Last year, right about this time, the school year looming for my kiddos, I did something akin to tossing a lit match into a firework factory. I asked for parenting advice on the internet. As you’d expect I got a wide range of answers and thoughts and essays and the like from folks trying to lend a wise hand.
Longing to make the most of these fleeting school yearsI was looking for rituals, traditions and ways to make the most of this season. Somewhere in the sifting past the noise, opinions, and unsolicited philosophies life well beyond the scope of the question I asked, there was a post from Tara Owens.
Tara Owens, in my little vocational corner of spiritual direction, is like our Godmother. She’s the one who cheers you on, calls you back when you drift, offers wisdom like it’s bread fresh from the oven. When she speaks, we listen.
She didn’t offer a piece of advice, but rather a mantra. A simple, two-line exchange that has become the foundation of my son’s spiritual formation and, if I’m honest, mine too. As we head toward the new school year I thought I’d share it with you today. The mantra goes like this:
I say to my son: “What’s the most important thing to remember?”
He says: “To receive the love of God and to be myself.”
So short. So simple. To receive the love of God. And to be myself.
Sure, this is a catchy mantra, but over this last year, it’s become perhaps the most helpful thing to remember on my spiritual journey. It’s become more than a phrase for me, it’s become a path. Hopefully for my son’s spiritual formation, but it definitely has been for mine.
Oftentimes in spirituality, it can feel like there is this unspoken (or sometimes spoken) call to become someone else. We find ourselves chasing the voice of the pastor, the poise of the guru, the serenity of the saint. And while there is beauty in drawing inspiration from another life, it becomes tragic when the pursuit costs us our own God-given identity.
The call of God, as I’ve come to understand it, is not to become someone else. It is to become the self God has been dreaming into existence since before you were born. As Thomas Merton wrote:
“For me to be a saint means to be myself.”
The question that comes into my office often is centered around people either not knowing who they are and are deeply perplexed as to how they can discover who they are. Why is it so hard? I think, at the core, it’s because we don’t believe our truest self is very lovely. Deep down, we suspect that if we were fully seen, we’d be found lacking. So we work, we perform, we polish, and we hide. We construct a version of ourselves meant to be accepted, admired, or at least safe.
The mystics call this the false self. A carefully built identity rooted in fear, approval-seeking, and self-protection. It’s who we think we have to be to be loved. But it’s not who we truly are.
And this is where Divine love becomes a necessity. When one knows, deep in their bones that they are beloved, the false self loses its power. It doesn't need to exist. What remains is the most beautiful thing God has ever designed: you.
This is why I talk so obsessively about belovedness. Not just for the sake of walking around in a cloud high on good vibes, but because knowing the degree to which we are loved is the degree to which we are liberated to be freely and fully ourselves. The degree to which we live freely as our tourist selves then puts us out there to be loved exactly as we are. There is no love like being lived exactly as we are.
This is the beautiful cycle: the love of God frees you to be yourself, and being yourself opens you wider to the love of God. Around and around it goes: An infinite loop of love and liberation. I’ve come to believe, at least for me and my son, that this is the foundation of our spiritual journey. Before theology. Before doctrine. Before we tangle ourselves in “right” ways to pray. We must:
Receive the love of God and be ourselves.
One could spend their whole life chasing worthiness, gaining the whole world and losing their soul. Or perhaps there is some space to simply open ourselves and receive the love that’s already ours. We could go the way of the world, exhausting ourselves trying to become someone better, holier, more acceptable. Or we can wake up to the truth that God’s love is the soil where your truest self already grows and just be what we are.
So try the mantra. Whisper it before the day gets loud. Write it on a sticky note. Teach it to your kids. Repeat it until it becomes more than an idea and instead becomes oxygen. What’s the most important thing to remember?
To receive the love of God. And to be yourself.