Tuesday, April 22, 2008

A Religious Basis for Being Yourself

"God speaks to you not only through His supernatural grace, but also through the individual nature which He fashioned into the person you are today. He would have you make an intelligent, reasonable use of the gift that is 'you'."

From, Anthony J. Paone, S.J.
Confraternity Of The Precious Blood
(an order of cloistered contemplatives)

This appeared yesterday on Scott Burkhead 's Daily Spiritual Guide, a wildly eclectic daily mix of genuinely uplifting tidbits.

And now for my commentary on this text:

"Reasonable" worries me a little, because it's easy to view something difficult as impossible, and therefore unreasonable. The use of the male pronoun bothers me too. But with those caveats, I love this idea.

My own religion is a patchwork; and this belief of the authentic self being a gift fits into it nicely. Moreover, I like a moral basis for something I'm working on talking myself into. We all hear a lot about being "selfless." I think we have to be ourselves before we have anything to offer anyone else, and before we have a self to transcend.



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