Read Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging Online
Authors: Brennan Manning
Tags: #Christian Life, #Spiritual Growth, #Christianity, #God, #Grace, #Love
Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging (3 page)
We learn to be gentle with ourselves by experiencing the intimate, heartfelt compassion of Jesus. To the extent that we allow the relentless tenderness of Jesus to invade the citadel of self, we are freed from dyspepsia toward ourselves. Christ wants us to alter our attitude toward ourselves and take sides with Him against our own self-evaluation.
In the summer of 1992, I took a significant step on my inward journey. For twenty days I lived in a remote cabin in the Colorado Rockies and made a retreat, combining therapy, silence, and solitude. Early each morning, I met with a psychologist who guided me in awakening repressed memories and feelings from childhood. The remainder of each day I spent alone in the cabin without television, radio, or reading material of any kind.
As the days passed, I realized that I had not been able to
feel
anything since I was eight years old. A traumatic experience with my mother at
that time shut down my memory for the next nine years and my feelings for the next five decades.
When I was eight, the impostor, or false self, was born as a defense against pain. The impostor within whispered,
Brennan, don’t ever be your real self anymore, because nobody likes you as you are. Invent a new self that everybody will admire and nobody will know
. So I became a good boy
—polite, well mannered, unobtrusive, and deferential. I studied hard, scored excellent grades, won a scholarship in high school, and was stalked every waking moment by the terror of abandonment and the sense that nobody was there for me.
I learned that perfect performance brought the recognition and approval I desperately sought. I orbited into an unfeeling zone to keep fear and shame at a safe distance. As my therapist remarked, “All these years there has been a steel trapdoor covering your emotions and denying you access to them.” Meanwhile, the impostor I presented for public inspection was nonchalant and carefree.
The great divorce between my head and my heart endured throughout my ministry. For eighteen years I proclaimed the good news of God’s passionate, unconditional love
—utterly convicted in my head but not feeling it in my heart. I never felt loved. A scene in the movie
Postcards from the Edge
says it all. A Hollywood film star (Meryl Streep) is told by her director (Gene Hackman) what a wonderful life she has had and how any woman would envy what she has accomplished. Streep answers, “Yes, I know. But you know what? I can’t feel any of my life. I’ve never been able to feel my life and all those good things.”
On the tenth day of my mountain retreat, my tears erupted into sobbing. As Mary Michael O’Shaughnessy liked to say, “Often breakdowns lead to breakthroughs.” (Much of my callousness and invulnerability has come from my refusal to mourn the loss of a soft word and a tender embrace.) Blessed are those who weep and mourn.
As I drained the cup of grief, a remarkable thing happened: In the distance I heard music and dancing. I was the prodigal son limping
home
—not a spectator but a participant. The impostor faded, and I was in touch with my true self as the returned child of God. My yearning for praise and affirmation receded.
It used to be that I never felt safe with myself unless I was performing flawlessly. My desire to be perfect had transcended my desire for God. Tyrannized by an all-or-nothing mentality, I interpreted weakness as mediocrity and inconsistency as a loss of nerve. I dismissed compassion and self-acceptance as inappropriate responses. My jaded perception of personal failure and inadequacy led to a loss of self-esteem, triggering episodes of mild depression and heavy anxiety.
Unwittingly I had projected onto God my feelings about myself. I felt safe with Him only when I saw myself as noble, generous, and loving, without scars, fears, or tears
—
perfect!
Good grief.
But on that radiant morning in a cabin hidden deep in the Colorado Rockies, I came out of hiding. Jesus removed the shroud of perfectionist performance, and now forgiven and free, I ran home. For I knew that I
knew
Someone was there for me. Gripped in the depth of my soul, tears streaming down my cheeks, I internalized and finally felt all the words I had written and spoken about stubborn, unrelenting Love. That morning I understood that the words were but straw compared to the Reality. I leaped from simply being the teacher of God’s love to becoming Abba’s delight. I said good-bye to feeling frightened and said
shalom
to feeling safe. What does it mean to feel you are in a safe place? That same afternoon I wrote this in my journal:
To feel safe is to stop living in my head and sink down into my heart and feel liked and accepted . . . not having to hide anymore and distract myself with books, television, movies, ice cream, shallow conversation . . . staying in the present moment and not escaping into the past or projecting into the future, alert and attentive to the now . . . feeling relaxed and not nervous or jittery . . . no need to impress or dazzle others or draw attention to myself. . . . un-self-conscious, a new way of being with myself,
a new way of being in the world . . . calm, unafraid, no anxiety about what’s going to happen next . . . loved and valued . . . just being together as an end in itself.
