3-27-19 - Coming To Oneself

(You can listen to this reflection here.)

This week's gospel story speaks well to people in recovery from addiction. Many can relate to a guy who leaves home, loses everything and finds himself starving in a pig pen. Millennia before 12-step groups were developed, Jesus found perfect language to describe hitting bottom:

“When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger.’”

I am captured by that line, “But when he came to himself….” It so economically describes what happens when we’ve gone off the rails, deep into toxic behaviors or thinking – it’s like we’ve parted ways with our true self. The first step in reconciliation is to return to ourselves and reintegrate.

This younger son suddenly saw himself and his surroundings clearly. He recognized the truth of what had happened, where his choices had brought him. Sure, he didn’t cause the famine, but the actions he’d taken since leaving home had left him with no resources to weather it. And when he saw himself for who he was, he remembered who he had been, the status he had given up when he estranged himself from his family. In a moment of true humility, he also saw clearly that he had forfeited that status forever. Forming a plan to get out of his dire straits, he did not presume to regain his sonship, but resolved to beg his father to allow him to be a servant in his former home.

True repentance begins when we stop blaming other people, our history and circumstances for where we find ourselves now. That can be one of the hardest steps to take, to accept where we are, regardless of whose choices helped get us there. Certainly our own responses played a part, and that’s where we start the road toward reconciliation.

Today I invite you to take stock of what “pig pens” you endure in your life:
Where are you stuck in patterns that keep you from thriving? 

Who do you need to forgive or get out of the way of?
What are you clinging to?  What are you using to anesthetize you from pain and the real work of healing into which the Spirit invites you?

I can be pretty good at wallowing. And maybe too good at compartmentalizing myself. But Jesus invites me, and you, with this young man, to take the risk of true humility and clarity. And as we reconnect with our deepest self, Jesus invites us to find our way home.

To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Sunday’s readings are here.