2022-12-01 A Meditation on Fussiness

Called the thrive, the believer has become conscientious, in a cautious manner: for, to be awakened, conscientious, to the state of mind of others, is a mighty Spirit or a megalomaniacal scheme. That is, we do well to consider our words to others, and never to deny that care for their thought-space, their belovedness, their beheld nature, their right to flourish and thrive.

So we can become too gentle, too obsessed with a certain spiritual level, too self-congratulatory (if our secret thoughts were known). We can, in short, amp up the tension in the room rather than release it. That tension is the fussiness over spilt milk, the supposition that all is on a perfect level until we came along.

So we bluster forward, unafraid of what our inclinations and communications do accomplish, only this: that you see I am not patronizing nor offending against your sacred spaces or thoughts. I am not aware of milk spilt, but as for myself—if you are anything like me—some relationships take “work”, and others, entire avenues of being, are innately safe and encouraging and healthsome. So we delight to understand that each of us has this divine need, or divine gift, or divine patronage. We each are happy to move on from the fussiness, and to enter into our proper space, wherever in the spiritual city of God that may be.

And then the tension in the room. Too obsessed with not treading on any toes, we run right up the escalator of pride, thinking ourselves the judge of who present is “doing the Christian thing”, making the good parable, telling the right joke, sensitive to the ego of others. For to flatter is to win a good mark, and publicly to forgive earns a murmur of approval, and to shower with affection brings smiles. So in all these things we trust a Holy Spirit thus to lead us into what we lacked and blustered through before, now possessed of a seemingly new conscientiousness, only we forget that we cared in times past as well, just with less self-awareness of the game.

With intention comes temptation: as we are aware of what we are endeavoring to prove, we become proud and sinful. More than that, we walk as though on eggshells, post-conversion, fearing to muck things up. But this should not be so! We should bluster ahead, forge a path, encourage incidentally, accidentally, unintentionally, but purposefully announce our love for the brethren and the sistren, who only this hour have a shared place special, a conjoined heaven on earth, a routine and motoring about most delighted and sincere.