Well here we are, another Christmas past and another year on the verge of a similar direction.
It has been quite an eventful year for me…but I won’t bore you with a list of those events (that seems to be every year end’s most popular post theme).
Once again I am passing the holidays in Medellin Colombia. I like it here. The air, especially this time of the year, is thick with crazy Colombian culture. This morning I am emerging from the last two days of “culture overdose” to try and get something meaningful posted. So here goes…actually I am cheating a bit since most of the words below are stolen from an old CRG piece…
I just finished a book by Ian Cron entitled Chasing Francis. The book is about an evangelical pastor of a very clubby christian church in New England. He goes through a spiritual crisis and ends up in Assisi, Italy on a pilgrimage to retrace the spiritual steps of a Catholic saint, Francis of Assisi.
My interest in Saint Francis was peeked by reading a lot of Shane Claiborne a couple years ago. Although I am sure you are familiar with the name and image of Francis, perhaps I can fill you in on a couple details of this remarkable christian. Francis grew up with wealth and privilege, but one day discarded all that. He literally disrobed in the town square, renounced the divisiveness of materialism, and took off for the woods.
And became one of the most beloved religious figures in history…a saint of saints.
My reality and perhaps yours has been one of slicing and dicing the words of Christ to make them fit well with my own version of the purpose of my life. One that is all about me, about my self-actualization, and about reaching my “god-given potential.”
But reading about Francis helps me see things a bit differently. Taking Christ’s words at face value, I don’t hear him talking about my potential. His words do not promote the rugged individualism that our modern society seems to cherish. His words promote caring for one another.
And not just within the confines of one’s immediate family, or close relatives. Christ’s words rather denote a collectivist theory of life…a life not of independence, but of interdependence. That we all need each other and to turn one’s back on his brother or sister (and I use those words broadly) is to turn one’s back on the author of life itself.
Christ’s words rather denote a collectivist theory of life…a life not of independence, but of interdependence.
But for a long time I felt convinced that God’s will for my life was for me to “maximize my potential.” That being created in His image was the prime motivation for that pursuit. But I believe Saint Francis would tell me bluntly that a more proper, saintly, motivation would be to maximize “your” potential.
Saint Francis was the first environmentalist. His love of nature was renowned. Why? Because he saw that nature was doing what he yearned to do…rely exclusively on God. To live like the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, who do not strive for self, but live in interdependence on God and each other.
If we read Christ’s sermon with the innocent heart of a child, I believe we will hear the message that Saint Francis heard and then emulated.
That’s what makes Saint Francis of Assisi one of my favorite impact mindfulness heroes.