But yes, writing about such an experience risks the invention of a new impostor wearing a glossier disguise. I am reminded of the sobering words of Teresa of Avila: “Such experiences are given to the weaker brothers and sisters to fortify their flagging faith.” Even attribution to “the grace of God” can be subtle self-aggrandizement because the phrase has virtually become a Christian cliché.
Thomas Merton, the most sought-after spiritual guide of our time, said one day to a fellow monk, “If I make anything out of the fact that I am Thomas Merton, I am dead. . . . And if you make anything out of the fact that you are in charge of the pig barn . . . you are dead.” Merton’s solution? “Quit keeping score altogether and surrender ourselves with all our sinfulness to God who sees neither the score nor the scorekeeper but only his child redeemed by Christ.”
[11]
More than six hundred years ago, Julian of Norwich seized this truth with stunning simplicity when she wrote, “Some of us believe that God is almighty and can do everything; and that he is all-wise and may do everything; but that he is all-love and will do everything
—there we draw back. As I see it, this ignorance is the greatest of all hindrances to God’s lovers.”
[12]
Yet there is more. Ponder these words of the apostle Paul: “The things which are done in secret are things that people are ashamed even to speak of; but anything exposed by the light will be
illuminated and anything illuminated turns into light
” (Ephesians 5:12-14, emphasis added).
God not only forgives and forgets our shameful deeds but even turns their darkness into light. All things work together for those who love God, “even,” Augustine of Hippo added, “our sins.”
Thornton Wilder’s one-act play
The Angel That Troubled the Waters
, based on John 5:1-4, dramatizes the power of the pool of Bethesda to heal whenever an angel stirred its waters. A physician comes periodically to the pool hoping to be the first in line and longing to be healed of his melancholy. The angel finally appears but blocks the physician just as he is ready to step into the water. The angel tells the physician to draw back, for this moment is not for him. The physician pleads for help in a broken voice, but the angel insists that healing is not intended for him.
The dialogue continues
—and then comes the prophetic word from the angel: “Without your wound where would your power be? It is your very remorse that makes your low voice tremble into the hearts of men. The very angels themselves cannot persuade the wretched and blundering children on earth as can one human being broken on the wheels of living. In Love’s service only the wounded soldiers can serve. Draw back.”
Later, the man who enters the pool first and is healed rejoices in his good fortune. Turning to the physician, he says: “Come with me first, an hour only, to my home. My son is lost in dark thoughts. I
—I do not understand him, and only you have ever lifted his mood. Only an hour . . . my daughter since her child has died, sits in the shadow. She will not listen to us.”
[13]
Christians who remain in hiding continue to live the lie. We deny the reality of our sin. In a futile attempt to erase our past, we deprive the community of our healing gift. If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can neither be illuminated nor become a light for others. We cling to our bad feelings and beat ourselves with the past when what we should do is let go. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, guilt is an idol. But when we dare to live as forgiven men and women, we join the wounded healers and draw closer to Jesus.
Henri Nouwen has explored this theme with depth and sensitivity in his classic work
The Wounded Healer
. He tells the story of a rabbi who asked the prophet Elijah when the Messiah would come. Elijah
replied that the rabbi should ask the Messiah directly and that he would find Him sitting at the gates of the city. “How shall I know Him?” the rabbi asked. Elijah replied, “He is sitting among the poor covered with wounds. The others unbind all their wounds at the same time and then bind them up again. But he unbinds one at a time and binds it up again, saying to himself, ‘Perhaps I shall be needed: if so I must always be ready so as not to delay for a moment.’”
[14]
The Suffering Servant of Isaiah recognizes His wounds, lets them show, and makes them available to the community as a source of healing.
The Wounded Healer
implies that grace and healing are communicated through the vulnerability of men and women who have been fractured and heartbroken by life. In Love’s service, only wounded soldiers can serve.
Alcoholics Anonymous is a community of wounded healers. Psychiatrist James Knight wrote,
These persons have had their lives laid bare and pushed to the brink of destruction by alcoholism and its accompanying problems. When these persons arise from the ashes of the hellfire of addictive bondage, they have an understanding, sensitivity, and willingness to enter into and maintain healing encounters with their fellow alcoholics. In this encounter they cannot and will not permit themselves to forget their brokenness and vulnerability. Their wounds are acknowledged, accepted, and kept visible. Further, their wounds are used to
illuminate
and stabilize their own lives while they work to bring the healing of sobriety to their alcoholic brothers and sisters, and sometimes to their sons and daughters. The effectiveness of AA’s members in the care and treatment of their fellow alcoholics is one of the great success stories of our time, and graphically illustrates the power of wounds, when used creatively, to lighten the burden of pain and suffering.
