When my girls were little, Laura and I would read to them every night. One of my favorite stories was about a character by the name of Punchinello. Sometimes I still call the girls my little Punchinello as a term of endearment (that and I really like saying “Punchinello!”). We laugh and have a good time but for me the short story touched me deeply which is why I loved reading it to my girls. I often cried after reading the story when my girls were asleep. I wondered what it would feel like to hear the One who created me say: “I made you and I don’t make mistakes!”
I'm probably like lots of you in that I have been wounded by the words and actions of influential people early in my life. Although I refuse to be a "victim" of those experiences, they have, nevertheless, served to shape my view of myself and by extension have impacted my relationships with people and with God. Much of my life has been marked by self hatred as well as feeling useless and worthless. Now, I offer this self-disclosure not for the purpose of evoking sympathy but to insist that even at 50 and a pastor, I desperately need God's transformational power to heal the wounds of my life and learn just how valuable I am. Brennan Manning's teachings have been instrumental in helping me grasp a Biblical understanding of God—not so much from a theological perspective but from the perspective of the relationship between Father and child. I am far from having accepted the truths about what God thinks about me but the more time I spend with Him, the more I begin to believe His words when He says He loves me and that I am valuable. I know that I’m not alone in this struggle and I desperately wish I could just tell those of you who have been wounded that God loves you and values you and that if you would just accept that then all the awful things you think and feel about yourself would just magically change. But I know from my own life that it’s not that simple. It takes time for God to rewire who we think we are into who God has always known us to be. It’s not easy so I won’t patronize you by offering some three-step or ten-step method for changing the way you think about yourself. Instead, I want to invite you to just spend time with Him, read the precious words of Life revealed in his Word and let His words of love begin to transform your mind and heart. I promise, based on personal experience, that you will begin to see yourself changed from the person you think you are or should be to the person He knows you are—a child loved by the Creator.
Priest, author, lecturer, alcoholic and spiritual formation guide, Brennan Manning, has dramatically blessed my life through his writings. This lesson in spiritual formation and healing is taken from a cross-section of some of Manning's writings. However, before I start my lesson, I have to share the story of Punchinello with you!
You Are Special
The Wemmicks were small wooden people. All of the wooden people were carved by a woodworker named Eli. His workshop sat on a hill overlooking their village. Each Wemmick was different. Some had big noses, others had large eyes. Some were tall and others were short. Some wore hats, others wore coats. But all were made by the same carver and all lived in the village.
And all day, every day, the Wemmicks did the same thing: They gave each other stickers. Each Wemmick had a box of golden star stickers and a box of gray dot stickers. Up and down the streets all over the city, people spent their days sticking stars or dots on one another. The pretty ones, those with smooth wood and fine paint, always got stars. But if the wood was rough or the paint chipped, the Wemmicks gave dots.
The talented ones got stars, too. Some could lift big sticks high above their heads or jump over tall boxes. Still others knew big words or could sing pretty songs. Everyone gave them stars. Some Wemmicks had stars all over them! Every time they got a star it made them feel so good! It made them want to do something else and get another star. Others, though, could do little. They got dots.
Punchinello was one of these. He tried to jump high like the others, but he always fell. And when he fell, the others would gather around and give him dots. Sometimes when he fell, his wood got scratched, so the people would give him more dots. Then when he would try to explain why he fell, he would say something silly, and the Wemmicks would give him more dots. After a while he had so many dots that he didn't want to go outside. He was afraid to do something dumb such as forget his hat or step in the water, and then people would give him another dot. In fact, he had so many gray dots that some people would come up and give him one for no reason at all.
"He deserves lots of dots," the wooden people would agree with one another.
"He's not a good wooden person."
After a while Punchinello believed them. "I'm not a good Wemmick," he would say. The few times he went outside, he hung around other Wemmicks who had lots of dots. He felt better around them.
One day he met a Wemmick who was unlike any he'd ever met. She had no dots or stars. She was just wooden. Her name was Lucia. It wasn't that people didn't try to give her stickers; it's just that the stickers didn't stick. Some of the Wemmicks admired Lucia for having no dots, so they would run up and give her a star. But it would fall off. Others would look down on her for having no stars, so they would give her a dot. But it wouldn't stay either.
