Thoughts on Receptivity

I've been thinking a lot about the difference between being passive and being receptive lately. 

I'm all about feminism - True feminism, that is. None of this "let's turn women into men" stuff. But I love JPII and theology of the body and religious sisters and women like Helen Alvare who all inspire me to fully embrace my feminine genius.

One of the more basic teachings of femininity, from a TOB standpoint, is that the man is giver and the woman is receiver. It's expressed in our sexuality, it is expressed in Adam's call to shamar, and woman's desire to be pursued. 

Yet the bold, assertive part of me shutters a little bit at this teaching. I don't want to be receptive...the connotation I hear equates receptivity with being passive. I get this image of a helpless woman sitting around for a man to come find her and rescue her on his perfect white horse. And oh gosh, that just makes me want to gag a little bit. I think this shutter and gag reflex is a reflection that this idea of passivity is not what it means to be receptive. 

I looked up the definition of passive because, well it can be confusing when we throw around abstract concepts. So, according to my friend dictionary.com, here we go:

Passive:  [pas-iv] adjective

1. Not participating readily or actively; 

2. Influenced, acted upon, or affected by some external force, cause, or agency

The definition of being passive hits my thoughts right on the head - this implies that we simply sit and do not respond or react to God or others acting upon us in this life. And God does not want this for us at all! He wants us to actively participate in our lives. That is why he gave us free will. If we sit and react (or worse, don't react), we are not growing or becoming who God wants us to be. 

Receptivity, on the other hand, is so opposite of this. There are similarities between the two, sure. But the difference is that receptivity is all about action. Sometimes this action is more subtle and interior, other times this action is big and bold. 

When I think of subtle and interior receptivity, I think of Mary pondering things in her heart. She did not passively allow things to happen to her. She received each moment and thing that her son said to her with grace, and she spent time thinking about it from there. 

About two months ago I went on a retreat with the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. One of the mornings, we ate breakfast with some of the elderly sisters. One of the old nuns sitting by me kept asking me the same questions and telling me the same story over and over again. The receptive response to this sister was to stay engaged with her, actively listen to what she was saying, and to respond with equal enthusiasm. This type of receptivity shows a deep love for the other, as we put ourselves second and respond graciously to their needs and desire to be known. 

When I think of being actively receptive, I think of the Sisters of Life in New York City, receiving pregnant women into their homes and providing for their needs. I think of my teammate from UNL, Martha, and how she cares for and loves on people with her popcorn and good questions about their lives. 

St. Therese of Lisieux received a call from The Lord to be a religious sister at a very young age. She was deeply convicted of this and knew she wanted to give her whole life to Jesus. Yet, she was too young to enter the convent. So instead of sitting around and waiting (which would have been acceptable in this situation), she took what she had received from God and asked her bishop to make an exception so she could enter Carmel in her young age. Mother Teresa of Calcutta did the same when starting the Missionaries of Charity. She had to push and actively work to get permission to get her new religious order started. Without this perseverance and active response to God, these two holy women might not have had the effect on the spirituality of so many people.

The more I ponder the idea of being receptive, the more I realize that that is the kind of woman I want to be. I want to be present to the lives of others. I want to actively listen and show that I care. I want to sit with Jesus each day and take in what He wants me to know. I want to make my decisions and movements based on what he reveals to my heart. I want to humble myself to allow space for others to grow. 

Being receptive means acting and making decisions to follow God. So let's be bold. Let's listen to the Lord and ponder what He says to us in our hearts. Let's respond with grace to the people He has put in our lives. Let's love loudly and actively. Let's be receptive to Christ and to the world around us. 

Emotions, Schemotions

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a lot of feelings. I remember laying on the couch watching The Santa Clause for the first time last year and experiencing approximately 7 different emotions at the same time. I think I freaked my male teammates out a little bit. My current teammates can tell you multiple stories of tears shed in the office due to different touching/beautiful/sad moments. Yeah, yeah, it's because I'm a woman - whatever. I like to look to my girl Zooey on this one:

I love this quote from Zooey because I think I have been told that my emotions are bad. 