[15]
[emphasis added]
Rainer Maria Rilke, in
Letters to a Young Poet
, explained the efficacy of his own gift: “Do not believe that he who seeks to comfort you lives untroubled among the simple and quiet words that sometimes do you good. His life has much difficulty and sadness and remains far behind yours. Were it otherwise he would never have been able to find those words.”
[16]
Rilke’s own wounds of pain and sadness made him aware of his inner poverty and created an emptiness that became the free space into which Christ could pour His healing power. Here was an echo of the cry of Paul: “I shall be very happy to make my weaknesses my special boast so that the power of Christ may stay over me” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
My own journey has taught me that only when I feel safe with God do I feel safe with myself. To trust the Abba who
ran
to His wayward son and never asked any questions enables us to trust ourselves at the core.
The decision to come out of hiding is our initiation rite into the healing ministry of Jesus Christ. It brings its own reward. We stand in the Truth that sets us free and live out of the Reality that makes us whole.
On the list of the ten best books I have read in my lifetime is Georges Bernanos’s
Diary of a Country Priest
. Since his ordination, the curate had struggled with doubt, fear, anxiety, and insecurity. His last entry in his diary reads, “It’s all over now. The strange mistrust I had of myself, of my own being, has flown, I believe for ever. That conflict is done. . . . I am reconciled to myself, to the poor, poor shell of me. How easy it is to hate oneself! True grace is to forget. Yet if pride could die in us, the supreme grace would be to love oneself in all simplicity
—as one would love any of those who themselves have suffered and loved in Christ.”
[17]
•
2 •
The Impostor
LEONARD ZELIG IS
the quintessential
nebbish
(Yiddish for nerd). In Woody Allen’s hilarious and thought-provoking film
Zelig
, he is a celebrity nonentity who fits in everywhere because he actually changes his personality to each evolving situation. He rides in a ticker tape parade; he stands between U.S. presidents Herbert Hoover and Calvin Coolidge; he clowns with prizefighter Jack Dempsey; and he talks theater with playwright Eugene O’Neill. When Hitler rallies his supporters at Nuremberg, Leonard is right there on the speakers’ platform.
He has no personality of his own, so he assumes whatever strong personalities he meets up with. With the Chinese, he is straight out of China. With rabbis, he miraculously grows a beard and side curls. With psychiatrists, he apes their jargon, strokes his chin with solemn wisdom. At the Vatican, he is part of Pope Pius XI’s clerical retinue. In spring training, he wears a Yankee uniform and stands in the on-deck circle to bat after Babe Ruth. He takes on the black skin of a jazz trumpeter, the blubber of a fatty, the profile of a Mohawk Indian. He is a chameleon. He changes color, accent, shape, as the world about him changes. He has no ideas or opinions of his own; he simply conforms. He wants only to be safe, to fit in, to be accepted, to be liked. . . . He is famous for being nobody, a nonperson.
[1]
I could dismiss Allen’s caricature of the people pleaser, except that I find so much of Leonard Zelig in myself. This radical
poseur
of my egocentric desires wears a thousand masks. My glittering image must be preserved at all costs. My impostor trembles at the prospect of incurring the displeasure and wrath of others. Incapable of direct speech, he hedges, waffles, procrastinates, and remains silent out of fear of rejection. As James Masterson wrote in
The Search for the Real Self
, “The false self plays its deceptive role, ostensibly protecting us but doing so in a way that is programmed to keep us fearful
—of being abandoned, losing support, not being able to cope on our own, not being able to
be
alone.”
[2]
The impostor lives in fear. For years I have prided myself on being punctual. But in the silence and solitude of that Colorado cabin, I learned that my predictable performance was rooted in the fear of human disapproval. Reprimanding voices from authority figures in my childhood are still fixed in my psyche and trigger warnings of rebuke and sanction.
Impostors are preoccupied with acceptance and approval. Because of their suffocating need to please others, they cannot say no with the same confidence with which they say yes. And so they overextend themselves in people, projects, and causes, motivated not by personal commitment but by the fear of not living up to others’ expectations.
The false self was born when as children we were not loved well or were rejected or abandoned. John Bradshaw defines codependency as a disease “characterized by a
loss of identity
. To be codependent is to be out of touch with one’s feelings, needs, and desires.”
