Muck it Up or Monk it Up

by Traci Hubbard

It would take a lot of self-control to work at a bubble wrap company.

Folks, every morning we wake up standing at a crossroads. One sign says, “Muck It Up.” The other says “Monk It Up.” Now “muck” is mud. It’s messy. It stains. It smells. And if you’ve ever stepped in it wearing stilettos, you know it spreads faster than butter on hot bread. But “Monk it up”? That’s different. That’s a life of intention, discipline, peace, and surrender.

Each morning, and many times throughout our day, when we have a choice to make around how we are going to love and listen, a question knocks on our hearts asking, “Will we push against change because we are comfortable, with the way things have been? When necessary change is the Holy’s prescription that empowers us to evolve into the ways of Jesus, we must be willing to look at our hearts, our words, and our ways of being to see how we muck up, interfere, even try to block what we need, what our family needs, what our congregation needs, and what Lake Country needs from us. Like Jesus, the Spirit has not called us to experience comfort 24x7 on our journey. If we truly want to embody Divine LOVE, the ways of Jesus show us we must die before we physically die. We must die to any thought or action that focuses on what we want instead of what we and others need. Every moment of every day we are confronted with this choice: Will we decrease so Christ, the ways of LOVE, can increase?

Here is a word picture for us in the form of a question…how many self-absorbed men and women in world governments do we witness saying and doing despicable things to human beings so they can sit on thrones of deceitful power? Can you see any of their faces? Now, let us ask ourselves another question. What throne am I seeking, and why? (Y=Some of you might be thinking) Oh, Traci, I’m not comfortable with the word ‘throne’…use another word. When it comes to checking in on our intentions, we do prefer watered down words so we can swallow our own prescriptions for loving and living. Folks, we muck up becoming living water we need and those around us need from us, when self is on the throne.

In chapter 9, Luke the physician, offers the prescription we need to swallow whole quoting Jesus when he taught that if we want to follow Him, we must deny ourselves. That’s the opposite of the world’s message, isn’t it? The world says, promote the ways you want things to be, which is saying, promote yourself. Because when we do, we are intent on protecting, pleasing, and posting ourselves as one who is in control, knows best, and can create the healing and connection humanity needs.

But when “self” sits on the throne, everything in our lives gets muddy. When we live unaware of ways we are self-deceived, we live disconnected from the Spirit, from life saving truth, from healing prescriptions, and our relationships suffer. Disconnection from ourselves and LOVE means the energy to evolve into the ways of LOVE have been turned off. And what happens in the dark safety of our selfishness? We chase status…even in our communities of faith. We compare new ways to old ways, whispering shards of discontent that muck up our ability to fulfill our vision and mission. When we prefer to be stagnant water people, the bacteria of “self” derails our intentional work that leads to connection and growth.

I once heard about a man who tried to fix his own plumbing without reading instructions. He thought, “How hard can it be?” Two hours later, the house looked like a water park attraction. His wife walked in and said, “Did you call a plumber?” He replied, “No… but I baptized the basement.” That’s what self-reliance without surrender looks like. Good intentions, save some money. Big confidence, I don’t need instructions or help. Result, a flooded basement.

When we insist on doing life our way, without surrendering our will to the ways of evolutionary LOVE, we create messes we can’t mop up. If anyone who really cares for you ever tells you that you conspiracy theories are getting out of control and your first thought is you wonder if the government paid them to say that, it’s time for a self-awareness check-in. If you have a friend who is addicted to helium and is resentful and bewildered that no one takes their cries for help seriously,(think about how people sound when they inhale helium), a fork appears in the road: Do you stop laughing and get your friend some help, or do you take out your phone, video the moment, and post it on social media? Tough to say.

Mucking things up never creates space for LOVE…it steals space for LOVE. Let’s look at how we can “Monk It Up” by living into the discipline of decreasing. Throughout history, monks have walked for peace. They didn’t walk for attention, for recognition, for power or applause. They didn’t walk for selfies. Like Jesus, they walked with intention. Their goal wasn’t fame, it was formation. Their goal was not influence, but complete surrender, even to the natural elements. The Texas Monks walked to remind themselves: The world does not revolve around me. My life is not my own. Peace begins in the heart surrendered to HOLY LOVE. Imagine these three things being our morning and daily mantra.

