Kyle Matthews song: The One Who Loves Me Most

We’re taking a brief hiatus from the words of wisdom from The Daily Office, but the content is related.  As you may know, I’m teaching Emotionally Healthy Spirituality on Sunday evenings right now.  Observing The Daily Office is a part of that study.  Last Sunday evening was the second of 8 sessions.  As discussion progressed, a song written by my friend Kyle Matthews was so strongly related to the topic of discussion that I wished I had had my iPod with me to share it with the class.  I think it was the bridge (in italic bold below) that was the clincher for connecting it with what we were talking about.

The One Who Loves Me Most

Kyle Matthews

Mama believes there’s still a child in me.

Papa can see the man I’ll one day be.

My sister knows my dumb mistakes.

My brother knows how much I’ll take.

But the One who loves me most knows me best.

The One who’s most proud of me now knows my regrets.

And there is no audience I must impress,

’cause the One who loves me loves me most and knows me best.

The junior high girls remember me, the flirt.

My bride to be can tell you how I splurged.

The wife who walks me through the years

knows my dreams, feels my fears.

But the One who loves me most knows me best. …

And I’ll never be all that people want from me.

So, I’ll hold on to the love that gives me all I need

to face the temptations of people’s expectations.

’Cause the One who loves me most knows me best.

The One who’s most proud of me now knows my regrets.

And there is no audience I must impress,

’cause the One who loves me loves me most and knows me best.

© 1993 Careers-BMG Music Publishing, Inc. / Final Four Music, BMI.

Used by permission.  CCLI No. 157134.

I'd love to tell you that you can locate the CD that this song is on ("This Is Not Normal") and get it quickly, but it's out of print.  You might be able to find it on eBay, but people who have Kyle's music usually keep it.  I'll let you borrow mine as soon as the last guy who borrowed it brings it back.

That’s enough to think about for now.  The peace of Christ to you.

Words of Wisdom from The Daily Office - Part 3

NOTE:  Still catching up from the hectic summer.  I know I had promised to upload one every few days.  Let it slide, please.  If you're getting this on facebook, please follow the "view original post" link to my Blogger site so that the counter will tell me how many are actually reading this thing.  Thanks.

If you’ve been paying attention for the past few weeks, I’m sharing some of the nuggets of wisdom that I have encountered as I follow one of the suggestions Blake gave for us as a congregation to do during his sabbatical:  going through Peter Scazzero’s The Daily Office as a personal devotion book.  I’m drawing what I share with you on Wednesday nights from previous weeks’ journal entries.  From week 3, day 2:  wisdom from Thomas Keating.

The Spirit intends to investigate our whole life history, layer by layer, throwing out the junk and preserving the values that were appropriate to each stage of our human development … Eventually, the Spirit begins to dig into the bedrock of our earliest emotional life … Hence, as we progress toward the center where God is actually waiting for us, we are naturally going to feel that we are getting worse.  This warns us that the spiritual journey is not a success story or a career move.  It is rather a series of humiliations of the false self.  (Intimacy with God, pp. 82-84)

Each session poses a question, and the one following the Keating quote was this:  What false self are you struggling with that Christ wants you to die to so that you can truly live?

The fact of the matter is that we all project a self that is the one we want others to see … and most of us have been doing it for so long that the habit of doing so has become so deeply ingrained in us that we aren’t even aware that we’re doing it.  That’s what makes going down to that bedrock such a difficult thing.  And if you think you don’t do it … you’re probably wrong.

It’s not just that we hide the stuff that we know about ourselves that we know (or fear) would meet with disapproval in the eyes of those whose opinions we value.  Some of us openly display a caustic and abrasive pattern of behavior that irritates others in order to keep them at a distance.  If they can’t stand to be close, they won’t get close enough to see what we don’t want them to see.  And we bury our true self so deeply that it even hides from us.

I know I haven’t filled up the page, but …

That’s enough to think about for now.  The peace of Christ to you.

Words of Wisdom from The Daily Office - Part 2

Blogger's Note:  This writing dates from July 20, 2011. A family emergency in early August (culminating in my father's death) has me way behind in keeping the blog updated.  Though I succeeded in publishing the Musings almost weekly for my Wednesday evening rehearsals, I did not succeed in uploading them to the blog.  I will post one every few days until I am caught up.  [End of note.  On to the blog!]

One of the suggestions my Pastor Blake made for us as individual members of this body during his sabbatical was to secure a copy of Peter Scazzero’s The Daily Office and go through it as a personal devotion book. I have been pretty much on time so far, but it has taken me 2 weeks to get through week 5. I promised a few weeks ago to share some of the inspiration in my Musings I’m going back over previous weeks’ journal entries and finding it interesting … in light of how the past couple of weeks have been, consider the following from Eugene Peterson (The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction):

I am busy because I am vain. I want to appear important. What better way than to be busy? The incredible hours, the crowded schedule, and the heavy demands of my time are proof to myself and to all who will notice – that I am important. If I go into a doctor’s office and find there is no one waiting, and I see through a half-open door the doctor reading a book, I wonder if he’s any good.

Such experiences affect me. I live in a society in which crowded schedules and harassed conditions are evidence of importance, so I develop a crowded schedule and harassed conditions. When others notice, they acknowledge my significance, and my vanity is fed.

I am busy because I am lazy. I let others decide what I will do instead of resolutely deciding myself. It was a favorite theme of C. S. Lewis that only lazy people work hard. By lazily abdicating the essential work of deciding and directing, establishing values and setting goals, other people do it for us.

And from Parker Palmer (Let Your Life Speak):

When I give something I do not possess, I give a false and dangerous gift, a gift that looks like love but is, in reality, loveless – a gift given more from my need to prove myself than from the other’s need to be cared for.

One sign that I am violating my own nature in the name of nobility is a condition called burnout. Though usually regarded as a result of trying to give too much, burnout in my experience results from trying to give what I do not possess – the ultimate in giving too little!

Burnout is a state of emptiness, to be sure, but it does not result from giving all I have; it merely reveals the nothingness from which I was trying to give in the first place.

That’s enough to think about for now. The peace of Christ to you.