[3]
The impostor is the classic codependent. To gain acceptance and approval, the false self suppresses or camouflages feelings, making emotional honesty impossible. Living out of the false self creates a compulsive desire to present a perfect image to the public so that everybody will admire us and nobody will know us. The impostor’s life becomes a perpetual roller coaster ride of elation and depression.
The false self buys into outside experiences to furnish a personal source of meaning. The pursuit of money, power, glamour, sexual prowess, recognition, and status enhances one’s self-importance and creates the illusion of success. The impostor is what he
does
.
For many years, I hid from my true self through my performance in ministry. I constructed an identity through sermons, books, and storytelling. I rationalized that if the majority of Christians thought well of me, there was nothing wrong with me. The more I invested in ministerial success, the more real the impostor became.
The impostor prompts us to attach importance to what has no importance, clothing with a false glitter what is least substantial and turning us away from what is real. The false self causes us to live in a world of delusion.
The impostor is a liar.
Our false self stubbornly blinds each of us to the light and the truth of our own emptiness and hollowness. We cannot acknowledge the darkness within. On the contrary, the impostor proclaims his darkness as the most luminous light, varnishing truth and distorting reality. This brings to mind these words from the apostle John: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8,
NIV
).
Craving the approbation withheld in childhood, my false self staggers into each day with an insatiable appetite for affirmation. With my cardboard facade intact, I enter a roomful of people preceded by a muted trumpet
—“Here I am”
—whereas my true self hidden with Christ in God cries, “ Oh, there you are!” The impostor bears a distinct resemblance to alcohol for the alcoholic. He is cunning, baffling, and powerful. He is insidious.
In one of Susan Howatch’s early novels,
Glittering Images
, the principal protagonist is Charles Ashworth, a brilliant young Anglican theologian who suddenly experiences complete moral collapse. Estranged from his father and longing for his paternal blessing, Ashworth goes to
a monastery to meet with his spiritual director, an older man named Jon Darrow. Ashworth is frightened of being exposed as a venal clergyman and a spiritual failure. Cunningly, his impostor intervenes.
The thought of abject failure was appalling enough, but the thought of disappointing Darrow was intolerable. In panic I cast around for a solution which would protect me in my vulnerability, and when Darrow returned to my room that evening, the glittering image said to him: “I do wish you’d tell me more about yourself, Father! There’s so much I’d like to know.” As soon as the words were spoken I felt myself relaxing. This was an infallible technique for acquiring the good-will of older men; I would ask them about their past, I would listen with the ardent interest of the model disciple and I would be rewarded by a gratifying display of paternal benevolence which would be blind to all the faults and failings I was so desperately anxious to conceal. “Tell me about your days in the Navy!” I urged Darrow with all the warmth and charm I could muster, but although I waited with confidence for the response which would anaesthetise my fear of unfitness, Darrow was silent. . . . Another silence fell as I painfully perceived the machinations of my glittering image.
[4]
The impostor is attentive to the size, shape, and color of the bandages that veil my nothingness. The false self persuades me to be preoccupied with my weight. If I binge on a pint of Häagen-Dazs peanut butter vanilla and the scale signals distress the following morning, I am crestfallen. A beautiful day of sunshine beckons, but for the self-absorbed impostor, the bloom is off the rose. I think Jesus smiles at these minor vanities (checking myself out in the storefront window while pretending to look at the merchandise), but they kidnap my attention away from the indwelling God and temporarily rob me of the joy of God’s Holy Spirit. Yet the false self rationalizes my preoccupation with my waistline and
overall appearance and whispers,
A fat, sloppy image will diminish your credibility in ministry
. Cunning.
I suspect I am not alone here. The narcissistic obsession with weight watching in North America is a formidable ploy of the impostor. Despite the valid and important health factor, the amount of time, energy, and money devoted to acquiring and maintaining a magazine cover’s figure is staggering. No snack is unforeseen, no nibble spontaneous, no calorie uncharted, no strawberry left unaccounted. Professional guidance is procured, books and periodicals scrutinized, health spas subsidized, and the merits of the protein diet debated on national television. What is spiritual ecstasy compared to the exquisite pleasure of six-pack abs and a rock-hard butt? To paraphrase Cardinal Wolsey, “Would that I had served my God the way I have watched my waistline!”
The impostor demands to be noticed. His craving for compliments energizes his futile quest for carnal satisfaction. His bandages are his identity. Appearances are everything. He convolutes
esse quam videri
(to be rather than to seem to be) so that “seeming to be” becomes his
modus operandi
.