In Paul’s letter to the church in Colossae, he says, “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” Died to what? To any way of thinking, believing, and living that places us above the Holy, which also means, above all humanity and all created things.

Like Jesus, the Monks were in constant connection with the Divine. They were plugged into and therefore were a living part of the energy of Eternal Love. They lived their human lives in spiritual awareness by being divinely awake, and this empowered them to understand something powerful, something life changing, in fact, life saving. When you, when I, die to ourselves, we live resurrected lives.

The Monks walked quietly through towns not to escape the world, but to intercede for it, for every human, for every creature, for our shared earth. They believed, therefore they know, that inner peace leads to outer peace, and transformation begins and grows from the inside and then out. This is what the Spirit desires to plant and grow in our personal and collective consciousness through the pen of Paul when he writes a life saving prescription to the church in Rome. “I appeal (beg) to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship (service). Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by (your) testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, acceptable, and perfect.” Everything Paul had written in chapters 1 – 11, which need to be read with critical thinking and historical context…those 11 chapters were systems of ethos to be imparted in that place, in that current time in history, addressing human intentions and ways of living. After writing this ethos, Paul appeals, he begs. Why? Because he has personally experienced this ways of being selfish and the ways of being surrendered, and he shares that the only way to be connected with the Holy, the only way to become living water to the thirsty, empathy and compassion in action to all people, especially the marginalized, the only way to be transformed into LOVE is to die to self. When we surrender ourselves, the Spirit guides and then walks with us through every wilderness, and every experience that shows up and interrupts our comfort so we can continue to spiritually expand by way of surrendering and trusting.

The monks weren’t perfect on their walk from Fort Worth to the Capitol of the United States - they were completely human and their intention was clear to our world, “Less of me, more of LOVE.”

John the Baptist was the first Monk, a radical Essene, to Monk It Up. In chapter three of his book of Good News, John writes, “He, (being Jesus), must increase, but I must decrease.” That’s monk language. Then, and even more in our world’s present-day life, John understood something we struggle with, and that is life works better when the ways of Holy Love are bigger and we are smaller. The decreasing of self-serving ego is not humanly natural. It feels risky, out of control…it feels like losing. And the truth is, we are losing something that mucks everything up. We are losing the armor of dualistic thinking that deceives us into believing we live in and us and them world. When we surrender our lives to become LOVE, the kin-dom paradox, the road to loving connection appears when we surrender control. We gain peace and experience freedom when we die to self-serving pride. When we live for LOVE, for others, ALL others, we stop mucking up what matters most.

The monks walked for peace. But peace doesn’t begin on roads, it begins in surrender. This is the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. Only a constant surrendered heart, only a heart willing to learn what is needed, willing to be humbled, can be an inspiring and loving spiritual leader. Folks, we cannot walk for peace outwardly if we’re at war inwardly. We will not become a community of LOVE that Lake Country needs if we push against whatever we need for the ways of LOVE to become a radical divine contagion that draws others to come inside. We must go be love outside our walls. We must die to ourselves so we can live awake, connected, conscious of who we are and who needs the sweet presence of our shared Maker flowing in and out of us. We must choose forgiveness over offense, humility over pride, and surrender over our natural impulses.

The ways of Jesus and the Monks, and the ways of the Spirit, do not call us to take up our cross once. Jesus, who walked his talk tells us to take it up daily. The daily fork in the road to becoming LOVE is: Self First, go this way and muck it up with resentment, exhaustion, and muddy relationships. Or go and be this way - The ways of LOVE First, and Monk it up with gentleness, authentic being inside and outside, with clarifying purpose.

Folks, we all have mud on our boots from time to time. The good news is LOVE, through acts of grace, washes our feet. Bob, last Thursday when we met together, you kind of washed my feet. Thank you for making me aware of something that could muddy me up.

Imagine a life where we stop running into the mud. When I decrease, LOVE increases. That’s not weakness, that’s wisdom. That’s not loss, that is liberation. And folks, that’s not boring, that is peace. Tomorrow morning, when each of us stand at that crossroads, may we ask ourselves, “Today, am I going to muck it up or monk it up? May we stop living in and for old ways. May we think, walk in and enjoy new ways of seeing and moving so the ways of Christ increase in every step we take. May it be so, amen.