Embracing Belovedness
The Fifth Sunday in Lent
Reflection By Martha Bourlakas
Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?”
- John 11:40
I have heard The Word is very near you for most of my adult life, but I wasn’t getting it. I knew I should understand that the infinite love of God and the Universe is not reserved for me only after everyone else has received theirs. I should be able to integrate this Word into my heart and life, living into God’s intimacy with me. My relationship with God and myself changed when I realized the shoulds were part of the problem. Instead of where I should be, here I am. When I receive God’s love and compassion for my Self first, as I am, I acknowledge the power of the Holy Spirit moving and acting within me.
My realization began with the word selfish, a word our religious systems, our culture, our families have long taught us—especially women—is the worst possible word. Isn’t it selfish of me to address the love and care I need, before considering others? After all, I am a Mom, a wife, a daughter, a friend. If I don’t put all the love and attention towards everyone else first, I am not following the Christian teachings of self-sacrifice I have always learned. The Holy Spirit within me was not settled on this idea, and she got blow-y, began stirring up things within me. I picked up my pen and started writing.
For two years, every single day, I wrote in my journal, I am a beloved child of God. This was my way of praying, understanding, believing it is not selfish of me to put myself first in receiving God’s love and care. I need and deserve this wondrous, expansive love, here and now. God’s abundant love is always available, not meted out after we have done all the right things. The words are teaching me that the best way for me to navigate marriage, parenting, friendships, work—all of it—is to turn God’s love and compassion first toward myself. From this love and relationship stem all other abundant, life-giving relationships and work.
The Holy Spirit blows through our bodies, our souls, our world, in a different way from what history and culture have taught us, expressing God’s creative radicalness. She teaches us that The Word, Belovedness, Wisdom are urgent, immediate, not rewarded after we accomplish our tasks, eat the rainbow, exercise, say all the right things. She knows if we are last, our outward love and service is fractured, resentful, full of loaded-up shoulds—not the kind of love we all need and deserve to receive. When we acknowledge and incorporate intimate love and care for ourselves, we begin to structure our lives differently, rooting ourselves in acts and movements of belovedness and ease.
I hope when I am 65, maybe 95, I am still writing in my journal, reminding myself I am a beloved child of God. Embracing belovedness can be a slow process, but I should not be any further along, or at any other place, other than where I am. On days when I struggle, face-to-face with the-Martha-that-should, I turn my face to the springtime sun, stay right where I am—in my compassion, in my belovedness, with my pen and paper. The Martha that is.