You know that old saying, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks?"  Having been the owner of several old dogs, the literal meaning of the saying is probably absolutely true.  Old dogs are one of God's great gifts to people in terms of companionship and a very gentle and laid-back attitude toward life, but the old dogs I have known have had no interest in learning anything like a new trick.  I have never even been able to get them to perform the old tricks they learned when they were young!

I guess that that people tend to settle into patterns of thought and behavior in our lives and, once we settle, we are not very open to changing.  We stop learning new tricks!  What I've found, however, is that I'm learning new things all the time -- and not just learning them intellectually.  I'm learning things that are changing my life - the way I live and the choices I make.

One thing I've learned is that I really believe in the unique giftedness of each person.  Author John Powell (Through Seasons of the Heart) wrote that each person has "a special song, a special act of love [and] no one else can speak my message, sing my song.."  This is not to say that there is just one divinely ordained path that I must find and walk before I can be fulfilled as a human being.  It means that my contribution to life is uniquely mine.  To the extent I fail to live my life fully - sing my song or speak my message -- the world is poorer for that failure.

I've learned that it is vital for me to get to know myself -- to become myself.  That means taking the time and effort to wade through and discard the layers of identity I may have borrowed from my work, my relationships, and even my religion.  Knowing myself means learning to let go, or at least reconsider, the identity I've thought of as me without really thinking about.  Elisabeth Kubler-Ross said it this way: 

You must give up everything in order to gain everything - all that is not truly you; all that you have chosen without choosing and value without evaluation, accepting because of someone else's extrinsic judgment rather than your own; all your self-doubt that keeps you from trusting and loving yourself or other human beings. 

(Death:  The Final Stage of Growth)

Discovering who I am in the depths of my self is only half the battle.  I need to invest my self in shaping what the Bible calls a new heaven and a new earth.  And that investment needs to be made in cooperation with the deepest spiritual reality of the universe - what religion calls partnership with God.  After all, social justice without spiritual connection leads to burn out and spirituality without a sense of new creation becomes self-absorbed and eventually a form of hell. 

We discover who God is as we discover who we are.  Theologian Paul Tillich saw that meeting of authentic self with authentic God as the process by which the suprapersonal (Einstein's term for God) reality underlying all of life becomes a personal God - through persons.  (Theology of Culture, "A Letter to Einstein").  Each of us actually creates, in a sense, a dimension of who God is in our lives and in the world.  I think that is pretty cool!  It says a lot about God's willingness to trust people and rely on us to change the world.

There is a lot to learn in life.  Even old dogs can learn to think in new and creative ways on the journey.  I might not agree with every new thing you're learning and you might not agree with all I'm learning, but we can respect all that learning!  We can encourage each other in the process of learning and growing -- and can't we just imagine the magnificence of a divine reality who can inspire and continue to teach all of us?  And that imagining may be the most exciting part of all!

Thanks for continuing to bless me as we journey together.
  
Jack Price

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