"We don't think ourselves into a new way of living, we live ourselves into a new way of thinking. The journeys around the edges of sin lead us to long for a deeper life at the center of ourselves."(R. Rohr "Radical Grace" p.257)
It is amazing to me the market that has been created in the self-help sections of bookstores. There are authors who create a series, and just change the title enough to make you think they're on to something new.
I'm somewhat guilty of falling for these things. And yet I haven't found a book in that genre that has ever radically changed my life permanently. It may have gotten me to try something or to think about it, but ultimately no deep lasting change.
Perhaps I do too much thinking and not enough living. Yet I have found that in those places where I have allowed life to be lived, trial and error if you will, that I find who the real me is. What do I truly enjoy. What isn't just a momentary fad. What isn't just a masking.
I've learned through my mistakes, first the amazing mercy of God. That rather than just pound me into dust, I am turned around and asked to see something deep within. That true center of my being, that image of God.
The more I live into that image, the more my thinking changes. I don't need to be as defensive. I don't need to justify myself. I don't need to make someone else rich, by following the latest trend. I can instead listen and live out the consistent presence in my life, the one that cares deeply for me.
Blessings,
Ed
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