Lenten Journey: Aspects of Spirituality – $$$

When I draw this Wheel of Spirituality, I often just put those dollar signs in this portion of the wheel. This area IS about your financial well-being but it is also about worth.

Again, thinking about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, there are various levels of financial security. There is the basic financial need that is about being able to provide food, clothing, and shelter for you and your family. There is also the financial desire for greater security for the longterm, the ability to provide a future for our children or other loved ones in need and the desire to feel secure in the knowledge that the next health crisis isn’t going to threaten any of those basic needs. And then there is the financial desire for security and comfort.

However, this $$$ placeholder is about more than just the health of your checking account or investments. This is also about worth and identity. How do you view your own worth? Is it only about what you can provide financially or are you accounting for all of your worth? Do you truly value yourself? One of the greatest barriers to a relationship with God or a Higher Power is the feeling that you are not worthy of that relationship. The idea that you must first love yourself before you can love and feel loved by another is not just a cliché but a powerful truth in the human experience.

And what about identity? Who do you say you are?

This may be an apocryphal story. I’ve never heard someone from England verify it for me but I was once told that, if you ask an English person “What do you do?” they will tell you about their interests and their hobbies. Here in the United States, we inevitably answer that question with our occupation. Our occupation is a very big part of our identities and, therefore, our sense of worth.

When you answer that question, how do you answer it and how do you feel about your worth when you answer that question? Do you sense a hierarchy of judgment in your answer? Is being a student not sufficient or being unemployed an identity that sticks to your soul rather than a temporary or chosen status that underlies another story?

When I quit my job at the hospital, I thought I was better prepared to answer this question. I’m a 21st century man. The fact that I left my job while my wife went to work full-time and I stayed home to take care of the kids shouldn’t threaten me. But it was harder than I thought. There was a lot in my brain and our culture that challenged my sense of self-worth as a man who wasn’t providing the paycheck for my family. As it turned out, it really was the best possible scenario because, when Covid hit, I was well-suited to guide my children’s education through that time of remote learning. But it took a while in that time between my last day at the hospital and the beginning of the pandemic for me to really feel comfortable with saying, “I’m a stay-at-home dad.”

So, as you contemplate this part of the Wheel of Spirituality, certainly consider how well your financial needs are cared for so that you have the ability to give greater attention to the transcendent. But also consider this part of your spirituality as deeply connected to that Self-Esteem part of the wheel. Who do you say you are? How do you feel about your identity? And how might your identity also be a much greater question than “What do you do for a paycheck?” What ARE your interests and hobbies? How does that inform your identity? And how does that identity help you to re-create yourself through the cycles of life?

-------------------------

You are welcome to take this journey in solitude in your own personal journal or share your reflections. If anything that you do makes you think you might want to continue a journey using Spiritual Direction, now or in the future, you can make an appointment with me through my website: 

www.RedRocksSDC.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Loving Your Enemies, Serving Your Loved Ones

If I were to sum up my theology in a single sentence, it would be “We are all children of God, worthy of Love, Forgiveness, and Grace.” So, you would think that the sermon series that my pastors have been preaching for the past five weeks would not be a challenge. Their topic has been Loving Your Enemies which, in theory, should be simple. If we are all children of a loving God than those who are my enemies are recipients of God’s love just as much as me. But this has not been an easy topic. Yes, in theory, I have no problem with seeing my enemies as children of God and loving them as God loves them. But, as is so often case, things get tough when the rubber meets the road. The primary passage that is the source of this commandment comes from Matthew 5:43-48. 43  “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44  But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you , 45  that you may be children of
Read more

Names and Labels (Top Posted)

Welcome! I’m going to start by talking about Names and Labels and explaining the Name I have given to this blog. Names and Labels can be so constraining and revealing at the same time. They put us in boxes of assumptions that go along with those names and labels. They can lead us astray by setting up expectations that any of us can be fully defined by our labels and names. At the same time, they can offer a glimpse into our identities that, as long as they are understood to be simply a beginning, can offer some insights into how we see ourselves. As author Bill Bryson wrote in The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way , “…there must be some conventions of usage. We must agree to spell cat c-a-t and not e-l-e-p-h-a-n-t and we must agree that by that word we mean a small furry quadruped that goes meow and sits comfortably on one’s lap and not a large lumbering beast that grows tusks and is exceedingly difficult to housebreak.” So, yes, Names and Labels have meanings
Read more

Hell and Damnation

According to my mother, my grandmother whom I called Nana, was obsessed with whether or not she would go to Heaven or Hell as her life came closer to its end. I’ll bet some of you had a Nana. Someone who cared for you when you were sick, ate the burnt pork chop while she served you the one that was perfectly cooked, went to church every Sunday, treated the people around her kindly. She wasn’t perfect. I’m sure she had her flaws. I’m sure I don’t know what they were. But at the end of her life, she was consumed by fear that she wasn’t good enough. Not good enough for Heaven… so, bad enough for Hell. “No truly accomplished New Testament scholar, for instance, believes that later Christianity’s opulent mythology of God’s eternal torture chamber is clearly present in the scriptural texts. It’s entirely absent from St. Paul’s writings; the only eschatological fire he ever mentions brings salvation to those whom it tries (1 Corinthians 3:15). Neither is it found in the other New Testamen
Read more