“I love God, whoever he is, and I’d really like to get closer to him.”
Glennon Doyle opens her chapter entitled Namaste with this vulnerable desire. “I love God and I’d really like to get closer to him” is something we commonly hear amongst Christian community. It’s the “whoever he is” part that makes this statement exceptionally vulnerable.
God has more facets to his character than we could even begin to imagine. I probably learn about a new one every day. And recently, I’ve learned about a new way of learning about my father’s character.
Mother Teresa understood this concept quite well. She talked about how she couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that people would weep when they thought about Jesus dying on the cross, but didn’t so much as shed a single tear when they heard about him dying in the streets today.
Let me expand on that last bit.
Doyle explains that “The reason that Mother Teresa served the lepers and destitute and dying in the streets of Calcutta was not because Jesus told her to; it was because Jesus was leprous and destitute and dying in the streets of Calcutta. And since she worshipped Jesus as God, she figured she should probably go help him, because it didn’t make a lot of sense to worship God in church while he was dying alone in the streets.”
I’ll let that sink in.
Jesus lives in us. In all of us. In the well-off, the students, the thugs, and the refugees. He’s there.
A couple days ago, while working with a Scripture Union club in a high school in the outskirts of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, I had the fifteen or so kids in the room close their eyes. I asked them to raise their hands if they believed they are a child of God. Slowly and in a slightly confused manner, as if to say “duh Aubrey that’s why I’m here at this Bible study,” hands went up. I told them to keep their eyes closed and to now raise their hands if they believed that by being a child of God, they believed God lived inside of them. Hands shot up.
“Keep your hands up, open your eyes, and look around,” I said.
They waited with confused looks on their face for me to explain what the heck they were doing answering such an obvious question amongst a bunch of their friends who they knew to be believers.
Mother Teresa (or Mama T. as I’ve come to enjoy calling her) had some insights on this. We can have so much confidence knowing that we are a child of God, but at the same time we need to be humbled knowing that everyone else is too.
I have God inside of me. That makes me special.
You have God inside of you. That makes you special.
Remember those facets of His character I mentioned earlier? Yeah, He has enough of those to fill every single one of His children and have them all be completely unique from one another.
I have a piece of God in me that you don’t have, and vice versa. Does that mean it only belongs to me or you? No. That’s what community is about. We can build off each other and teach each other what it looks like to live out those characteristics of our father.
Mama T. understood this.
“She understood that everyone is Jesus. She understood the meaning of the word Namaste, which means ‘the divine light in me sees and honors the divine light in you.’ God in me recognizes God in you. And the God in my honors the God in you. So when she encountered a person, she would fold her hands, bow her head, and say, ‘Namaste.’ And when she wanted to see God, she didn’t look up and away; she looked into the eyes of the person sitting next to her.”
Let’s consider this blog part II to my tattoo blog series (yeah, I got another one). If you read my previous blog, you know I have a lion on my inner forearm. It represents something intimate between me and God, hence the placement that allows me to hold it close to my side, only showing it when I want to.
My newest tattoo is different. I wanted it to be in a place I would always see so I could be constantly reminded of what Mamma T. lived out so well.
When I’m angry with someone else, annoyed, or just done with another person, I can look down, see the word “namaste” and be reminded that that person has Jesus inside of them. Do I really want to treat Jesus how I’m treating this person? Cus they are Jesus, just in a different package than the Jesus I would being choosing over them in that moment.
Glennon Doyle is living this out a little differently than I’ve chosen to, but it works just as well, and I would encourage you to practice this in your daily life.
She writes, “I decided to start bowing to everyone who crossed my path. Just a little teeny bow of my head. Just enough to remind myself not to be a jerk, since no matter who I’m talking to, whether it’s a child, or a principal, or a gas station attendant, or a frenemy, or my husband, it’s God I’m talking to.
And as I bow, I whisper, Namaste. God in me recognizes and honors God in you.
I’m starting to see God everywhere.
It’s like that little bow of my head snaps me out of the horrible trance I allow myself to get lulled into each day, in which I forget that everything and everyone is magic. Including me. Namaste.”
So, let’s start empowering one another and encouraging each other to fully live out the God within us.
Namaste.
