Turning 50: Becoming Real

Lessons in Franciscan theology

“Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'

'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.

'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'

'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'

Ah, turning fifty. Eyesight worse. Joints shabby. But I break less easily.¹ Many of my sharp edges have been worn off.

Extravagant love, everywhere, all at once

When I interviewed for the Franciscan spiritual director training program, Sister Mary Jo told me that there are two things to know about Franciscan theology:

1. God loves you extravagantly.²

2. God’s extravagant love manifests as your daily life.

During the pandemic, I had a practice of seeing everything as a manifestation of God’s love: my cereal, the milk in the cereal, and the blueberries, the spoon and the bowl. The swaying trees, the warm (or cool) air, my home, my dog, a moment with a friend. Whatever I was seeing, I would silently whisper to myself:

And I would let it in.

It was a mystical time. I was living in the Gift, God’s Love all around me. I was being held in the Light.

Learning to be loved

If the Franciscans are right, God’s extravagant love manifests as your daily life, but you still have to let it in. And at least for me, it’s been hard. I’ve come to see Franciscan spiritual direction as learning to be loved, and a lot of my second half of life work has been seeing all the times I had pushed Love away. Love was unsafe and painful for me as a child, so I rejected love and connection as an adult. People, particularly women, getting close to me felt dangerous and annihilating. So I pushed it away.

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it, and embrace them.” - Rumi

A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world. Everyone you meet is your mirror.—Ken Keyes Jr.

One of my favorite writers, Henri Nouwen, summed it up so well in his book Life of the Beloved: “The journey from teaching about love to allowing myself to be loved proved much longer than I realised.” I may have trained as a spiritual director. Some people might see me as smart, thoughtful, or wise. I find it easy to love others. But to allow myself to be loved? That’s a much longer, and much more painful, journey.

Has it been the same for you?

I turned fifty on Saturday and last week, I was in California celebrating with friends and family. This week, friends came in to Portland from around North America and we ate at my favorite Asian restaurants, went on hikes, and just hung around the house.

(more photos here)

The whole time, I’ve tried to simply let myself be loved, without the ego performance of “spiritual, smart, wise.” Just “being Douglas” without “doing Douglas.” My mantra during these last two weeks: “This is God’s love.”

Isn't that what friendship is all about: giving to each other the gift of Belovedness? - Henri Nouwen

And then there’s capitalism

I believe we spend our entire lives trying. Trying to change situations, conditions, people, or ourselves. Trying to have control or agency. Trying to win affection, esteem, and approval. Trying to get security and pleasure. At the root of it, we’re trying to be loved. So much of our overwork and overconsumption stems from the belief that we have to earn our love. We think we have to earn our belonging.

I think it took me until I got diagnosed with breast cancer to figure out that love is not something you tap-dance to get.—Sheryl Crow

All our ceaseless activities, our endless trying to wear the right clothes, live in the right neighborhood, have the great job, attract the right partner, are simply strategies to get what we really want: to be seen, to be heard, to feel connected, and to belong. But if Sister Mary Jo is right, we’re already seen, heard, and connected. We’ve always belonged, from the very beginning.

If you understood that, really understood that, what could change? About you? About the world?

I read this week that if you tell someone that there’s something wrong with them with enough confidence, they will believe you. And that’s the work of any great salesman. And it made me sad.

An immense amount of money, human talent, and research today goes to finding words and images to convey to you: you are not enough, you don’t have enough, and you need more. All that energy trying to replace what we really want, deep primary satisfactions with shallow secondary satisfactions. This noisy and mean-spirited message is constantly culturally reinforced in what we read on the internet, what we watch on television, and the conversations we have with others. It becomes what we dream of and hope for for ourselves. We’ve formed addictions to you are not enough, you don’t have enough, and you need more without realizing we’re doing it. And it is robbing us of lives that could be lived with contentment and gratitude.³

All sins are attempts to fill voids.—Simone Weil

But the best things in life are free

But becoming Real has nothing to do with finding a relationship, a better job, a new location, or more money. It has nothing to do with physical or emotional or spiritual healing, or, as Werner Erhard puts it, “more, better and different.” Becoming Real is simply letting yourself love and be loved. And the learning takes a lifetime.

I found this poem about turning fifty:

“Crossing Some Ocean In Myself”  -Mark Nepo

Half a century, and finally,

what I feel is what I say

and what I say is what I mean.

What I mean is that others,

so used to my gargantuan efforts to be good,

don’t understand my efforts to be real.

They find me coming up short.

I’m simply burning old masks.

And the next step takes me–

I don’t know where–

as it should be–

I don’t know

just that I love who I love.

I listen with my heart.

I struggle with the reflexes of my mind.

I mean, the pains of life are sharper now

but disappear more clearly the way

knives are swallowed by the sea.

And the subtleties of being come on

like waves that cleanse but which,

when dry, cannot be seen.

So much like a gentle animal now,

unsure what I was fighting for,

except to breathe and sing, except

to call out the human names of God

that others have uttered when

thoroughly stripped of their plans.

So much like a love animal now

until the end of any day’s work

is the soft moment

when loving and being loved

are the same.

All year round,

the birds and trees instruct,

make visible the wind

the way reaching without shame

makes visible the love.

Makes visible the love

All we want is to be seen, to be heard, to feel connected, and to belong. And the funny thing is, all of these can only be given freely, gratis. With grace, from one’s heart to another. Despite the noisy drumbeat of marketing, the best things in life are free.

At the conclusion of the Dante’s massive epic Paradiso, the narrator at the end of his journey through Hell, Purgatory, and finally Heaven, reflects:

Here vigour failed the lofty fantasy:
But now was turning my desire and will,
Even as a wheel that equally is moved,
The Love which moves the sun and the other stars” (Paradiso, XXXIII, 142-145)

The Love which moves sun and the stars. The flowers in spring. The robins that sing. The sunbeams that shine. All yours and mine. The best things are life are free. Truly. In fact, if you used money, they aren’t the best things.

Heaven is a place on earth. Love can come to everyone. Even as you become Real, shabby and loose in the joints.

Only Love makes you Real. And as Sister Mary Jo says, it’s already all around you. May you let it in.

1. Except for heels and Achilles

2. I grew up Christian. Went to church every week. Yet somehow, I had never been told that “God loves you.” Oh, I had heard that “God loves you, but you’re a sinner.” Or “God loves you, but Jesus had to die for your sins.” Or “God loves you, but you can’t drink/use drings/be gay/cuss/have premarital sex/have an abortion/cheat on your spouse/be angry/masturbate, etc.” In college Intro to Rhetoric, I learned you can always ignore anything before the word but; the real message is always the words. No one had ever told me that God loves me (extravagantly!) until Sister Mary Jo did in 2020.

3. And wiping out the carrying capacity of the planet we live on. (covered earlier this month)