Rev. Joseph Boyd
The first word that came to my mind on the topic of becoming ourselves is: Renunciation. It’s a peculiar word, and not one that we often use in our culture. Historically the term renunciation has been used within religious orders, for monks and people devoted completely to religious life, separate from the rest of the world. For most of us, I don’t know if we’ve been given the opportunity to discover the power and depth of what renunciation really means. We live in a culture that is the opposite, and proclaims the opposite of renunciation. The simplest definition of renunciation in its most broad interpretation is to actively let go of something. For monastics and those in religious orders it was the renunciation of work that paid a salary, the accumulation of material goods, and in some cases letting go of any romantic entanglements. So it would be easy to think that the act of renunciation is the exact opposite of most of our lives: those of us who work, have families, people who live in the world and value that as our life path.

The reason I thought of the term renunciation in terms of becoming ourselves, is that it has been an important part of my lived experience in terms of finding a way of being in the world that feels meaningful and worthwhile. Probably like many of you, I was taught by our culture that the goal of life was accumulation: the accumulation of goods, experiences, titles, accomplishments. I was raised as an American to believe that success and real happiness needed to be pursued in earnest, and the pursuit itself was the real reason we were alive. I was taught that if I found success I would be happy, and if I failed which is probable, keep working and keep trying. Not all of these teachings are bad. I think there is a lot of good in this way of being in the world, but what’s strange to me now, is that I never knew there was another way or other ways. I never knew that this was one choice of many. I never knew there were other ways to be myself.

Finding ourselves is a big industry in this country. There are many organizations, self-help books and seminars dedicated to people who want to find themselves. For some of us, the idea of becoming ourselves is never really a conscious thought at all, and we may be skeptical of anyone who with seriousness is seeking to answer the question: Who are you? Some of us have found that leaving that question alone and occupying ourselves with what is at hand is the most wise decision, and maybe that is the most wise decision. But for some of us, the question comes to us, and becomes impossible to ignore. In my experience, the question of who we really are comes up during a time of transition when there is some loss. It could be the loss of a loved one, a loss of a career path, a loss of children living at home. When our whole identity is in need of a shift after something critical is now missing. For some of us, the question of who we are doesn’t have much importance until we reach middle age or older. When we see that mortality is real, and that it is real for us.

Whether we use the term renunciation or not, for each of us there comes a time when we are asked to let go. We are asked to let go of the way we moved in the world literally or figuratively, and we are asked to let go of how we knew ourselves, and who we are becoming, even though we don’t know who that is. That is happening now on a mass scale. We have collectively let go of a critical way of being in the world, and are now seeing what we will let go of in order to become who we’re going to be, even though we don’t yet know who that is. That’s a very precarious place to be in, and we are in that precarious place. We may think the answer is accumulation of something we don’t have, which in part may be true. The accumulation of a vaccine which is important, the accumulation of data and tracking, the accumulation of science to help us imagine who we will become. I do think this is crucial and it’s very important.  And I don’t think this is the full answer to becoming ourselves as an individual person and as a society. Becoming ourselves is more than the external factors of our life; it’s about how it actually feels to be a person. How it actually feels to be together after being apart, how it feels to be a person that has gone through what we’ve gone through collectively, and noticing the ways we’ve changed, and perhaps the ways we want to continue to change. Becoming ourselves is simultaneously internal and external, the meeting place between the two.

This time has taught me the power of surrender, that is active, and not apathetic. Surrender is another term for renunciation. I’ve learned during this time that am most truly able to embody my life when I’m willing to practice letting go. Letting go of perfectionism, expectations of things being what I want all the time, letting go of unrealistic expectations of myself and others, letting go of what is unnecessary so I can appreciate what is actually here. Letting go of the deep seeded thought that what is here is somehow lacking or missing something. Letting myself see that this moment is complete, that I’m complete, that you’re complete, and all of that is still becoming, never the same from moment to moment. Letting go of needing to prove or earn validation. Letting go of fear and dread, and learning how to trust more completely. I’m not saying this is how I feel all the time. But I’ve had moments of it, more moments this year than I’ve ever had in my life.

And I’m curious to hear about some of your experiences. Maybe it’s connected to mine or maybe it’s completely different, and that’s valid too. There is something just so fundamental during this time. I feel like I’m being shown the fundamentals of what it means to be alive, and what it means to be alive together as a community. I feel like I’m getting schooled daily in what really matters. And what I’m learning is that not everything I’ve been taught about what matters, really matters in the same way. I see that ambition in the way we commonly think of in our culture are often just vapors, thoughts that lack substance, a kind of dream that doesn’t seem as connected to what is right here.  Ambition is really important, but I’m learning that it really matters what we choose to be our ambition. I’m learning that the more fundamental, the more every day and common, the more meaning I’m finding. I have the ambition to be present for my life, to be present to the life of my community, and do what I can in the circumstances I’m in to promote healing and goodness. The rest I’m starting to see is worth renouncing. Anything that separates me from my life, from this precious life, anything that separates me from my neighbor and this earth, it’s ok to consciously and actively let it go.