That's the way I want to be, thought Punchinello. I don't want anyone's marks. So he asked the stickerless Wemmick how she did it.
"It's easy," Lucia replied, "Every day I go see Eli."
"Eli?"
"Yes, Eli. The woodcarver. I sit in the workshop with him."
"Why?"
"Why don't you find out for yourself? Go up the hill. He's there." And with that the Wemmick who had no stickers turned and skipped away.
"But will he want to see me?" Punchinello cried out. Lucia didn't hear. So Punchinello went home. He sat near a window and watched the wooden people as they scurried around giving each other stars and dots. "It's not right," he muttered to himself. And he decided to go see Eli.
He walked up the narrow path to the top of the hill and stepped into the big shop. His wooden eyes widened at the size of everything. The stool was as tall as he was. He had to stretch on his tiptoes to see the top of the workbench. A hammer was as long as his arm. Punchinello swallowed hard. "I'm not staying here!" and he turned to leave. Then he heard his name.
"Punchinello?"
The voice was deep and strong. Punchinello stopped.
"Punchinello! How good to see you. Come and let me have a look at you."
Punchinello turned slowly and looked at the large bearded craftsman. "You know my name?" the little Wemmick asked.
"Of course I do. I made you." Eli stooped down and picked him up and set him on the bench. "Hmm," the maker spoke thoughtfully as he looked at the gray dots. "Looks like you've been given some bad marks."
"I didn't mean to, Eli, I really tried hard."
"Oh, you don't have to defend yourself to me, child. I don't care what the other Wemmicks think."
"You don't?"
"No, and you shouldn't either. Who are they to give stars or dots? They're Wemmicks just like you. What they think doesn't matter, Punchinello. All that matters is what I think. And I think you're pretty special."
Punchinello laughed. "Me, special? Why? I can't walk fast. I can't jump. My paint is peeling. Why do I matter to you?"
Eli looked at Punchinello, put his hands on those small wooden shoulders, and spoke very slowly. "Because you're mine. That's why you matter to me."
Punchinello had never had anyone look at him like this—much less his maker. He didn't know what to say.
"Every day I've been hoping you’d come," Eli explained.
"I came because I met someone who had no marks," said Punchinello.
"I know. She told me about you."
"Why don't the stickers stay on her?"
The maker spoke softly. "Because she has decided that what I think is more important than what they think. The stickers only stick if you let them."
"What?"
"The stickers only stick if they matter to you. The more you trust my love, the less you care about their stickers."
"I'm not sure I understand."
Eli smiled. "You will, but it will take time. You've got a lot of marks. For now, just come to see me every day and let me remind you how much I care." Eli lifted Punchinello off the bench and set him on the ground. "Remember," Eli said as the Wemmick walked out the door, "you are special because I made you. And I don't make mistakes."
Punchinello didn't stop, but in this heart he thought, I think he really means it. And when he did, a dot fell to the ground.[1]
(You can purchase this wonderful children's book beautifully illustrated by Sergio Martinez from Amazon.com.)
Brennan Manning Biography
Born in New York City to Emmett and Amy Manning during the era of the Great Depression, Brennan Manning grew up in Brooklyn along with his brother, Robert, and sister, Geraldine. Manning graduated from St. Francis College majoring in philosophy and minoring in Latin. Thereafter he completed four years of advanced studies in theology. In 1963 Manning graduated from St. Francis Seminary and was ordained to the Franciscan priesthood.
In the late sixties, Manning joined the monastic order of the Little Brothers of Jesus. Among his various assignments, Manning became an aguador (water carrier), transporting water to rural villages via donkey and buckboard; a mason's assistant, shoveling mud and straw; a dishwasher in France; a voluntary prisoner in a Swiss jail; and ultimately a solitary contemplative secluded in a remote cave for six months in the Zaragoza desert.
