{"id":255,"date":"2010-12-05T12:17:20","date_gmt":"2010-12-05T12:17:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/experts.patheos.com\/expert\/frederickwschmidt\/?p=255"},"modified":"2010-12-05T12:17:20","modified_gmt":"2010-12-05T12:17:20","slug":"losing-ourselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/whatgodwantsforyourlife\/2010\/12\/losing-ourselves\/","title":{"rendered":"Losing ourselves"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>Losing ourselves can be a good thing or a bad thing spiritually.<\/p>\n<p>Losing ourselves\u2026<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> In the expectations of others in order to find love<\/li>\n<li>In the supposed glamour of the lives that others live<\/li>\n<li>In a desire for the things that other people own<\/li>\n<li>In a self-medicated flight from reality<\/li>\n<li>In the past<\/li>\n<li>In the future<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These are typically bad for us spiritually.<\/p>\n<p>Losing ourselves\u2026<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In the moment<\/li>\n<li>In the needs of others<\/li>\n<li>In the presence of God<\/li>\n<li>In the pursuit of what Jesus described as the pearl of great price<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Those are good ways of getting lost.<\/p>\n<p>Are you lost?\u00a0 And if you are, are you lost in all the right ways and in all the right places?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Losing ourselves can be a good thing or a bad thing spiritually. Losing ourselves\u2026 In the expectations of others in order to find love In the supposed glamour of the lives that others live In a desire for the things that other people own In a self-medicated flight from reality In the past In the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":240,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spiritual-perspectives"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Losing ourselves<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Losing ourselves can be a good thing or a bad thing spiritually. Losing ourselves\u2026 In the expectations of others in order to find love In the supposed\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/whatgodwantsforyourlife\/2010\/12\/losing-ourselves\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Losing ourselves\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Losing ourselves can be a good thing or a bad thing spiritually. 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Schmidt, Jr. is inaugural holder of the Rueben P. Job Chair in Spiritual Formation and a Senior Scholar at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, IL. He is also Vice Rector at Good Shepherd, Brentwood, TN; an Episcopal Priest; spiritual director; retreat facilitator; conference leader; and writer. He is the author of numerous published articles and reviews, as well as several books: A Still Small Voice: Women, Ordination and the Church (Syracuse University Press, 1998), The Changing Face of God (Morehouse, 2000), When Suffering Persists (Morehouse, 2001), in Italian translation: Sofferenza, All ricerca di una riposta (Torino: Claudiana, 2004), What God Wants for Your Life \ufeff(Harper, 2005), Conversations with Scripture: Revelation (Morehouse, 2005), \ufeffConversations with Scripture: Luke \ufeff(Morehouse, 2009), and The Dave Test (Abingdon, 2013). He and his wife, Natalie (who is also an Episcopal priest), live in Arrington, TN. 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