I love the conversation between Thomas Merton and Robert Lax. Lax gives Merton a new ambition, one he never before considered. Merton just wanted to be a good Catholic, a vague non-committal kind of ambition, without much risk or sacrifice. Also without any real joy or aliveness. Lax tells Merton he should want to be a saint, and this is a startling ambition. I can see the thoughts bubbling up in his head: Who do you know who wants to be a saint? And probably the follow up question: Aren’t those kinds of people insufferable to be around?

 But Lax insists: You should want to be a saint, and he offers some wise counsel about what that really means. To become a saint is to want to be one. The desire to be a saint is to become a saint. It’s the right place for your desire to be – that’s all it takes. Any of us can be a saint, but we have to want it. Merton wrote years after this encounter that he learned the real power of this encounter. He learned and wrote later in his journal: to be a saint means to be myself. An unexpected revelation. When our desire is aligned with being a saint, we become ourselves. I interpret this in a very broad way. I don’t think we need to get trapped in a limited idea of sainthood, with our checklists of what it takes to really be a saint. I think it is an act of discovery, not a to-do list. But if you’re looking for a list, I think Pope Francis offers some good pointers. Can we bear witness to our life, and seek to do good in whatever circumstances we find ourselves in? Can we be true to our word, and appreciate those who live with us? Can we seek to do good and let go of personal gain, the expectation that we should be rewarded for goodness? I think these are some fine pointers, and any one of us can use them.

I’m learning that the biggest problem in our country is not too much ambition, it’s too little. The ambitions most of us have and have been raised to have are too little compared to the task of becoming ourselves. Most of the ambitions we are encouraged to have revolve around self-interest, which is not bad in and of itself, but it’s limited. It’s limited if we aim to become ourselves. We have a high level of desire in this country, a wonderful, vivacious energy that can be really good. But I think we need to find an ambition worthy of all that desire. And it’s not a paint-by-numbers thing. I don’t think we will become carbon copies of one another if we have the ambition for instance to bear witness and do good within our circumstances. There are endless ways to do that, ways that utilize our natural personality, our talents, and our interests.  I sense that this culture is easily bored by goodness, as if we think to seek goodness is kind of silly or uninteresting compared to the accumulation of personal wealth, prestige, and power. But as some of us have learned it’s actually the opposite. When you achieve any level of power for the sake of itself, any kind of wealth and prestige for the sake of your own self-interest, that becomes an enclosed circle, a closed loop with the self that becomes quite dull and very predictable in a short period of time. But goodness has no real end. Goodness connects you to yourself and others; it connects you to all sentient life. Goodness connects you to mystery and depth of life. And it survives death – all the people who have been recipients of goodness thanks to you and pass it on indefinitely even after we’re gone. Personal wealth and self-interest definitely loses power, and is completely renounced when we die. It gets divided up, and we leave the world as we came in: empty handed.

But if you seek to do good without hoping to gain anything, this is not a big problem. It’s ok to leave the world empty handed because we know we didn’t come here to gain anything, but to give something, to give whatever goodness we could.

So do you want to be a saint? I think it’s worth some consideration. Remember to be a saint is to want to be one, to have that ambition. We can renounce, let go of all the self-talk that says that we could never be a saint, that saints are boring, that the life of goodness is for people who are much better than us, people with more character, more grit, more whatever. We can renounce all that excuse making. We can choose to renounce personal self-interest as the only reason we’re alive, and see something that includes our person but is much more expansive. If you don’t want to be a saint, I think that’s fine. I’m not going to strong arm anyone into sainthood. But I hope you let that work on you and challenge you. It continues to work on and challenge me.

 I’m beginning to see that becoming ourselves is the most natural thing in the world. It’s not that arduous or such a big deal. Becoming ourselves is choosing to do good, and renouncing our sense that we should gain something from it in a way we imagine. We do get so much back, but never in the way we imagine. It’s better than what we imagine, if we continually renounce the kind of self-interest which blinds us from our life, the beauty and depth of our life in the present. When we see the life we’re living now, in the circumstance we’re in, as the perfect laboratory of goodness, waiting to be expressed and given through us, we get to be who we’ve been all along. We get to actively become ourselves.