Midway through reading a newly published book, I noticed that the author had quoted something I had written previously. Instantly I felt a flush of gratification and a rush of self-importance. As I turned to Jesus in prayer and contacted my true self, the ubiquitous impostor was exposed anew.
“Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self,” Thomas Merton observed. He went on to explain.
This is the man I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy. My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God’s will and God’s love
—outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion. We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we
cherish about ourselves
—the ones we were born with and which feed the roots of sin. For most people in the world, there is no greater subjective reality than this false self of theirs, which cannot exist. A life devoted to the cult of this shadow is what is called a life of sin.
[5]
Merton’s notion of sin focuses not primarily on individual sinful acts but on a fundamental option for a life of pretense. “There can only be two basic loves,” wrote Augustine, “the love of God unto the forgetfulness of self, or the love of self unto the forgetfulness and denial of God.” The fundamental option arises from the
core
of our being and incarnates itself in the specific choices of daily existence
—either for the shadow self ruled by egocentric desires or for the true self hidden with Christ in God.
It is helpful to understand that not all human acts proceed from the core of our being. For instance, a husband makes a sincere choice in his marriage vows to love and honor his wife. But one hot summer day, he loses his cool and gets into a blistering argument with her. Yet he does not retract his choice, because the anger arises from the periphery of his personality, not from the depth of his soul. The act does not touch the heart of his existence or represent a total commitment of his person.
Impostors draw their identity not only from achievements but from interpersonal relationships. They want to stand well with people of prominence because that enhances a person’s résumé and sense of self-worth.
One lonely night in the Colorado Rockies, I heard this message:
Brennan, you bring your full presence and attention to certain members of the community but offer a diminished presence to others. Those who have stature, wealth, and charisma
—those you find interesting or charming or pretty or famous
—command your undivided attention, but people you consider plain or dowdy
—those of lesser rank performing menial tasks, the unsung and uncelebrated
—are not treated with the
same regard. This is not a minor matter to me, Brennan. The way you are with others every day, regardless of their status, is the true test of faith.
Later in the evening as I dozed off, contrasting images danced on the screen of my mind: Carlton Hayes, a magnificently chiseled athlete in his early twenties, six feet three, 185 pounds, bounces on a trampoline flashing an irresistible Crest-white smile. A crowd has gathered. He switches to skipping rope
—a dazzling display of coordination, agility, and grace. The onlookers cheer. “Praise God,” the athlete shouts.
Meanwhile, Moe, someone from his retinue of attendants, approaches with a glass of Gatorade. In his early fifties, Moe is five feet four and paunchy. He wears a rumpled suit, shirt open at the collar, tie askew. Moe has a thinning sliver of matted hair extending from his temples to the back of his head, where it disappears in a clump of gray-black hair. The little attendant is unshaven. His bulbous jowls and one glass eye cause the spectators’ eyes to dart away.
“Pathetic,” one man says.
“Just an obsequious, starstruck hanger-on,” adds another.
Moe is neither. His heart is buried with Christ in the Father’s love. He moves un-self-consciously through the crowd and extends the Gatorade gracefully to the hero. He is as comfortable as a hand in a glove with his servant role (that is how Jesus first revealed Himself to Moe and transformed his life). Moe feels safe with himself.
That night, Carlton Hayes will deliver the main address at the banquet of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, who are attending from all fifty states. He will also be honored with a Waterford crystal cup as the first eight-time Olympic gold medalist.
Five thousand people gather at the Ritz-Carlton hotel. Glitterati from the worlds of politics, sports, and show business are scattered throughout the room. As Hayes steps to the podium, the crowd is just finishing a sumptuous meal. The speaker’s address abounds with references to the power of Christ and unabashed gratitude to God. Hearts are touched; men and women weep unashamedly, then give a standing ovation.
But behind the glossy delivery, Carlton’s vacant stare reveals that his words do not inhabit his soul. Stardom has eroded his presence with
Jesus. Intimacy with God has faded into the distance. The whispering of the Spirit has been drowned out by deafening applause.
Buoyed by success and the roar of the crowd, the Olympic hero moves easily from table to table. He ingratiates himself with everyone
—from the waiters to the movie stars. Back at the Red Roof Inn, Moe eats his frozen TV dinner alone. He was not invited to the banquet at the Ritz-Carlton because, quite honestly, he just wouldn’t fit in. Surely it wouldn’t be fitting for a pot-bellied, glass-eyed attendant to pull up a chair with the likes of Ronald Reagan, Charlton Heston, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
