“More tortuous than all else is the human heart, beyond remedy; who can understand it?”
– Jeremiah

Can we fail to have a ‘self?’ The Danish Philosopher, Kierkegaard, wrote about an existentialism that described an anxious self that will not accept the idea that being a self is based upon a fundamental gift from God.  And because this self will not accept itself as received from God, it feels that it needs to create itself, which is a failed plan from the start.  Inasmuch as we try to create any number of false ‘selves,’ based upon ambition, interests, expectations of others, etc., the truth is that none of these creations are our real self.

The truth of our selfhood, for Kierkegaard, is that it is pure gift from God and the extent to which we either accept and embrace this or reject and deny it constitutes both the feeling of anxiety and whether or not we are authentic selves.  The  anxiety arises from the play between either accepting the truth of who we are within God or striking out on our own so to speak in an attempt to create an image that we then consider our ‘self’ to be.  We convince ourselves that this false self is who we really are.

Thomas Merton also spoke about this idea of a false self that we hold onto in order to support our ego. Authenticity for Merton involved discovering the hidden true self in God through the doorway of contemplative prayer, which involves a type of death to the false or external self.  Seeking union with God through prayer dismantles our false self and will lead us to our true self hidden in God.

Existentialism aside, if we choose to base the authenticity of our lives on what we do, what we accomplish, and what we can gain, we will have created an image of selfhood that will – whether or not we come to realize it or not – leave us unfulfilled. There is always a sense of ‘never enough’ in the pursuit of accumulation.  We tend to see ourselves and others only in terms of what we can count.

Conversely, if we appreciate that our life is truly a gift from God, then WHO we are is always a reception – something we receive!   We see the things and people that come into our lives as gifts as well, and we also see that it’s not a one-way street.  Life as gift means that we receive and give, i.e., there is a necessary sharing of this gift of Love that is our true Self in God.

The prophet Jeremiah characterizes these two choices in today’s first reading (JER 17: 5-10):

“Cursed is the man who…seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the LORD. He is like a barren bush in the desert that enjoys no change of season, But stands in a lava waste, a salt and empty earth. Blessed is the man…whose hope is the LORD. He is like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches out its roots to the stream: It fears not the heat when it comes, its leaves stay green; In the year of drought it shows no distress, but still bears fruit”

Turning away from the Lord and seeking the strength of ‘flesh,’ could very well describe what we are doing when we try to hold onto a false sense of self, a contrived type of individualism that cuts everything and everyone away from our lives. As Jeremiah says, following only flesh (the external or ego-driven pursuits) is a barren and empty existence.  The frightening thing is that many times we don’t even realize that we are living that way.  However, when our hearts are turned with hope towards God, we welcome the ‘Living Water’ like a tree next to a flowing stream.  We receive the livelihood of our lives, our very selfhood, as something totally gratuitous.  At times we bloom and our leaves are green, but even when there is distress, our heart knows where it lives, where it’s self IS…in God!

Oddly enough, I believe that the story of the rich man and Lazarus in the Gospel today (LK 16: 19-31) can also be seen along those same lines. Jesus is telling the story of how a rich man went about his life in total disregard of others, seeking only to  dine well and dress finely.  This rich man practically had to step over a poor man named Lazarus who was always “lying at his doorstep.”  Lazarus is covered in the sores of negligence and avoidance.  The rich man never seemed to even notice this poor Lazarus, who begged for care every day.  Finally when they both died, the rich man found himself in the torments of the netherworld, while Lazarus was taken into the ‘bosom of Abraham.’ The rich man asks that Lazarus be allowed to alleviate his torment with some water, but alas there is a great chasm that prevents both of them from crossing to the other side.

This story can certainly be seen as a call to social justice and the need to feed the hungry and share the gifts we have. But perhaps, at even a deeper level, it comes down to whether or not we see our lives, or Life itself,. as a gift from God to share, or something that we must create for ‘ourselves’ to the exclusion of all else.  In a sense, Lazarus can be seen as the poverty of the rich man’s image of himself.  His self-reliance and self-indulgence will not allow himself to see that his (the rich man’s) spirit is poor and in need.  The rich man’s poor spirit lies at the threshold of his fabricated life, yet he refuses to see it and accept it.  By holding so tightly onto a self-image built upon accumulation and finery, the rich man cannot accept the gift of poverty, which is simply to know our need for God IN each other.  Our true self is our utter dependence upon the grace of God to sustain us in and through our interdependence upon one another.

Perhaps this Gospel is not so much about doing what is right or wrong and the judgment of these actions, but more about the awareness of choices we make that either embrace or deny WHO we really are. When we turn our hearts away from the Heart of God, Christ is telling us that we are creating a “chasm,” turning our back on Love Itself.  And this Love is yearning for us.   This yearning of God’s Love for and in us is an invitation for us to embrace our poverty and receive the abundance that nourishes our very “selves.”

When we can share this type of poverty, i.e., knowing our need for God in each other and how precious our hearts are to God, it becomes a true abundance that can only SHARE! Then, Jeremiah’s description of our tortured and impoverished human hearts can receive and share the abundant Heart of God who knows us so well, because it dwells within us, sparking us towards divinity.

As Thomas Merton says, “…this little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.”[i]

      (originally published March 16, 2017)

Peace

Thomas

[i] Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander” in A Thomas Merton Reader, edited by Thomas P. McDonnell (Image: 1974), p. 347