In my own world, most often as I wrestle with the things that I am to teach in the realm of spiritual formation or leadership, I am faced with my own inadequacies, brokenness, and desperate need of God.

One of my leadership life commandments has been that: "I won't be like a travel agent who sells people on a destination that he himself has never been." That means that I have had to lay my soul on the altar over and over again.

Education has a cost. It is the cost of integrity forming in us what we have learned. If we do not allow what we have be enlightened with or to, to transform us, we have chosen to leave the gift unopened.

I have found that it is easier to regurgitate information, or prepare a great and enthusiastic speech about places we have never been than it is to set the ego aside, admit our self-focus as well as our self-hatred at times, and allow God to move through us. But the results of the latter far outweigh the former.

In Parker Palmer's great book, "The Courage To Teach" he notes:

"Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one's inwardness,
for
better or worse. As I teach I project the condition of my soul onto my
students,
my subject, and our way of being together. The entanglements I
experience in the
classroom are often no more or less than the convolutions of my inner
life.
Viewed from this angle, teaching holds a mirror to the soul. If I am
willing to
look in that mirror and not run from what I see, I have a chance to gain
self-knowledge–and knowing myself is as crucial to good teaching as
knowing my
students and my subject." 

When we don't like what we see in the mirror of enlightenment, we have a divine choice…we can either move toward what frightens us, and grow, or back away reducing our depth and self-understanding to information distribution.

The condition of our soul enters into everything we do as humans. The way we relate or don't relate. The way we choose to respond or thoughtlessly react. The way we communicate through a discussion or evade one altogether. The way we dialog through conflict or deny their is conflict.

Teaching/leading has created an atmosphere in my life where I have to continually look in the mirror and do something about what I see. Though it's never easy, and often painful, it is also a great blessing. The more I deal with and heal the image of myself in the mirror, the more I heal the man-made image of God I also carry in my soul.

When we look in the mirror, we often see a Pandora's box of paradox, In the book "The Ragamuffin' Gospel" Brennan Manning noted the following as he honestly assessed his heart:

Brennan has a great way with words! Often when we see the paradoxes that dwell within they scare us and we stop looking. We are afraid of being accepted by God and others due to what we see that we don't like. So we live a life of cover-up or performance hoping -that- will make up for the deficiencies we see in our lives. But this simply creates a new religion for you to live out…Christ came to free you from that trap. I like how Manning re-centers us on the Gospel of God's grace:

If you have never stepped out in leadership, or decided to teach someone else, let me encourage you to look for an opportunity. It will cause you to look at who you truly are. It will create an awareness of who your really are. It will force you to consider some of your held beliefs about God that are more than likely false. This will bring you to a new and truer awareness of who you are and who God is…and that is where real growth happens.

Mirror, mirror on the wall…who's the fairest of them all? Now the mirror can honestly respond, "Jesus is, and do you know what? He thinks your incredible."

Dei Gratia,

Monty