Back in the early 1980s Pat Robertson, host of The 700 Club, was prophesying a “spiritual awakening” in this country. I quickly dismissed it as so much hooey.
This month, I’ve learned just why I was correct back then.
See, when such folks make noise about an “awakening” they have this idea that God will come down and simply turn others’ hearts toward Him, which in practice means that people will adopt their political and cultural values and “clean out” their enemies by destroying or at least ridiculing them.
But after reading the article “Real Awakenings are Not Elegant — [They] are Messy, Ugly, Shattered & Raw” by Elizabeth Gordon in ElephantJournal.com, I was reminded that I’ve been going through my own “awakening” since August 2017, though I’m not at liberty to discuss the details. They refer to inner, not societal, transformation.
One thing that Gordon mentions, and which has been my experience, is that “With real-world awakenings, there is a lot of crying. There is a ton of confusion and doubt and questions and shock. There is deep-seated socialization and conditioning that gets unearthed, leaving us wondering what … we believe/want/know/feel now.” I can imagine that such happened to many of the Biblical characters — Jacob, Paul, the Apostle John and even Jesus, when He was tempted in the desert for 40 days.
Reason: “They expose all the yucky stuff, the shameful stuff, the secrets, the dreams that were never given a voice, the relationships that imprison us, the words left unsaid. Awakenings are a mirror we can’t turn away from, even in our ugliest, most tattered gown. They force us to get real, to get honest, to get transparent. They ask us to [uplevel].”
That is what began to happen to me nearly two years ago, when I realized that much of my life at the time turned out to be a lie or, at best, a sham. Without realizing it, I had been selling myself short, perhaps because I felt I didn’t deserve better.
But there is a reward for going through the process — “And when we do arrive, we realize we have been cleansed, blessed, and prepared. We understand that those dark nights of the soul were an opening for our raw truth to claw its way out. We are humbled that our greatest pain has now become our biggest teacher.”
I had an inkling of that reward last year.
This is why such talk of “awakening” is just that — talk, with no substance. There’s no reference to personal repentance or engaging the inner, deeper life, causing folks to “arrive at our deepest place of love and compassion ... [and] to arrive at the tender crossroads of accepting ourselves and loving others.”
That’s what real revival will produce — tenderness, which I have come to crave.
Of late I’ve been listening to “Awakening,” a beautiful Spyro Gyra tune from 1980 which is in the key of F-sharp but, interestingly, doesn’t resolve until the very end. And today I know why — it also represents an arrival.
Anyway, true revival will lead to kindness, gentleness, goodness and self-control, among other things, with the focus on what God wants to do. May that happen to and through me and us.
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