Slow-Growing into God

Growth always comes with a cost. I'm not talking about growth as the day-in, day-out growing older that is part of being human. I'm talking about spiritual growth, emotional health, the ongoing development of the inner person.

Growth in any aspect of life always means leaving the previous season of life and stretching into something new and unknown. Maybe for that reason, a great many of us often feel stuck where we are. On the one hand, we grow comfortable and have a sense of ease and familiarity with where we are, even if that place is not particularly pleasant. Pleasant is good, and we much prefer the smooth ride to the bumpy, unpredictable journey.

Most of us, though, have to be jettisoned out of that kind of comfort in order to grow, in order to move toward the completeness for which we were created. Thrown into uncertainty or hardship, we are forced to find within ourselves the resources that have lain dormant within us, as well as calling on resources outside ourselves that we have not accessed previously. For most of us, difficulty provides a sharp-edged catalyst for growth that most of us would not undertake otherwise.

I've noticed that most all of us, no matter who we are and where we are in life, tend to think that we are fully formed right where we are in the current moment . . . that if we just tweak a few things and make some minor adjustments, we'll be the full expression of "me." Such is our conceit. Such is our illusion.

Most every discovery we make in our own growth or becoming feels like the one, missing puzzle piece. Each step we make feels like the final step over into the promised land, the final move into our long-sought-after destiny. I've met few people in life who did not think that where they were at that given moment was not their final landing place . . . which is why I've called it our "conceit" and "illusion." Every awakening feels like the ultimate awakening . . . but it is not.

In the Gospels, Jesus consistently invites us to grow up. He returns to it as a core message. Jesus does not have judgment for those who are stuck in particular places of development in the spiritual life. He knows that we can only get to the next place in life from where we are, so he doesn't belittle a person for being where they are.

He does, however, have harsh words for those who are stuck in life, but who pretend they are more advanced than anyone else. Note here that the harshest words of Jesus in the Gospels are aimed at those who, by outward appearance, are religious and flaunt their supposed "righteousness" for others to see. He has no condemnation for those who are "sinners" and who know they are "sinners" . . . only for those who pretend, by their religiosity, to be other than "sinners."

In a sense, those who are most openly religious in the Gospels don't feel the need to "grow up" or to make any kind of spiritual journey. They have arrived. They are completely all they need to be. They have all the answers, they've settled all the issues, they've worked out all the theology. Hence, they love to be seen by others as holy, applauded by the masses as righteous, honored by outsiders as having special access to the Holy.

Wisely, St. Benedict of Nursia said, "Do not wish to be called holy before you are."

But in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says all of the above is merely early-stage religion. Not that it is unimportant -- Jesus is careful not to abolish anything in the Law (Matt. 5:17) -- but Jesus takes it in a different direction (Matt. 5:17-44). While some might have anticipated that Jesus would rachet up the Law to a more rigorous degree, instead he takes the Law inward. He begins with the Law as a kind of Religion 101, as a place to begin basic life with God in the world. "Do this" and "Don't do that." "Here's how you need to behave," the Law says in countless codes of behavior. It is important early stage religion.

Jesus, though, doesn't not notch up the Law a degree or two. Rather, he says, go inward. You've been concerned about behavior, about morality. Now go to the source of that behavior. Go to the root of morality. Because Jesus knew that any religious system that merely offered regulations for moderating behavior could not produce lasting life-change or transformation. In Jesus' estimation, the Law regulated behavior but did almost nothing to touch the interior of a person.

So he said things like, "You have heard it said, 'Don't kill.' I'm saying to you, don't be angry and don't hate." Jesus went, not just to the behavior itself, but to the inner source of the behavior. He said the same kind of thing not just about killing, but about adultery and taking oaths.

In other words, Jesus affirms and acknowledges the importance of a religious system that advocates for civil behavior; however, he does not wish us to remain at that place forever. He builds on that stage of development. He invites us to grow, to develop, to resist being locked into a particular way of being that becomes so settled we can never move from it.

We all need Religion 101, the basic initiation into religious life. And some of us need that training longer than others. We need to be fully grounded in explicit instructions that govern our behavior in order to function as God's people in the world. But Jesus is warning against the trap of thinking Religion 101 is the fullness or extent of religious devotion. It is not. There is more.

There is always more beyond where you are . . . wherever you are. The more beyond does not negate nor diminish where you are currently. You have to be where you are in order to get to where you are going . . . just don't take any place in life as the final destination. There is always more, always something larger still in front of you. Don't build a house where you are and settle there for a lifetime. Keep traveling. Keep growing. Keep becoming. No place is the final place.

How do I know where I am? Consider where you were 5 years ago . . . or 3 years ago . . . or 1 year ago. Are you the same person now? Do you have the same beliefs? the same practices? the same image of God, yourself, and other persons or groups? If yes, then you may have built a house where you are.

In the spiritual life we are always moving into a larger world, a more expansive vision, an increasing grace. At any given time, we are living into only a small part of who God is. We never live into all of God all at once.

