Let’s Begin Beloved

Those first tender moments of waking up are fragile and revealing. There’s an art to where we begin our story, our relationships, our day.

Awakening is not a moment to rush by.

I recently woke up to hot air balloons in the morning sky. I almost missed them against the hazy sky.

When my kids were young, I woke up running. Literally, a morning run was the first thing I did. I raced to be up before four little bodies stirred. After a short run, I brewed coffee, read Scripture, and shot an arrow prayer with a fervent zing.

It was what I needed before the day came rushing in. As my children grew, I found a gentler pace of waking followed by a run. Even before I swept sleep from my eyes, I held a sense of already being behind, a deficit, an undercurrent of striving for God’s goodness or delight. Some days it was simply the voice of shame that got there first. As I discovered contemplative practices such as Examen or Centering Prayer, I still began from a harried place on the inside.

When author Tish Harrison Warren was looking for a new way to begin her day before email and to-do’s, she started a new habit of making her bed and sitting on a smoothed rectangle in silence without her phone.

Before we begin the liturgies of our day – the cooking, sitting in traffic, emailing, accomplishing, working, resting, - we begin beloved.

Let’s begin Beloved.

That sense of peace was what I was seeking in my own habits. But it’s too easy to slip into equating practices with what makes us Beloved. I longed to go further back and deeper down.

As Jesus rose through the surface of the Jordan, God exclaimed, “This is my Beloved son in whom I am well-pleased.” I am comforted by God’s love alighting on him before a single day of public ministry.

But did Jesus’ Belovedness begin there?

My Dad used to describe the time before I was born as “back when you were just a twinkle in my eye”. That suggested how long ago he loved me. I remember thinking, I was in his arms before I was in his arms. That resonates with Jesus’ words to his Father, You loved me before the creation of the world.

In Genesis, God speaks from the Beloved Community, “Let us make man in our image” and declares everything very good. The Hebrew word for good is tov and it is good in God’s eyes, not limited to our own viewpoint. We were birthed out of deep shared Belovedness and remain so despite being wounded or pulling away. God delighted in walking with us in a flourishing garden with nothing between us. He still does. We began naked, unashamed,

Being Beloved is our true beginning, a relationship more than a place to return to again and again.

Henri Nouwen describes our Belovedness this way,

Long before any human being saw us, we are seen by God’s loving eyes. Long before anyone heard us cry or laugh, we are heard by our God who is all ears for us. Long before any person spoke to us in this world, we are spoken to by the voice of eternal love.

Being Beloved goes back further, down deeper and out farther than we imagine. Our Belovedness is given.

So, what interrupts us remembering our Belovedness? Striving, shame, our inner critic, outer critics, lies we believe, betrayals and rejections of all kinds, fears of abandonment, feeling too much or not enough, just to name a few culprits.

Nouwen says we must reclaim our takenness, “We can desire to become the Beloved only when we know that we are already the Beloved.”

Knowing is more than mental ascent. The Trinity invites us to experience our original Belovedness through our body, mind, soul and strength, to let already-present Love work itself deeper into us than we have yet allowed. The paradox of being Beloved is our brokenness which came after Belovedness, will not be overlooked or discarded in a way we might prefer. We cannot turn away from our wounds and be healed. As we keep ourselves attuned to the voice of the Beloved, our brokenness can be lovingly worked into our Belovedness.

Nouwen claims our full humanity includes two vital responses to our brokenness: placing our brokenness under the light of God’s blessing and befriending it. He suggests we tend to live our brokenness under the curse, which is not from God but lies we have loved.

The great spiritual call of the Beloved Children of God is to pull their brokenness away from the shadow of the curse and put it under the light of the blessing.

God’s blessing will not be earned. It is given as a slumbering miracle, a latent Christ.

Beginning Beloved, and returning as often as needed, is slowly changing how I awake everywhere, how I talk and listen to others, God and myself, encounter Jesus as we walk together, take criticism, view my enemies, and welcome the Spirit moving through broken me into a wounded world.

May we begin Beloved because we already are. As Thomas Kelly writes,

for the Eternal Life and Love are not pocketed in us; they are flooded through us into the world.

And keep living so. For we are not pockets.

Or if we are, may they have holes.

Our Belovedness is meant to flow through us and into our beautiful terrible world and all the broken hearts we encounter including our own.

In case you want to read more of what I read when writing this, here are the books with affiliate links to serve us both.

Further Reading:

Harrison, T. W. (2016). Liturgy of the Ordinary. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press.

Kelly, T. (1966). The Eternal Promise. New York city: Harper and Row.

Nouwen, H. J. (1992). Life of the Beloved. New York: Crossroad Publishing.