In the mid-seventies, Manning moved to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida where he was engaged in campus ministry at Broward Community College. His successful ministry was abruptly interrupted, however, when he suffered a debilitating collapse into alcoholism. Six months of treatment culminating at the Hazelden treatment center in Minnesota restored his health and placed him on the road to recovery. It was at this point in his life that Manning began writing profusely. One book soon followed upon another. Simultaneously, invitations for him to speak and to lead spiritual retreats multiplied exponentially. “Today, Brennan travels widely as he continues to write and preach, encouraging men and women everywhere to accept and embrace the good news of God's unconditional love in Jesus Christ.”[2]
Introduction
While Manning’s mission to spread the Good News of Christ’s unconditional love to the world seems simplistic in nature, his understanding of how a person matures or is formed as a result of that unconditional love is far from simplistic. Instead, Manning emphasizes a number of different formational principles that are at times complex and interwoven so that two or three principles are at work simultaneously to guide believers along their path to spiritual formation. It would appear that based on Manning’s writings, many of his formational principles were either spiritually inspired during his contemplative seclusion in a cave in the Zaragosa desert or forged in the fire of brokenness during his first and recurring battle with alcoholism. The foundational principles of Manning’s concept of spiritual formation can generally be identified as, ruthless trust, accepted tenderness, elimination of self-hatred, intimate belonging and compassion. During the process of trying to determine if there is a systematic approach to Manning’s formational principles it became increasingly obvious that each element is in some way interdependent on one or more of the other elements. Consequently, no single element can be identified as the central concept upon which the others are dependent. Therefore, instead of understanding Manning’s view of spiritual formation as a systematic approach, it is best to consider his spiritual guidance as holistic as opposed to strictly sequential. Nevertheless, below is an attempt to describe each formational principle on its own merit and thereafter describe how Manning’s principles interact as a holistic approach to spiritual formation.
Ruthless Trust
In describing ruthless trust, Manning writes, “Unwavering trust is a rare and precious thing because it often demands a degree of courage that borders on the heroic...It requires heroic courage to trust in the love of God no matter what happens to us.”[3] This is clearly a biblical concept as we find Jesus insisting that his disciples “Trust in God and trust in me [Jesus].” (John 14:1). But how is this level of trust transformational in the life of the believer? From a relational aspect, according to Manning, our level of trust with someone will have a tangible impact on the depth of our relationship with that person. Essentially, if I cannot trust you, I cannot love you. This is no different in our relationship with Jesus. If I cannot trust Jesus fully then I cannot love Jesus fully. Ruthless trust by necessity insists that we trust when trust is unreasonable or seemingly impossible. Nowhere does this ruthless trust manifest itself more clearly than when we trust that what Jesus did on the cross was sufficient to atone for our many sins. Since there is absolutely nothing we can do to atone for our own sins, we must trust that Jesus did what we could not. The depth of our trust will manifest itself in our actions in response to Jesus’ atonement on our behalf. If we ruthlessly trust in Jesus then we will surrender our lives to him. As a result, we are transformed through our relationship with Jesus and become more like him in thought, word and deed. If we do not trust Jesus fully, we will constantly try to supplement Jesus’ atonement with our own efforts to atone for our sins. In this way we move away from a relationship with Jesus. Manning writes that “Our trust in Jesus grows as we shift from making self-conscious efforts to be good to allowing ourselves to be loved as we are (not as we should be).”[4] It is important to note that if a person is unable to fully trust the Creator of the universe then it is not unreasonable to insist that such a person will have difficulty fully trusting anyone. As a result, relational depth is stunted with both God and neighbor.
