“Know thyself.” This phrase goes back quite a way. Its Greek origins and testaments to its proverbial value place it among the Delphic maxims. There were three. In addition to “know thyself” were “nothing to excess” and “surety brings ruin.” This kind of introspective triumvirate of self-management is not about the practice of self-knowledge, but of self wisdom. And wisdom is what it means to seek deep truth and apply it to the way you live your life, not just the accumulation of information we sometimes mean by “knowledge.”
I like helpful bits of wisdom that come in threes, I am, after all, a devoted Trinitarian. So to make these wise words even easier for myself to pocket and carry around, I’ve boiled it down to introspection (know thyself), moderation (nothing to excess) and humility (surety brings ruin).
In 1577, Teresa of Ávila, a 16th Century Spanish Carmelite Catholic nun and a mystic (one who was consulted by the Pope, no less), wrote her great work of introspection, The Interior Castle. In it she names for us why it’s so important to look inside ourselves, where she promises nothing less than a meeting with God and an alignment with God’s purposes for us. “It is no small pity, and should cause us no little shame, that, through our own fault, we do not understand ourselves, or know who we are.”
Introspection is important because to be more present in the world, to be opened and ready to serve a God who wills love and goodness for all Creation, we have to open from within. We have to start from our true point of view, not from each person’s false self, as Thomas Merton called it. Nor can we begin from our superficial or hoped for selves, the people we like to imagine we are. No, we must seek our inmost self, the child inside, the person we are protecting, the person we often neglect to know better. In 12-step programs, this kind of inner work is already assumed to be hard work. Step 4 along the way to healing and wholeness from addiction asks one to make a “searching and fearless moral inventory” of oneself.
“Searching” and “fearless” implies two things: this inner work will require us to look hard for the truth of our self and we will definitely find things that will scare us. Teresa writes, “When we proceed with all this caution, we find stumbling-blocks everywhere; for we are afraid of everything, and so dare not go farther, as if we could arrive at these Mansions [great
rooms in the interior castle] by letting others make the journey for us! That is not possible, my sisters; so, for the love of the Lord, let us make a real effort: let us leave our reason and our fears in His hands and let us forget the weakness of our nature which is apt to cause us so much worry.”
Knowing oneself is not, it seems, a game for the weak-intentioned. But neither is it to be a quest that wears us out and renders us unable to go on in the world. The point at which the returns and insights diminish is the point at which we must evoke trust in God. The point at which we must take a break, take our work seriously, but not gravely so, in the literal sense that the work weakens us almost to death. We are looking for the truth so that the goodness and light of God’s presence in our very own souls will give us strength, love, comfort, courage, and joy. Again, Teresa knows that moderation is necessary. “Do not try to get so much that you achieve nothing.” But how do we withdraw and moderate when we find ourselves in a nosedive of self-involvement? That’s where humility helps.
“Trust God that you are where you are meant to be,” Teresa advises. Not just in the inner work, but in our lives, trust that we are where we are meant to be. In learning yourself, do so with the conviction that you matter deeply and dearly, you are the Beloved of God, but no more or no less than your siblings in Creation. We are all the Beloved of God, and so, we must accept ourselves and use ourselves honestly but with gentle grace, just as we would others. We must see both our gifts and our flaws and be at peace with them as part of ourselves. We can endeavor to make change that responds to God’s urging, but not to make ourselves either the idols of contempt (“I hate this ugliness in myself!”) or idols of perfection (“I’m so very good—better than others!”). We must, as Teresa says, begin our journey inward with humility. “I do not know whether I have put this clearly; self-knowledge is of such consequence that I would not have you careless of it, though you may be lifted to heaven in prayer, because while on earth nothing is more needful than humility,” she writes.
We at First Congregational have one extra special gift in this work. We are a community of those who believe in capital L “Love.” We can help one another to be introspective, to be moderate in our self-questing (and to moderate the urge to turn our self-judgments against our neighbors), and to be humble in our own estimation of ourselves. We can go on this journey together. Indeed, we can walk with God as Christ’s disciples did. Fearless, trusting, looking to become more wise, but also fallible and human and needful of grace. As we continue to climb out of a time of pandemic, and sometimes slip back into it a few steps, let’s focus on not only how we might be church in the world, but let’s see if we can’t prepare to know ourselves better as individuals and as a congregation. In that knowing may we conform ourselves to God’s will for this church in this time and this place.
With prayer and thanksgiving,
