We Are ALL “Anointed”
You Might Not Feel Like It, but You Will Be Found
A few days ago, I read a chapter in a book written by a woman who died tragically in her 30s. It created an epiphany that is changing my life. The woman’s name was Rachel Held Evans, the book “Searching for Sunday” and the chapter was called “Anointing of the Sick”. The author was born into and lived as an active and sincere committed evangelical Christian and writes about the questioning, broadening, and rediscovery of her faith (yes, she became less legalistic and more accepting of the spectrum of human conditions including homosexuality, gender identity and complexity of issues that through the lens of grace often seems to move the focus from power and black/white to a process of humility and open minded love and kindness that brings a different kind of healing and life progress).
An idea that initially caught my attention was a distinction between “cure” (a fix) and “healing” (perhaps describable as a progress and experience in growing toward wholeness). After reading the chapter I woke up the next day with a conviction so real to me that I am writing a Medium post. “Anointing”, for me, is not a condition of exclusivity or a selective appointment given on a limited basis to a select few. Put in psychological terms it is identification with our own authentic lives and then living our own lives, fulfilling our own unique purpose. For me the quiet and subtle difference between pure psychological reference and power of spirituality is my faith that for each of us our anointing will find us, it is searching for us. Our only contribution is willingness (or at least willing to be willing) combined with some seed of humble open-mindedness.
There is a scene from the movie “Moneyball” where the general manager is talking to a baseball team assembled according to, at the time, a novel theory of data analytics (now widely adopted by professional baseball). The premise is that his team has much lower salaries and needs a different approach to compete with rich teams. Each player has been selected according to probability (regardless of traditional judgement about baseball player valuation) that they can contribute to winning games for the team. One might call it their (each player) a particular anointing. To this point in the movie the theory has not born fruit yet, but the manager says (with trepidation), “You may not look like a winning team, but you are. So, go out there and play like it.” No spoiler but for a movie to be interesting the reader can pretty well guess how things unfold.
Your contribution, your anointing, may not be apparent to your culture, religion, society or world. It may be covered over by the traditional judgements of unlived lives of parents or the template of “success” held up by broadly esteemed stars and powerful figures of popular fame. Your anointing may not be the subject of applause or the rain of money and glory — but it is always searching for you. Your anointing is working quietly even if repressed into subliminal unconscious depths of your soul. Likely it will feel “un-special” or perhaps unremarkable if honestly identified. We can expect our own ego (our ego, if healthy, is a very useful part of our psyche, and, is usually about energies of self-promotion) to sponsor such dismissive attitudes. It is certainly likely that key institutions (such as the religious doctrines that were taught to Rachel Held Evans) will see the discovery of authentic soul as dangerous or even threatening. Some of the more radical demonstrations by authentic humans who lived out their true calling have, regardless of innocence, resulted in poverty, suffering and sometimes even assassination or execution. Those individuals invariably had the awareness to meet the challenges of such unusual experiences. Most of us can fulfill our true lives and while the vicissitudes of life will provide ups and downs, joys and sorrows, there will likely be to the outside observer a fairly pedestrian aspect to our days. No matter, that does not make any one of us awkward seekers less.
The moral of this story is this: There is no exceptionalism or a “greater” or “lesser” life. We, our universe, needs each one of us to be who we were meant to be, to fulfill our true purpose and meaning. To the extent a family, community, country or our planet does this we may not find a transactional “cure” but we will make progress toward healing and wholeness. We may not look like a winning team, but we are.
