I noticed the other day that the company who used the catchphrase, “Because you’re worth it” at the end of their advertisements, seem to have dropped the tag.  It was a successful catchphrase in commercial terms because the public not only remembered the phrase but also recalled the product – so why has it been dropped?  People seemed to find it distasteful.  It seemed to speak of the worst of our present culture: selfishness, self-absorption and greed.  The advertisement seemed to imply that the person who bought their product was somehow worth more than other people.  Stand-up comedians started sending it up.  Journalists used the terms as a short-hand to describe an egotistical and spoilt UK.  The catchphrase became a bad joke.

The thing is it is not so far from the truth of how we do see ourselves.  Time and time again you hear people on television saying the equivalent of ‘because I’m worth it’, in comments like, “I’ve worked hard all my life so I deserve this (as they buy a second home or an expensive car).”  A right is claimed that many people in the world cannot claim because, although they have worked hard all their lives, too, often much harder than any of us ever will just to keep body and soul together, the situation they have been born to in their lives will mean they will never receive any of the material good things that we claim as our due.  By all means buy a second home or expensive car but don’t try and don’t claim a moral right about it.  Be honest, say I have been fortunate or even blessed; not “because I’m worth it.”

But, here is the punch line.  We are worth it.  God in Christ tells us so.  In the crucifixion and the love outpoured there, God is saying, “You are worth it.  This is what you are worth to me.  In love, through my son Jesus, I will show you how great is my sense of your worth by becoming human, being alongside you and dying for you.  You are worth it to me.”  The big point in this is that it is not something intrinsic in me: not some huge talent or special quality I possess that makes me worth it.  It is all comes from God.  It is God valuing me, his love for me that makes me worth it.  And, of course, as soon as I take this in, I realise that God has exactly the same attitude towards everyone in his world.  We are all worth it, because he makes it so.

What response does this pull out of me?  First, an extraordinary sense of gratitude and a greater sense of the worthiness (worth – ness) of our God which leads to genuine worship (worth – ship) and a renewed sense of the value of every person in the world.  We are all worth it, thanks be to God.

Contemplation and Concentration

 

A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all.  No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for.  You are made in the image of what you desire.

Thomas Merton

 

The quotation above by Thomas Merton, is one of my favourites and stares at me as a screen saver whenever I switch on my computer.  It is very powerful: we are shaped by the end we live for – that we, in essence, become what we most desire.  But it is a totally orthodox statement.  Our desires are a kind of food.  Just as receiving Christ makes us more like Christ so both the good and the bad things we desire will, over time, change us into that thing or that person.  Lately, I found myself wondering what I truly do desire.  I would love to say my life is all spiritual.  I would love to say that loving God and allowing him to love me is the end for which I am living and which I desire with all my heart.  The problem is that when I come to God in contemplative prayer, I realise that I am driven by all sorts of voices inside me, many of which are so buried that it is hard for me to be aware of them.  Labels, masks, false selves: how am I to know who I am or what I really want?

The great eye opening to my lack of real desire for God shows most when I try to settle into contemplative prayer.  Not only is my mind busy with all the many things I have to do today,  but there is a constant running commentary as if everything I think and do becomes a vehicle for performance, for conversation, is turned into a project, a piece of writing or teaching; is, in a way, offered to others.  And then there is the constant, “What will people think?”  “Is it okay?”  “It costs too much and I am exhausted.”  “I don’t want to take the chance.”  Perhaps these show more than other things what my real desires are – for an easy life, in which I will get things right and no one will tell me off!

The great gift of all of this is that it shows how little I can do of myself to help myself: how much I need God and the help that only he can give.  So as I sit down yet again to try to concentrate; perhaps the hardest thing in learning how to contemplate, I am comforted by this wonderful poem by Denise Levertov.

 

Flickering Mind

Lord, not you,

it is I who am absent.

At first

belief was a joy I kept in secret,

stealing alone

into sacred places:

a quick glance, and away—and back,

circling.

I have long since uttered your name

but now

I elude your presence.

I stop

to think about you, and my mind

at once

like a minnow darts away,

darts

into the shadows, into gleams that fret

unceasing over

the river’s purling and passing.

Not for one second

will my self hold still, but wanders

anywhere,

everywhere it can turn. Not you,

it is I who am absent.

You are the stream, the fish, the light,

the pulsing shadow,

you the unchanging presence, in whom

all moves and changes.

How can I focus my flickering, perceive

at the fountain’s heart

the sapphire I know is there?

 

Perhaps in the end all any of us can say is, “I want to want to be spiritual.  I want to want my deepest desire to be a longing for God.”

 

(Launde Abbey has its own Thomas Merton retreat, “Attention to Paradise: A Guided Retreat with Thomas Merton,” starting on July 14^th.)

 

Preparing for this Sunday’s sermon I came across the phrase, “Original Insecurity”, when reading one of my favourite bible commentators, David Lose. One of the readings this Sunday was about Adam and Eve hiding in the Garden of Eden from God, after they have taken the apple. As most people know the action of taking that fruit was the first so-called Original Sin and since then, according to the theory, every human being has been born sinful. I don’t happen to believe that, but that every single human being has a propensity to sin and with the best will in the world, cannot seem to manage not to, I do agree.

I was made to think again when David Lose said he preferred to speak of “Original Insecurity” rather than “Original Sin.” In the changing of that one word he opened up the Adam and Eve story to speak even more relevantly into our modern world.

David’s theory, as I understood it, is that the story is as much about identity as it is about anything else. Not the identity we have but the identity we want to have. We know that Eve is tempted to take the apple because then she will be “like God, (knowing good and evil).” God has created her and placed her in a beautiful situation. But it is not enough. She wants to have the knowledge that God has because with it she thinks she will be “like him.” Although she has everything she could possibly need she does not appear to have a mature sense of self. So she tries to manipulate her environment. She seeks the recognition she wants, to establish her value, to get a sense of worth from herself and her own actions. She finds she cannot do it. She looks to herself and what she can make of herself, all by herself, to give herself significance and meaning. When things begin to go pear-shaped (apple-shaped?) she pulls Adam in to give her back-up and collude in her quest for self-significance. Together they leave God entirely out of the picture and they soon realise that they do not trust the false, selfish and self-serving personas they have created; moreover, they no longer trust each other or God. They experience themselves for the first time as separated, “naked” (vulnerable, fragile) and alone.
If we could point to one thing in our present age that seems to wound people and fails always to bring lasting contentment, it is that search for an identity which is not our own. We cannot establish ourselves, our value or our own worth on our own. We need a significant other to do that, and that very significant Other is God, who made us, knows us through and through and loves us with a passion we can’t begin to comprehend.

We may often find ourselves reverting to the original sin of pretending to be someone other than we are but perhaps this Collect from the Fourth Sunday in Lent will help us, when reminded of our frailty, to turn again to the One who gives us life, identity, significance and security.

O God,
you know us to be set
in the midst of so many and great dangers,
that by reason of the frailty of our nature
we cannot always stand upright:
grant to us such strength and protection
as may support us in all dangers
and carry us through all temptations;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.