Accepted Tenderness
It is an oft repeated sentiment by many that they find it difficult to believe that God lovingly accepts them as they are. With respect to this acceptance, Manning writes,
“When I accept in the depth of my being that the ultimate accomplishment of my life is me—the person I’ve become and who other persons are because of me—then living in the wisdom of accepted tenderness is not a technique, not a craft, not a Carnegian ploy of how to win friends and influence people, but a way of life, a distinctive and engaged presence to God, other ragamuffins, and myself.”[5]
Manning refers to God’s tenderness toward us as his “Fierce Mercy.” And it is this fierce mercy that transforms our lives. The Bible is replete with examples of God’s tenderness as fierce mercy. Some of the more poignant examples are Jesus’ encounter with the woman caught in adultery, Peter’s repeated denial, and ultimately the events of Jesus’ death on the cross. In each case, Jesus never reacts angrily toward the transgressors but instead tenderly offers forgiveness. Jesus offers forgiveness to a woman caught in adultery by calling into question the integrity of her accusers who are prepared to stone her. Jesus offers forgiveness to Peter who repeatedly insists that he would never deny his association with Jesus yet he does so not just once but three times. Finally, after being brutally beaten and then nailed to a cross, Jesus makes one of his most profound statements when he says, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” (Lk. 23:34) As a result, the woman caught in adultery became a devout follower of Jesus, Peter became the rock upon which the Church would be built and Jesus’ work on the cross still makes it possible for lost sons and daughters to come home to God. We are transformed when we accept God’s tenderness, according to Manning, because it changes our perspective on life and the world. Manning writes, “The way of tenderness affects our manner of being in the world rather than our manner of doing in the world.”[6]
Eliminating Self-Hatred
Self-hatred is perhaps one of the most crippling phenomena among mankind but particularly when it impacts the Church. About self-hatred, Manning quotes Andrew Greeley when he writes,
“God’s mission in the world and his mission in his relationship with the individual believer is essentially a mission of overcoming self-hatred. For self-hatred is a barrier to love. We hate other people not because we love ourselves too much but because we are not able to love ourselves enough.”[7]
Unfortunately, much of our self-hatred inevitably manifests itself in our relationship with God and others. Manning recounts a fictional yet interesting story about a young back-woods boy who is painfully unpopular particularly among his peers. He ventures out one day and providentially encounters an injured turkey that he quickly kills and slings over his shoulder as he heads to town. Once in town, he is lauded as a kind of hero by the townsfolk as he retells the story of his good fortune. All the way out of town he is praising God for his provision until the town bullies apprehend him at the edge of town and take his turkey from him. Thereafter, all the way home the boy repeatedly chastises himself for displaying obvious pride and joy over his good fortune certain that God must have been angry and thus relieved him of his vaunted trophy. Of this attitude Manning writes,
“Our God is the One who benevolently gives turkeys and then capriciously takes them away. When he gives them, they are a sign of his interest, favor, and good pleasure with us. We feel comfortably close to God and are spurred to the heights of generosity. When he takes them away, it is a sign of his displeasure, rejection, and vengeance. We feel cast off by God. He is fickle, unpredictable, and whimsical. He builds us up only to let us down. He relentlessly remembers our past sins and vindictively retaliates by snatching the turkeys of good health, wealth, inner-peace, empire, success, and joy.”[8]
Why is this our view of God? Primarily, according to Manning, it is due to our self-hatred. In essence, we project onto God how we think he feels about us based on how we feel about ourselves. But this is a crucial error in our understanding of God and how he views us. Manning writes, “[Thus,] if we feel hateful toward ourselves, we assume that God feels hateful toward us. But we cannot assume that He feels about us the way we feel about ourselves—unless we love ourselves compassionately, intensely, and freely.”[9] Ultimately, we begin to be transformed and set free from our self-hatred when we learn to see ourselves as beloved children of the Father.