We slowly live more deeply into God; that is the nature of God. What we see, experience, and apprehend at any juncture is incomplete, only a part of the whole. So we keep moving, keep traveling, keep becoming. This is the nature of our life's journey, our life in God.

The Way In: A Rilke Poem

The Way In
Rainer Maria Rilke

Whoever you are: some evening take a step
out of your house, which you know so well.
Enormous space is near, your house lies where it begins,
whoever you are.
Your eyes find it hard to tear themselves
from the sloping threshold, but with your eyes
slowly, slowly, lift one black tree
up, so it stands against the sky: skinny, alone.
With that you have made the world. The world is immense
and like a word that is still growing in the silence.
In the same moment that your will grasps it,
your eyes, feeling its subtlety, will leave it. . . .

[Rainer Maria Rilke, Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. by Robert Bly, p. 71.]


I have lived with this Rilke poem for the better part of a year now. It first appeared on my radar as I considered a change of work and a move to another state. Last week I read it to a group on retreat at a Benedictine monastery. It seemed to have as much resonance with persons in that body as it has had with me.

Initially, the overlay on my life was obvious. I held a job I loved for 18 years, among a people I dearly loved. As such, I lived in a comfortable "house" for all those years, a house that was cozy and somewhat predictable, with regular rhythms and a consistent way for me to exercise my gifts. I was free to explore as needed, to occasionally move beyond the fences which would predictably arise. I found myself most fully "at home" in that house.

To step out of my "house" meant distance from friends and life-companions who were my extended family . . . distance from practices that had grown to be second-nature . . . and distance from financial security as I enter the late afternoon and evening of life.

Yet, as Rilke described the house, I knew it "so well." As familiar and cozy as it was, once the door cracked open and the light from outside the house rushed through the door-ajar, I had to step through . . . for reasons I did not fully understand then, and which I still cannot adequately verbalize.

I had other, previous experiences leaving "a house I knew so well," but in those experiences I was suffocating inside the house. In order to live and offer my life in service to the world, I had to step out of those houses. Last year, though, I was not pushed out the door, nor stepping away with a sense of desperate survival. I could have rocked along, business as usual, for a good, long while.

Nonetheless, it was time to "step outside the house." In a sense, this time as at other times, I had to do it. The invitation to step outside the house, as Rilke says, is the opening into the "enormous space" nearby . . . into the wild immensity of the world.

I'm no hero, villain, or saint for stepping out of that particular house. People make life-altering decisions all the time, sometimes out of courage, sometimes out of desperation, and sometimes just to survive. And truth be told, there are still plenty of houses I live in which I've yet to step out of.

A house is a structure, a confinement, a place of dwelling. It roots us, in the sense of limiting our movement, travel, or journey. Even on an intentional journey, a spiritual journey, humans seem to want to build dwelling places in which to settle. Maybe we do that out of our fear or for the sake of security. Whatever the reason, we seem to be very good at building and living confined within houses.

If "journey" is metaphor for moving onward in life, then "house" is metaphor for staying put where we are. Rilke simply says, "step out of your house some evening, the house that is so familiar to you."

Growth, especially spiritual becoming, does not consist in making sure everything is comfortable and well-ordered, safe and secure within the confines of my current "house," but rather, stretches, reaches, explores. Spiritual becoming means always expanding, including, opening. Authentic growth never keeps us confined, never makes us smaller, but always thrusts us into the world as redeeming, reconciling presences.

But taking a step out of our houses is no simple act. Many of our houses are well-constructed and have served us well for a lifetime.

The houses in which we dwell differ for each of us.
There is the house of what you believe.
Or the house of what you hold dear.
Or the house of what you belong to.
Or the house of your deepest loyalties.
Or the house of your politics.
Or the house of your ideology.
Or the house of your religious tradition.
Or the house of your roles.
Or the house of the way your parents raised you.
Or the house of what is required at your work.
Or the house of that toxic relationship.
Or the house of your identity group (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.).

Most of us live in many houses, and we stay in them because they are so familiar to us . . . we "know them so well." We may even say things like, "This is just who I am."

When Rilke says, "Take a step out of your house," he is not suggesting we should forsake the house, burn it down, or turn our backs on it. (Of course, there is a time to make a complete break from the house we know so well . . . but not in all cases.)

He simply says, "Step outside."
"Enormous space is near."
"The world is immense."

This is poetic wisdom: Just a simple step outside our role, our belief, or our must/should/oughts is a step into the world, into the vastness for which we were created. Most often, it is the first step that is most crucial, because without the first step there can be no successive steps. Take the first step, he says.

Last week on retreat, my friend David heard this poem for the first time. He pointed out something about the poem I had overlooked completely in months of pondering it. He noted the poem's title . . . while the main action of the poem is taking a step "out of your house," the poem is showing us "the way in."

This is how it goes. The way in, the way of living soul-fully, the way into a deepening life of significance, the way of accessing your own interior riches . . . all are accessed by taking a step out of the house you know so well!