The Sanctity of Being Average
by Tom Baker
How A Course In Miracles Fit Into My Average Life
Date: February 2, 2009
Usually when I want to make a spiritual point I go back to the time in my life when I was a Catholic priest. This makes me terribly autobiographical and, sometimes I fear, a bit narcissistic. The narcissicism thing is further complicated by the fact that you hear a kind of cleaned up, polished version of myself as a priest---a kind of sound bite portrait---characterized by when I told the archbishop I was leaving the priesthood and he replied in an alarmed tone of voice, "Tom, you've lost your faith." And I replied back, "No archbishop I've lost your faith. But I've gained my own." This is a neat little exchange with me on the advantageous end and makes me look like a new age Martin Luther who faced down the Roman Hierarchy then marched triumphantly into Virginia Beach where I married a brassy chick from Connecticut and lived happily ever after. Well, the last part is true, I am living happily ever after with the brassy chick from Connecticut, but the priesthood part is much more human and complicated than I portray it.
It all started with me wanting to be somebody important. When I was a kid I would dream of winning the Nobel Prize for anything and being famous: peace, medicine, literature it didn't matter, just so it made me important. Yet everything I did I was average at, my studies, sports, singing. I had average friends and we exchanged average thoughts. My sister was happy to be average because it helped her fit it. She was happy and my father encouraged me to be happy too. "Most people are average, Tom, you're in the majority," He would say. "Be like your sister. Don’t try so hard." Even my name was average, Tom, which people often and to this day mistake for Bob, an even more average name. When I went to college I became a hippy and started writing poetry which I carried around with me in case I met a pretty, above average girl. Yet, I seemed to meet only average girls who deemed my poems OK which I knew meant average. I went to the University of Kentucky which, to my horror in my sophomore year a magazine article called "One of the best average schools in the country." I graduated in the middle of my class and stood on the edge of adult life and I prayed not to be average anymore. I prayed with conviction. I've always had a rather average spiritual life so I had to push myself with my praying. Well, the unexpected and unwelcome happened. I did below average in graduate school and disastrously below average teaching the seventh grade. I went back to my praying and clarified that when I said "not average anymore" I meant above average not flunking out of life. Assume nothing with God.
God got clear or somebody got clear and I heard loud and clear, "Be a priest, it's an above average calling for average guys." Which is exactly the case. So with mediocrity nipping at my self esteem I rushed into the seminary which led to the priesthood, and I was never average again. What the priesthood did for me was allow me to be somebody important. Weddings, funerals, Sunday mass couldn't start until I showed up. Bread and wine couldn't become Jesus until I said the words. But most of all people took me seriously, and when other people took me seriously I started seeing myself as someone important. What people often said was that God picked me, Mr. Average, to be Father Wonderful. The church with all its pomp and circumstance, solemnity and ritual makes the average magnificent. The priesthood for me was a kind of enchantment. For ten years I played the part the church proudly gave me and when I took off the costume, low and behold some of the magnificence remained, at least within my heart. Being a priest was what it took for me to believe that I could be important. That's what the Catholic Church taught me. It was a kind thing for God to do, to let me play that part to prove to myself what He knew all along. But that's why we're here isn't it, to prove to ourselves something God has known all along.
After the priesthood I got married. Life is always filled with contradictory lessons. Marriage proved that my importance wasn't that important, that love was better. As a priest I was admired. Admiration massages the ego but it sort of bores the soul. Admiration is the fast food of love, tasty but fattening and finally monotonous. When I got married I discovered treasuring, which is love's gourmet main dish. My wife treasures me. She doesn't think I'm special or more lovable than other people. She simply treasures me, along with many other people and animals. One time we got into one of those silly little "what if" discussions that marriages are made of. We were feeding the cat and Kathy announced that she wouldn't take a million dollars for our cat. I was shocked. "Do you mean that if someone offered to buy Mooshie, a cat, for a million dollars you wouldn't sell?"
"Nope, she said, "And I wouldn't take a million dollars for you either." That was comforting. I looked at Mooshie. We were in the same happy boat, neither of us were for sale, no matter the price. That's my wife. For Kathy love has no degrees. She loves me as her husband, but she doesn't love her cat as her pet any less, or her friends or her family or her clients. The idea that you would love someone better than someone else is a weird idea to Kathy. I remember Kathy complaining about girl friends who were great friends until they got a boyfriend and then they disappeared, like when the lunar module went around to the dark side of the moon and they lost radio contact. Finally there would be the crackle of the radio, "Houston, we have contact." When her friends would break up then they'd reconnect to Kathy. Kathy could not understand this disconnect. For her being loved doesn't mean you're more important than everyone else, it means you're treasured along with everyone else. Being loved doesn't mean you're exclusively important, it means you're inclusively treasured, along with mom, dad, aunt Jenny, the kids at work, our friends, Mooshie the cat, Jesus, and a whole lot of others. The truth of the matter is that when you believe that you are treasurable, you don't need to be more important than anyone else. This has relaxed me a good deal.
Finally what has A Course In Miracles taught me? Kathy taught me that I didn't have to be important. The Course taught me that there was nothing I had to do or achieve to become holy. In the seminary you would often see a seminarian looking at his hands with a great deal of awe, especially as the time for ordination drew near. For with the sweep of those hands blessings could be given, absolution could be granted, and if you made bishop, simply by putting your hands on a man's head, a priest could be created. When I left the priesthood I retained a sense of importance, but not a sense of holiness. It was like the enchantment lifted---the spells didn't work anymore. At job interviews they'd ask me what I was good at and I'd say, "Well, I used to be good at forgiving and blessing people, but no more." I would look at my hands and think, "I'm just shootin' blanks." I had studied A Course In Miracles all through my priesthood but only when I took off the trappings of holiness did it's major teaching hit me: That I am the son of God, along with everyone else, and that most of the pain I've given myself in this life has been in trying to improve on rather than express the miracle I already am. I can still forgive and bless people and I don't have to wear special clothes, or say special words, or live a special life.
I'm back to average. I'm just your average child of God, no more important, no holier than any of the rest of you. Bless you.
© Copyright Tom Baker 2009