Intimate Belonging
Everyone wants to belong—for our degree of belonging will have a direct impact on our sense of identity. For example, being abused, neglected or abandoned, in many cases, forges a sense of uselessness/worthlessness. Conversely, being loved and cared for builds a strong sense of security and the freedom to be all that God intended for us to be. Manning writes, “Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.”[10] Paul’s letter to the Galatians reminds us that God’s relationship with us through Jesus necessarily defines us when he writes,
“But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.” (Gal 4:4-7)
Manning insists that there is tremendous transformation in the realization that we are beloved children of the Father—the Creator of the universe. Manning quotes Frederick Buechner when he writes,
“We are children, perhaps, at the very moment when we know that it is as children that God loves us—not because we have deserved his love and not in spite of our undeserving, not because we try and not because we recognize the futility of our trying; but simply because he has chosen to love us. We are children because he is our father, and all our efforts, fruitful and fruitless, to do good, to speak truth, to understand, are the efforts of children who, for all their precocity, are children still in that before we loved him, he loved us, as children, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”[11]
Compassion
How we treat others can have as much or greater transforming affect on our own lives as it does on those with whom we interact. Compassion is one of those acts that can impact and transform us disproportionately compared to the person or persons on which we have compassion. For example, when Jesus wept over Jerusalem, his compassion had little if any impact on the people of Jerusalem but it had a dramatic affect on him. However, most of the time, compassion will have a palpable impact on the recipient of that compassion. Manning observes that,
“A Christian who doesn’t merely see but looks at another [compassionately] communicates to that person that he is being recognized as a human being in an impersonal world of objects, as someone and not something. If this simple psychological reality, difficult and demanding as it is, were actualized in human relationships, perhaps 98 percent of the obstacles to living like Jesus would be eliminated.”[12]
What do you see when you look at another—especially someone who has hurt you? What if we could see that person with the eyes of a triage doctor as opposed to an executioner? Who would be changed—you, the offender or perhaps both? Whether or not Manning’s assumption about the efficacy of compassionate interaction is completely accurate is not really the point. More important is the fact that compassion can and does have dramatically transformative power. Manning makes this clear when he continues,
“In Jesus’ reaction to Peter we see that no man was ever freer of pressures, conventions, or addictions. Jesus was so liberated from the dominating barrage of desires, demands, expectations, needs, and inflexible emotional programming that he could accept the unacceptable. He did not have to resort to screams, vicious attacks, or undue threats. He communicated his deeper feelings to Peter by a look. And that look [of compassion] transformed and re-created Peter.”[13]
Every time we show compassion to someone, we become more and more like Jesus. The closer we get to what Manning calls “Indiscriminate compassion,” the more we are transformed into the image of Christ and the more we begin to love our neighbors as ourselves—especially when those neighbors are particularly unlovable. In this respect, Manning writes, “The insistence on the absolutely indiscriminate nature of compassion within the Kingdom is the dominant perspective of almost all of Jesus’ teachings.”[14]
Summary
Clearly, no single principle is more important than the others. Additionally, there is not an inherent progression whereby a person can complete one then go to another. Instead, Manning’s principles are interrelated and interdependent as part of his holistic approach to spiritual formation. If you go back and read the story of Punchinello, see if you can pick up on the correlation between Lucado’s beautiful yet simple children’s story and Manning’s principles for spiritual formation. We can trust ruthlessly when we realize that we belong intimately to a loving Father. As a necessary part of that intimate belonging, we begin to accept God’s tenderness that can only be described as fierce mercy in light of the grotesque nature of our sin. Ultimately, what grows out of the relationship of intimate belonging with God that can only be possible through God’s tender acceptance of who we are and not who we want or think we should be, is a sense that we need not hate ourselves because we may, in fact, be quite likeable. Once we begin to let go of our self-hatred, we are better able to stop focusing on our own shortcomings and begin seeing with eyes of compassion a lost and hurting world around us desperately in need of life-giving transformation available through Christ.
[1] Max Lucado, You Are Special, (New York, NY: Scholastic Inc., 1997), pp. 7-31.
[2] “Biography,” Brennan Manning, <http://www.brennanmanning.com/bio/index.html>, (accessed 11/15/07)
[3] Brennan Manning, Ruthless Trust, (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2000), 3-4
[4] Ibid., 92
[5] Brennan Manning, The Wisdom of Tenderness: What Happens When God’s Fierce Mercy Transforms Our Lives, (New York, NY : HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2002), 3
[6] Ibid., 6
[7] Brennan Manning, The Importance of Being Foolish: How to Think Like Jesus, (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2005), 107
[8] Brennan Manning, A Glimpse of Jesus: The Stranger to Self-Hatred, (New York: HarperCollins, Inc., 2003), 4
[9][9] Brennan Manning, Abba’s Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging, (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2002), 19
[10] Ibid., 60
[11] Ibid., 95
[12] Manning, Being Foolish, 110
[13] Ibid., 111
[14] Manning, Abba’s Child, 75
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