I want to be better

The concern which I lay bare before God today is my need to be better.

I want to be better than I am in my most ordinary day-by-day contacts:
With my friends—
With my family—
With my casual contacts—
With my business relations—
With my associates in work and play.

I want to be better than I am in the responsibilities that are mine:
I am conscious of many petty resentments.
I am conscious of increasing hostility toward certain people.
I am conscious of the effort to be pleasing for effect,
not because it is a genuine feeling on my part.
I am conscious of a tendency to shift to other shoulders
burdens that are clearly my own.

I want to be better in the quality of my religious experience:
I want to develop an honest and clear prayer life.
I want to develop a sensitiveness to the will of God in my own life.
I want to develop a charitableness toward my fellows
that is far greater even than my most exaggerated pretensions.
I want to be better than I am.

I lay bare this need and this desire before God in the quietness of this moment.

(For the Inward Journey: the writings of Howard Thurman.
Selected by Anne Spencer Thurman. pages 50-51
originally published in Meditations of the Heart)

I want to be better (the title, and throughout the selection)/I need to be better (the first and last lines). That’s what Thurman shares, and there is something there with which I (gratefully) struggle.

My concern is the way my sense of the need to be better is an indication that I am not enough. Not good enough, not able enough, not acceptable enough. This stands in the face of my firm conviction that I, like every person, am of inherent worth and dignity.

Still, the truth that I want many of things that Thurman lists—in my relationships, in my responsibilities, in my religious practice—almost needs not to be mentioned. I act as if I want these things. I take the time each morning to “find a stillness” (thank you, Carl Seaburg) so that I grow, develop, become. This religious way of living a life helps me to be confident that I will become increasingly aware of my desires, increasingly honest about my needs.

And maybe even this humanist can “lay bare this need and this desire before God” by any name “in the quietness of this moment.” Happy Friday, friends.