Welcome to the St. Alban's Reading Blog!

With you, St. Alban’s clergy will be reading the latest short daily passages from Show Me The Way by Henri J.M. Nouwen, and we will be offering our comments here. You are invited to post your thoughts as well. Please sign your name to any postings you make.

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Monday, February 25, 2013

I'm very struck by the discussion of competition in our reading for today and the relationship between competition and compassion.  Competition is definitely a theme that I hear coming from our young people at various youth events.  They talk about competition for spots in college, competition for opportunities to play in the game rather than ride the bench, competition on test scores and grades.  And then I think about how it is that we adults model that competitive spirit for our young people...best car, best house, newest gadgets, most perfect life.  And then I think of the competitive nature of our wider society and particularly our politics today, where the goal no longer seems to be about winning for the sake of pride in a job well done, but rather winning for the sake of ensuring the other side loses.

I love this notion of "imaginary distinctions as sources of identity" that Nouwen mentions on page 54.  So many of the distinctions we make between ourselves are, when you get down to it, imaginary.  I think this is one of those hardest lessons to learn when we're growing up, that the difference between having a flip phone and an iPhone or a Bean fleece vs a North Face or an A vs an A- is, in the grand scheme of things, an imaginary one.  What does it matter as long as you can make a call or stay warm in the snow or did your best on the test?  I think it has to do with our notions of the world as a place of abundance or a place of scarcity. 

If we think there's a limited amount of "the best" then we must compete for it.  If there's only one way to be the best or one thing to have that's the best, then there's not really any other choice.  But if we think of the world as an abundant place, then it frees everyone and everything up to be their own unique kind of best...an infinite number of "bests" that we can  be.

And that mindset of abundance is at the heart of compassion.  We don't need to hoard all of those best and most generous parts of ourselves if we believe there's plentiful "best" to go around.  This is part of what we're trying to show our young people here at St. Alban's...there are an infinite number of ways for you to be the best version of yourself, and your best is no better or worse than anyone else's. 

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