the Dangerous Gift

Why are we the one terrible part of creation privileged to refuse our own flowering?

                               David Whythe, Quoted by  CV Paintner in Soul’s Slow Ripening p.57

 

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There is something about time of waiting

Something about those liminal moments

When we are stuck in between

 

for as things slow, and sometimes even stop

we have time to stop

and in the quiet stillness

 

listen

listen our hearts beat

our lungs fill

listen to our bodies, and feel the places where we carry our pain

all the emotional, mental, spiritual pain

that finds its home

in our physical shell

 

in the stillness we have time

for what Ignatius call “the daily examen”

 

we can look in the mirror and take a look at

ourselves

 

this is critical task

for healthy people

(or so my training as both as pastor and therapist tell me)

are souls who have

self-awareness

self-reflectivity

and self-control

 

Do we examine ourselves honestly?

(Some don’t examine, and some do, and are too harsh)

Do we think deeply about what we find?

Do we respond to what we find in meaningful ways?

 

It is scary and painful to go to that quiet place

Inside the soul, and meet the Sacred One

Such moments are our Gethsemane

our moment when we lie on the hard rock of reality

 

it is not that it is all bad

we are all people who are both wonderful and terrible

good and bad

generous and greedy

kind and cruel

 

Our inner world is not black and white

There are many shades of gray

But there are also amazing, brilliant colors

Swirling and mixed together

 

A kaleidoscope of grace

 

It can be a bit overwhelming

 

Sometimes, as we linger

We are driven to tears

We see it all!  Who we can be.  Who we want to be.  Who we are.

 

We see the grand victories and the abysmal failures

 

I love the old Irish poem

“When I contemplate my sins, grant me tears always,

For great are the claims of tears on checks

Grant me tears when rising, grant me tears when resting…..

 

Grant me tears, the poem concludes, “to help cure the soul”

 

In this time, in this still moment

As we sit with COVID

As we await the outcome of a hate filled election

As we struggle with who we are as people of faith

And members of a community

And citizens of a nation

 

I have tears…

 

Because what I see is that we have exchanged

The radicality of God, for the normalcy of the world

 

We have taken the way of God, and we have bent it to our will

We have soften it, watered it down

until now only hints of the radicality remain

 

we still talk about loving our neighbor

but we have accepted the world’s definition of “neighbor” not God’s

We still insist we need to be generous,

But we have accepted the world’s insistence that the person

Who dies with the most toys wins

 

But most of all

This is the deepest failure of all (as I reflect upon it)

We have become radical individualists, rather than people

Who think, live and breathe community

 

In the early church, the work of God was communal

The life and death and resurrection of Jesus was a universal action

 

It is not that there is not an individualistic impact on each of us

for we are part of the whole (indeed)

 

but when Christ rose the early church saw it as

the trampling of hell

the leading of all souls out of hell,

and the lifting up of all humanity with Christ

 

this was not a partial victory

and it was not about individuals

it was about the world

 

it was about all nations

all people

and all of life

 

and we are called to be swept along

“We are all caught up in the cosmic sweep of Divine grace and mercy”

(Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ, p.166)

 

but in my heart I have made all of this about me

my comfort

my wealth

my power

my agenda

my values

 

I have no let God overwhelm me

I have not allowed that complete, non-hostile takeover

and so I am still way too much about “me”

 

I am still an individualist

And thus cannot grab hold of the communal

Cannot fully grasp how we humans are bound together

And how we humans around bound with the earth

 

and cannot really see (and feel)

that when the earth suffers we all suffer

and when another nation suffers, all nations suffer

and when another race is minimized and abused, we are all minimized and abused

and when some struggle with poverty, we are all poor

and when some are oppressed, we are all oppressed

and when some are brutalized we are all brutalized

 

this is what I find in my soul mirror

in this time of waiting

 

and my heart is full of tears

because I believe with Rohr, and Crossan

and a cloud of witnesses

 

that until we are caught up in the Cosmic Sweep of Divine Love

and until we believe that God is all in all” (I Corinthians 15:28)

and until we let that sink into our hearts

and into our minds

and transform our ideologies and actions

 

than “much of what passes for Christianity

will amount to little more than well-disguised narcissism

and self-referential politics”   (Rohr, The Universal Christ, p.167)

 

But there is hope, dear ones

For we are all precious souls

And God is

And Love is

And the inner presence of God means

 

That we can indeed participate in the work of love

We can move beyond ourselves

We can fight for the common good

We can reject this implicit narcissism that affects us all

 

There is hope, for when we love God

Then Sacred Love, present as Holy Spirit

Can move within us

Can seize us, permeate us,

 

And we can flower

Love can bloom forth

We can look beyond ourselves, act beyond ourselves

Love beyond ourselves

 

And all things can work together for the good of all

 

if we do not give up