will write him an email :])
EDIT: 4) no more hot showers.

(since lent is still over a week away this list is subject to change, but probably not much.)

i encourage whoever is reading this to also take part in giving up something for lent. if you want to talk about it, or whatever please let me know; i am excited and i would love to share the experience!

merton

“Many poets are not poets for the same reason that many religious men are not saints; they never succeed in being themselves. They never get around to being the particular poet or the particular monk they are intended to be by God. They never become the man or the artist who is called for by all the circumstances of their individual lives.

They waste their years in vain efforts to be some other poet, some other saint. For many absurd reasons, they are convinced that they are obliged to become somebody else who died two hundred years ago and who lived in circumstances utterly alien to their own.

They wear out their minds and bodies in a hopeless endeavor to have somebody else’s experiences or write somebody else’s poems or possess somebody else’s spirituality.

There can be an intense egoism in following everybody else. People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular—and too lazy to think of anything better.

Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success and they are in such haste to get it that they cannot take time to be true to themselves. And when the madness is upon them they argue that their very haste is a species of integrity.

In great saints you find that perfect humility and perfect integrity coincide. The two turn out to be practically the same thing. The saint is unlike everybody else precisely because he is humble.”
[Thomas Merton, 1962]

eyes

eye
–noun
1. the organ of sight, in vertebrates typically one of a pair of spherical bodies contained in an orbit of the skull and in humans appearing externally as a dense, white, curved membrane, or sclera, surrounding a circular, colored portion, or iris, that is covered by a clear, curved membrane, or cornea, and in the center of which is an opening, or pupil, through which light passes to the retina.
2. the aggregate of structures situated within or near the orbit that assist, support, or protect the eye.
3. this organ with respect to the color of the iris: blue eyes.
4. the region surrounding the eye: a black eye; puffy eyes.
5. sight; vision: a sharp eye.
6. the power of seeing; appreciative or discriminating visual perception: the eye of an artist.
7. a look, glance, or gaze: to cast one's eye at a beautiful necklace.
10. a manner or way of looking at a thing; estimation; opinion: in the eyes of the law.
11. a center of light, intelligence, influence, etc.
12. something resembling or suggesting the eye in appearance, shape, etc., as the opening in the lens of a camera, a peephole, or a buttonhole.
14. the central spot of a target; bull's-eye.

      eyes. a globular ball resting within once empty sockets on the open side of your face. these white balls with a large dot of colour have the ability to say so much. the large, obtrusive mouth babbles on and on about truths and fallacies- but the eyes..the eyes do not deceive. the eyes just sit there, shifting from side to side, every once and a while they will be eclipsed by the heavy eyelid. stare. stare into someone's eyes (please don't be creepy). in a conversation (a real conversation- or even a "rant") try to put every ounce of your attention into the person's eyes and listen to what their gaze is saying. oh the insight you will find when you take the time!
      as you become enraptured in the truths that are spilling out of of these beautiful globes, you will feel connected. you will slip past the exterior and into the the person. you will feel the living blood flowing in their veins and their heart thumping to a beat that is beginning to make more sense the more you listen. your heart begins to syncopate with theirs. reality has completely crept away- or reality has just begun, depending on how you look at it. you feel a sensation within your own eyes as their eyes also search the depths of yours. their is a transmission that exceeds verbal, written or picture communication. you feel real, they feel real, what lies behind these eyes matter...and they matter to the utmost importance. your feelings and theirs become the one and the same. when something makes the opposites' fill with salty water, yours do too. you do not really understand why this empathy exists, but you are over-exhausted with the combined emotions and you feel so alive that you no longer question what is happening. the glassy eyes turn away but yours remain. this side view of the opposite's eyes still connecting with yours. you are still able to exist inside the emotions expressed through the retina. you are the light filling the person's mind with love, compassion, empathy and care. both of you become strangely comfortable with each other- as if you've grown up with this person. at this point conversation dives into unchartered waters where you are relying solely on the this connection made between eyes. mouths continue to blab on and on, but the real transmission lies within the eyes. your heart is overwhelmed with an unfathomable love for this person. you are a part of their life, you know how they are, for you are in the midst of the story that resides behind their eyes. your eyes turn into a delicate glass substance and this gaze turns into an embrace (not the physical embrace you and i know so well, but an embrace between eyes. that silence that follows a conversation. that is a true embrace.). and an embrace leads to further comfort- a comfort yet to be felt. you have a friend. you care about this friend, and they feel likewise.
      you part ways with that comfort still lingering deep within. you do not know what to make of it...but you think to yourself: "this is beautiful." beautiful indeed! this inexplicable experience created by our inexplicable G-d is beyond beauty. you may think to yourself: "what a sneaky god! to slip such an experience into something so simple as a gaze. if only i take the time and effort to gaze with intent and love, then i could experience you, G-d, in this extraterrestrial, metaphysical way between my friend and i. you are so sneaky sometimes!" keep your eyes open for the little moments, the moments meant to be holy but are so often eclipsed by _______(fill in the blank). the eye is a beautiful creation, do not discredit it as a route to sin or deceit. G-d loves to show off his beauty (ie, the beautiful sunset today), but i have found that G-d loves to hide his beauty too...in the most quaint places. these beauties often times exceed the beauty He paints across the sky.