“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” – Jack Kornfield

When the theological pendulum gains enough momentum that it swings all the way to one side and then gets stuck, it is time for the lubricating words of surprise. It is necessary for jesters and outlaws and poets and prophets to come along carrying WD-40 and telling us things like God is a verb not a noun, go sell all you have, give to the poor and follow me, the reign of God is in your midst, or God takes no delight in your solemn festivals. So go let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

In this spirit of unsticking, it is time that we give some attention to the often neglected and seemingly hidden words of Jesus tucked in among his reply to the scholar of the law trying to trick him by asking, “Teacher, which commandment of the law is the greatest?” to which Jesus replied, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind” to which he then surprisingly added “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

In my preaching classes in seminary I used to be told by my speech teacher that I had a bad habit of “dropping my endings,” lowering my voice at the end of sentences to an apparently inaudible mumble. Who knows, maybe Jesus had a bad habit of dropping his endings as well, but I’m guessing that it was the church that dropped those last two words and probably not too long after Jesus spoke them. But, Jesus wouldn’t have said them if he didn’t mean them. So, we must not let them drop off, go small, become inaudible.

On the whole, Christians have been clueless how to teach and preach the meaning of those two words– “as yourself.” It is not hyperbole to say that throughout Christian history they largely have been ignored altogether. Today, to spend time parsing “love of oneself” is liable to evoke accusations of hawking New Age spirituality or warm fuzzy theology or a spirituality for wimps. From the time we stood only a head taller than the family Bible placed upright on the floor we learned directly and indirectly that following Jesus translated into what all those hyphenated self-deprecating terms like self-deprecating mean, words like self-centered, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, self-denying, and selfless (that one doesn’t even need a hyphen). Truth be told or humbly offered, for mature adults able to hold nuance in one hand and paradox in another, spiritual depth does eventually require some work on the self, some letting go into self-forgetfulness. But one needs to develop a healthy self before one can volitionally choose to surrender it. Any work on the self that we do is bound to be misspent, harmful, and ill-advised unless it includes and fosters the work of cultivating love toward oneself. Sadly, few of us were blessed to have been taught this directly and unapologetically from a young age .

I suspect that Jesus commanded that we love our neighbors for the sake of communal shalom. I don’t imagine when he added “as yourself” that he was meaning it tongue-in-cheek. I suspect Jesus commanded that we love ourselves because he could taste and see that there was already something in the water or the Kool-Aid that caused humans to assume that loving oneself was tantamount to arrogance, self-absorption, at best, and spiritual treason, at worst.

Recently I heard someone tell a story of being a little girl and how when she was reveling in being a little girl in front of company her mother turned to her and said, “Stop it! You’re not that interesting.” Upon hearing that stinging belittlement, I was not surprised that this grown woman had never forgotten it. This is probably why Jesus said, “”Let the children come to me and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these” while the thought-cloud above his disciples heads more than likely read, “But they’re not that interesting, not that important” (Mt. 18: 16).

If you are at all like me (which may not make the Top Ten List of compliments you receive this year), you may find it easier to be compassionate toward others than toward yourself. I can preach and teach that each person is utterly singular, an unrepeatable miracle, not only the image of God but the beloved of God as well, and do so with sincerity, passion, and conviction, then reveal to a friend, therapist, or spiritual director that while I know it in my head to be true, I still struggle from time to time to know it in my heart — about myself — and to live freely, gratefully, and compassionately from that grace-filled place of belovedness.

In the 1980’s while I was between my graduate studies at Princeton and a full-time job, I had the good fortune of studying with the late Gerald May. He practiced medicine and psychiatry for twenty-five years before turning more toward spiritual guidance and formation, becoming a senior fellow in contemplative theology and psychology at the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation in Bethesda, Maryland. Jerry listened to a lot of people over the years as both a psychiatrist and a spiritual director. He knew many highly successful people, many clergy, spiritual guides, spiritual pilgrims, as well as inmates, clients, and those suffering mental illness. A friend of mine told me he once heard Gerald May give a talk and offer as an aside “I only know three people personally who I’d say truly, fully love themselves.” I have great respect for Jerry. So while not altogether surprising, I find his assessment sobering and sad, to say the least.

As I have stated elsewhere, the ability to imagine someone else’s life or situation is necessary for practicing deep sympathy. I also have suggested that a sign of an authentic, mature, and loving person is whether or not they are able to widen their circle of compassion by seeing that they are, in fact, connected to and not separate from others. Today I want to emphasize that what also is necessary for full human becoming is the capacity and the courage to accept ourselves just as we are, to be capable of seeing, acknowledging, accepting, and embracing the disparate pieces of who we are with self-compassion. This means holding the ignominious and the glorious, what we are proud of and what we are ashamed of, as graced parts of who we are. As Richard Rohr says, “everything belongs.” Until we can hold the humbling  (even humiliating and shame-inducing) parts of ourselves, it helps to have someone who holds us in the radical acceptance, non-judgmental compassion, and wide embrace of the mercy of God.

I want to end with a poem by Pesha Joyce Gertler that I think illuminates and celebrates the need to be compassionate toward oneself, which not only is a commandment and an important spiritual practice but also, as she indicates, a holy act.

The Healing Time

Finally on my way to yes
I bump into
all the places
where I said no
to my life
all the untended wounds
the red and purple scars
those hieroglyphs of pain
carved into my skin, my bones,
those coded messages
that send me down
the wrong street
again and again
where I find them
the old wounds
the old misdirections
and I lift them
one by one
close to my heart
and I say holy,
holy.

~ Friends, this week let us be compassionate toward our neighbors and ourselves. After all, Jesus didn’t suggest it. He commanded it. ♦

Dan

REFLECTION:

Read this poem once when you wake up and once when you go to bed. Think of one wound, one mistake, one misdirection, or one scar, and prayerfully hold it up to your heart and say “holy, holy,.”