"Make your ego porous. Will is of little importance, complaining is nothing, fame is nothing. Openness, patience, receptivity, solitude is everything." Rainer Maria Wilke
Today it was neither a good homily, family story or insightful friend that lead me to this page. Instead, it was a typo.
As it is not unusual for me to be rushing to meet a deadline, I often make mistakes while typing. Yesterday was no different, and while proofreading a hastily completed lesson on the name of God as God revealed it to Moses, I realized I had typed, "I aam" instead of "I am."
At first I laughed because, for some strange reason, it reminded me of the fractured saying of Popeye –"I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam!"
It was even funnier imaging God talking with Popeye’s voice!
But once I got past the chuckle, I continued to be intrigued by the four letters, which would make a strange name for God, unless, of course, it referred to a personal god of sorts.
A god whose name would make a sought-after acronym for the T-shirt industry:
I.A.A.M. -- "It’s All About Me!"
That was it! That was what I was seeing in those four letters. Certainly, with living in the world today as experience, we know firsthand this is a god that raises its ugly head too often for comfort.
And we all know people who could wear the t-shirt, some proudly and others underneath their clothes so neither we, nor they, would notice.
They are the ones who make it clear that they know just about everything about anything, the ones who think nothing can hold a candle to their ideas, their work, their way of doing things. The world seems to revolve around their wants and needs, and certainly, their perspective is the only one that could be considered clear. They are always right, while the rest of us see through muddy waters.
The scary thing about this god is its power to entice. Born of our insecurities and fed by our ego, we can all too easily be led astray.
None of us are immune.
During one of my own trips to buy a t-shirt, while engaged in an I.A.A.M. whine session that I conveniently called prayer, God stopped me in my tracks with a short, but powerful, question: What is your motivation?
"Whoa, let’s not go there!" was my reaction, as I ended (or so I thought) the chat we were having.
I didn’t like that question, because it would force me to the root of the I.A.A.M mentality--the "why," and that would mean I would really have to start looking at who I truly was and the real reason for my decisions.
But that question was a turning point in my life, because when we start to look at the whys of our self-centeredness we start to look at the reasons for our sinfulness.
Today that question lives on the periphery of my thoughts, ready to jump out on center stage should a decision or behavior need challenging..
It’s a God question, one that was painful and challenging and grace-filled because it was the fruit of prayer. We all get the questions, but we don’t all hear them unless we quiet our self-chatter long enough to utter the silent prayer of the heart, the prayer of openness to God’s will that leaves us very vulnerable to the truth –even when we don’t want to hear it.
Copyright © 2010 Mary Regina Morrell
