BELIEVE IN YOURSELF

 

Collage Journaling

Perhaps you know Mother Teresa's Meditations from a Simple Life.  Of course it is filled with wisdom.  From time to time I thumb through it.  My copy is heavily marked; like many readers, I often have pen in hand.  Her small meditations can throw you deep into thought.  That's the way reading is, isn't it?

Mother Teresa says that the soul needs prayer as the body needs blood.  I think Christians sense this.  When prayers are neglected the doldrums set in; we feel sluggish, a spiritual dehydration so to speak.  But today, something different caught my attention.  On my umpteenth perusal I noticed this:

It is important to gain self-knowledge as part of spiritual growth--to know yourself and believe in yourself means you can know and believe in God.  Knowledge of yourself produces humility, and knowledge of God produces love.   

Much of what we may do concerns, at least peripherally, knowing ourselves.  My mindfulness and meditation practice, my blogging, prayer journaling, and collaging invariably lead me to self-knowledge.  But because they are not in service of others necessarily, nor do they earn money, or meet the definition of productivity, I can feel guilty about the time spent.  Perhaps you have some activities about which you feel the same, solitary activities such as gardening, doing cross-word puzzles, or walking (all offering time for introspection), or even reading.

But now here is someone no less than a Saint telling us that gaining self-knowledge is part of our spiritual growth.  We could intuit this perhaps, that loving ourselves--surely part of knowing ourselves--is important.  After all, if we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, we do need to love ourselves.  

But to have it confirmed by Saint Teresa of Calcutta is a gift.  She is saying that knowing and believing in ourselves is prerequisite to knowing and believing in God. We can extrapolate to say that showing ourselves tenderness helps us show tenderness to others.  Respecting ourselves allows us to respect others, and so on.  This may be obvious, but I cannot say that it always is to me.

I am always looking for something helpful.  This is.  We do not have to feel self-indulgent for taking care of ourselves.  It can be done humbly. We can be introspective and committed to our own well-being, knowing that this will facilitate our relationship to our God.  And of course from there, the sky is the limit, is it not?  Once we are right with God, there are no constraints.  Thanks be to God.                 Nina Naomi