Practicing the Little Way of St Thérèse

“Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else” – Judy Garland

I don’t know if it’s wise taking quotes from famous people too seriously if you’re bent on a spiritual life. But sometimes I’m prodded into a more honest way of looking at myself with advice from the most worldly and superficial quarters.

It must have something to do with the daily struggle. The struggle to be with God. To be good. When we live through a world that is just so not into the godly.

It’s the children of the world that do often have the most sensible advice when it comes to dealing with the world they know so well.

A sincere heart

I’ve been meditating on sincerity today. Being who I say and believe myself to be without caution, hiding or hedging. You just don’t know what people will think when they pick up that you may not be as enthusiastic as they are about sport, politics, shopping, holidays, house renovations, job advancement, the latest TV shows. I get as obsessed with these things as much as the next person at various times but I have to admit a lot of the time my heart’s just not in it.

Can you see the problem?

If God really sets out to transform you, to set you apart, to be a chosen people. Well, doesn’t that make you just a little weird?

When I feel weird then I begin to wonder should I really be someone else? Should I disguise my weirdness just a little so it’s not too obvious?

In my heart I know the answers to these questions of course.

I may be weird to some, yes. But weird in a way that God loves me that way. And if I can fully accept and embrace my own odd self then I am just that more embracing and accepting of every other odd self I have the great joy and privilege to meet with.

If I don’t break this sense of security that comes from conforming then I will never be free. I will never be able to speak the truth without adornment and I will never know what it is to stand out by living differently to the way I am defined here.

Emerson noted that we can expect to be heckled occasionally

For nonconformity, the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face.

He did continue though with an encouraging observation:

but the sour faces of the multitude…have no deep cause, but put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs.

Photo credit:Grudnick

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