To backtrack Blog: The Call posts 1 (http://wp.me/p89n5f-2X) through 8 (http://wp.me/p89n5f-47) look at varying aspects of being called by God. Inward spirituality and religiosity are not the focus as one might assume a call from God demands. No, described are practical, real world experiences. A call that is first held internally has behind it a powerful yet subtle force that pushes until achieving an outward expression.
Often in a faith life internal spirituality gets compartmentalized; removed from outside activities. It’s more convenient that way. Otherwise the risk is interference with how we want to manage the world so we cultivate separate ways of being. In keeping with that thought a former Catholic priest observes that people go to church every Sunday out of cultural habit and then from Monday to Saturday their spirituality gets locked away.
In an earlier post Blog: The Call (7)-Perspective Gone Wrong (http://wp.me/p89n5f-3Z) I describe a mistake that caused aggravation and worry. But from it evolved an increased awareness of perspective and personal filters; how, if we are not careful, these can skew thinking and attitudes.
Perspective and personal filters are a central premise of the next blog series posts on the theme of unique and distinct. If we hope to relate well to others and have relationships that flourish the need is to set aside or decrease their effects.
Cycles of Seemingly Similar
Do you ever witness or experience the same thing happening over and over again, in your life or someone you know? You shake your head in exasperation and think: “Not again!”
My husband often complains our daughter is rough on her electronics. While the other family members keep their computers and phones in good condition and for long periods, our daughter drops phones and damages computers. After years of denying complicity and precipitated by a glass of water that cost her $2,000 for a new computer–an unneeded cost for a university student who was saving for a car–she conceded, “I have to figure out what I am doing. I think I move too fast and have to slow down.”
Wow, I had to sit for that one. For a long time I had challenged my daughter to stand back and look at her actions. What was she doing that ended in so many damaging and expensive “accidents”?
Maybe the same stuff happens because God wants to show us something and she will not give up until we see it. How often do we lock into a familiar way of being and acting because we do not explore an alternative perspective? To change may take more energy and time than we will commit. The cycle of seemingly similar perpetuates.
Attitudinal Mind-Trap
We develop comfortable frameworks as in always sitting in the same pew at church or claiming the same floor space in fitness class. The box we create to harness a situation or to understand someone has limits. With little effort these are boundaries we understand. There is no need to stretch, strain or be insecure with a more complicated perspective.
In business terms the reference is “pigeon holing” meaning that the employer only sees you in one light. Your job is the one that suits you. Your potential or your capacity to go beyond what you do is inconceivable; in the bosses’ eyes you never change.
It is a similar attitudinal mind-trap that often characterizes relationships.
To perceive and accept change and transformation in others remains hidden when we continue to frame their new actions with our old perspectives. We rob the relationship of the ability to grow and prosper. A perverse and mis-placed need to control change–to lock down terrifying and ever-present turmoil in an ever evolving world–impedes relationships maturing.
In mid-life it surprised me, when annoyed, my brother sometimes said, and not in a complimentary way, “You’re so like Dad.”
Yet, my brother left home at age eighteen and his career took him far away. Over the next twenty-five years we visited each other when we could and talked on the phone, but he did not live with me and see how my life unfolded daily. He didn’t live in my shoes and walk in my world. Yes, I am our father’s daughter but I am so much more: elements of my father and a blend of my mother, mixed with the environments in which I have lived and the life I have experienced. I have evolved into someone who is uniquely me. But for a while my brother held me in that box he created at age eighteen. I was still that same person he knew when we were children.
Since he has retired and moved nearer my brother’s perception is shifting. He observes and understands the unique nature and distinct place his sister holds in time and space. It’s been a while since I’ve heard “You’re so like Dad” and meant in a negative way. But for a long time it was convenient to pull out from his box the sister he supposed he knew. But what he thought was familiar and safe had long ago disappeared.
Unique & Distinct continues in the next blog post.
What are your observations on cycles of seemingly similar? Have you noticed holding attitudes that are stumbling blocks in relationships?