My birthday was last week and I find myself in a really full and satisfied season of life.  Loving the Seahawks and believing they can still do great things this season, on Sunday I thought of posting on Facebook: “All I want for my birthday is the Hawks to win today and win the Super Bowl.”  Sadly, they got completely destroyed.  Still, even though I DEFINITELY have more work to do on attaching less of my happiness to the fortunes of the Seahawks, Sunday and birthday week were WONDERFUL!  So, why is that?

I think it’s because life, and the joy that comes with it, isn’t about winning, it’s not about getting or achieving.  Life is about connection and love.  There were SO MANY moments of great connection with friends and family during the week that if my heart was a gas tank and love was gas, my heart would have exploded with bliss.  The icing on this cake of joy was a surprise birthday party full of friends and family my wife Lisa, aka the most kind person since Jesus, threw that transformed Sunday Seahawks sorrows into party happiness.  I share all this because I think it has lessons you and I can carry into Christmas and our own journeys of personal growth and transformation.

Along those lines, Richard Rohr notes, “spirituality has more to do with subtraction than it does addition.  Yet our culture … seems obsessed with addition: getting rich, becoming famous, earning more brownie points with God or our boss, attaining enlightenment, achieving moral behavior.  Jesus and the mystics of other traditions tell us that the spiritual path is not about getting more or getting ahead … Authentic spirituality is much more about letting go.”  There are two Truths from this I invite you and I to rest in, remember, and practice this Christmas season: Life is about connection and love, and our true worth and identity, which are immense and beautiful, are found more in BEING than by doing.

 

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Grace and peace,

Lang