Recently, my friend Matt made a comment that emotions are bullshit. When I went home that night, I realized I was really mad at him for that comment. So I vented to Jesus and I realized it was because I took what he said personally. And then I was annoyed at myself for feeling that.

I think what is hard about emotions is that when we feel something, especially if we feel it intensely, we think we have to act. However, simply following everything that our heart desires is an extreme and will not lead to you making the best choice you could make for yourself. The opposite of this extreme is to view emotions as 100% bad (or BS as Matt would say) and simply live in our heads. We need to understand that our emotions are not bad. Jesus had emotions! He cried, He got angry, and most of all He loved. Yet He did not let these feelings rule His choices. 

I think we each naturally gravitate towards one of these two extremes. We can shut off and completely ignore our feelings and over analyze everything - this is being driven by our intellect. Or we can lean towards being emotion driven. This is what we do when we follow the different ebbs and flows of our heart in each passing moment. 

The trouble with following one extreme over the other is this: if we shut out our emotions we lose the ability to know and understand the deep desires that God has placed on our heart, and if we only follow the emotional highs we can easily chose a lesser good. Our intellect does not have the ability to see what your heart feels, but our heart does not have the ability to order goods, it simply seeks to love and be loved. 

We need to work to find a balance. We need to learn to pay attention to what our hearts are telling us, but we need to learn how to reconcile that with our intellect, what we know to be good and True.

But what does listening to your heart and reconciling that with your intellect and your will look like!? It does not mean justifying what you feel. It means listening to Jesus, taking what you know to be intellectually True and fitting what you're feeling into that. Sometimes this will mean we have to walk away from things that our hearts are still attached to. But other times it means we can follow our hearts. The goal is to make a choice and live in a place where our hearts and intellect are aligned. 

Unfortunately, this is going to look different for everyone. My balance between my heart and my head is going to look different from yours. But the first step to figuring out that balance is silence.

The other beautiful thing about this situation is this: if you truly love God and are in communication with Him, you can do what you want. Seriously. This is a thing!

Last year my disciple Amy told me that "Love God and do whatever you please" was a quote from St. Augustine. I laughed at her and told her that was relativism. She then explained to me that it's not (my students were so much holier than me). Here's the whole quote:

"Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love of God will do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved."

If you really love Jesus, that means you're in a real, personal, relationship with Him. To be in a relationship with Jesus means that you are communicating with Him, listening to Him, and learning what He wants. If there is a good desire on your heart that is not evil, and you are talking to Jesus and a good spiritual guide about it, you can (probably) move forward with it. 

A recent example of this is my life was last year when I started feeling a desire to join the FOCUS Events Team. I was so torn up over this decision, I really wanted it, but did God!!?? I had no idea. Back and forth I went, until one day, my super holy spiritual director told me to forget about what God wanted for my life for a minute and asked me to consider what I wanted. I told her that I wanted to join the events team. Her response: "okay, then join the events team."

Here's the thing: God is now blessing that decision. I know I could still be in Nebraska living out life as an on campus missionary and God would be blessing that decision just as abundantly. This isn't to say that God doesn't have a plan for our lives - He does! And it will be an incredible plan beyond our wildest imagination! This just means that we are using the gifts God gave us by properly using faculties and our free will! (Check out my friend Caitlin's sweet post about free will in our dating lives.)

So, in conclusion...

Emotions are not bad. Our hearts are the maps that show us God's will for our lives; our heads are the tools for navigation. 

Don't beat yourself up for having negative emotions (Remember Jesus got angry too). Feeling angry, sad, or whatever is not a sin. How we choose to act on our feelings is how we will be judged. And don't get catch up in the back and forth of trying to figure everything out: take what you feel under advisement and then act. If your choice is wildly out of line with God's plan for your life, we must trust that He will correct it.