“The Contentment and Joy of Beginnership”
Do you feel like a beginner in an area where you should be a master? Well, join the human race, dear heart! “Impostor syndrome” (which is often a result of feeling like a beginner) is something we all struggle with in one way or another, in one area or another. Feeling like a beginner is not generally a comfortable feeling.
However, at the ripe old age of seventy-two, I have realized that I can choose to be contented and even joyous with the feeling and the reality of being a beginner.
Here is an excerpt from my 12-step report to my sponsors and accountability posse this morning:
“Dear ___________________________________,
. . .
Today, by God’s grace, I am cultivating awareness of God. Good things for me and for others will come about as I consistently do this.
It was a good affirmation, but I am not sure how much I followed through on it. I am a beginner at cultivating awareness of anything. However, Thomas Merton said that God loves beginners. I hope Merton was right, and I suspect he was.
Today, by God’s grace, I am content and joyful to be a beginner. By the end of the day, I am planning to be a little further along on my beginnership.
Daryl”
I thought that I might be coining the word “beginnership”, but I was quickly disabused of that notion. While it is not yet an official word, it was used in an article in Forbes Magazine in February of 2022 (https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/02/09/the-power-of-beginnership-as-a-business-leader/?sh=1cfff9f17bf8, accessed 04-24-2023). So much for originality!
Some Buddhists also speak of keeping “a beginner’s mind”. This strikes me as being incredibly wise.
And why is it wise to recognize and cultivate beginnership? The answer is simple: Because we all are beginners. If we begin to think otherwise, we are already off the path of wisdom and into a thicket of bad results.
I had a fascinating exchange of emails with a student. He was responding to one of my comments on his assignment. His email invited me to think more deeply about the whole matter of biblical interpretation. I was able to encourage him, I think, by admitting that I myself am a beginner when it comes to interpretation. I also raised his grade a bit for his prompt and thoughtful response.
If the Bible is God’s Word, as I believe that it is, then we should not find it difficult to believe that we are beginners in interpretation. After all, if God is infinite (in other words, if God has no boundaries), then we ought to be humble beginners in trying to understand what God has said. We can be content and even joyful in our beginnership.
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