Wisdom for Early Ahjummahdom 3: I Am Beloved

Lesson 3 is "Don't spend time with people who don't treat you well."

I explained this rather crudely to a little brother/dong-seng in his early 20s once as "when you're in your 30s, you don't give a shit about what other people think of your choices anymore... you just do what you gotta do." What I meant by this was not that we should make bad choices that draw negative opinions from others. The context of our conversation was his doing things he doesn't want to do and hanging out with people with whom he'd rather not just because he didn't want his friends to think badly of him. Who cares?? You gotta do what you gotta do. And if friends think badly of you when you do what you gotta do, then maybe they're not really good friends.

I am Beloved. Whether or not friends think so or regardless of how others treat us, we are Beloved. By God. So why spend time with people who contradict this fact? Time is precious and limited. We've only got so much of it. Better to surround ourselves with people who affirm the truth of our identity than ones who lie to us.

I'm not going to go into the Beloved bit because someone else does this so much better than I can: Henri Nouwen. I strongly recommend reading Life of the Beloved. 

Between my marriage, raising kids, my family, my job, and my various hobbies, I barely get enough sleep or time to eat. I don't have a lot of time to waste on sorting out mixed messages and falsehoods and licking wounds. So I prefer not avoid people who give me mixed messages and falsehoods and wounds in the first place. It's hard enough to find as much time as I'd like to spend with people who treat me well for heaven's sakes! Nobody's perfect and relationships aren't always smooth sailing, but the ones in which I can live as the Beloved and I can treat the other as the Beloved are the ones to keep.

Wisdom for Early Ahjummahdom 2: My Body is a Temple of the Holy Spirit

Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person; for the temple of God which you are, is holy. (1 Corinthians 3:16-17) 

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? (1 Corinthians 6:19)

Back in youth group days, our counselors would use verses such as these to scare us into not smoking or taking drugs or getting tattoos. Whether or not such actions to our body is sinful is a topic for another time perhaps. The matter at hand is one's body... and its inevitable deterioriation and--dare I say it--death.

Start taking care of your body now, not later, because your body is basically gradually breaking down as you age whether you realize it or not. This is Lesson 2.

What does this have to do with the Holy Spirit? It doesn't... because humans are not the Holy Spirit. We are spiritual but also corporal, and we are not God.

The temple is a physical building. All physical buildings require maintenance and upkeep. The more regularly you maintain, the longer it will last and the easier it is to keep it well-maintained. Aside from the holiness factor, which makes our bodies sacred and therefore demanding respect and dignity on an abstract level, our physical bodies also demand good treatment on a concrete level.

Bearing in mind one's temporality, one's limitedness in body, is humbling, if not humiliating. I think this is important spiritually as well because it reminds me that I am not God. The omnipotence one sometimes feels as a youth is deceptive. While I don't want to curb human abilities too much--we are like God, after all, and made in God's image--ultimately we are not God.

So, for practical and prayerful purposes, one should exercise, eat healthfully, and be conscientious of potential diseases and conditions that can be harmful to our limited but infinitely dignified bodies. And of course gratitude for having a body and the life with it is also in order.