Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me;
my LORD has forgotten me.”
Can a mother forget her infant,
be without tenderness for the child of her womb?
Even should she forget,
I will never forget you.” ‘ (IS 49:14-15)
A friend of mine recently had a very disturbing experience. In a public space, he was approached by someone whom he did not know and had never met, and was told that he needed to leave this place because “your kind” does not belong here. I cannot even imagine the horror and pain of this experience that my friend endured. I know that it is something that does not leave you, and in fact can come back into your heart and break it over and over again in so many ways – anger, frustration, sadness, weariness and maybe even despondency. I wonder where the spirit of exclusion and disregard in this person who said this comes from. Is it a generational prejudice passed down ever so subtly through the years, or does it come from a hurt within that person that cannot heal so that it feels it must lash out at others?
Why do we compartmentalize so many things in our lives – work, family, society, politics, religion, morality, love, and social justice? We treat our lives as if the different aspects of them in fact come from different places. The inevitable result of treating ourselves as some type of disjointed center of random ideologies and half-committed convictions is that we dys-function as fragments of a wholeness that will not SEE itself. Everything is either black or white, red or yellow, right or wrong, democrat or republican, tasteful or inappropriate. The dualisms line up in our heart and we lose even the hope of becoming the wholeness that we fail to see from the start. I find that when I fall into this pattern of “either/or” everything becomes a worry, a distraction, something I fear about my past, or something I am anxious about in the unknown future. The seemingly “different pieces” of me mandated by the voice of individualism that I hear over and over again under the many guises in our world – political, social, familial, and yes even religious – lead me to believe that I “am” these isolated pieces that cannot come together.
The drive toward certainty in understanding and knowledge unfortunately can support this “fragmented self” and totally blind us to the immense truth that can be found paradoxically in wonder and mystery. The dualisms that we try to live by stifle the spirit of wonder that I believe we are hearing in the Scriptures this weekend:
“Brothers and sisters: Thus should one regard us: as servants of Christ and and stewards of the mysteries of God. It does not concern me in the least that I be judged by you or any human tribunal;
I do not even pass judgment on myself; I am not conscious of anything against me,
but I do not thereby stand acquitted; the one who judges me is the Lord.” (1 COR 4: 1-5)
Paul is saying something here, I believe, about the freedom that is granted when we begin to really see ourselves as “stewards of the mysteries of God.” When we learn how to begin letting go of the dualisms that divide us, we can actually begin to let God be God. This is the God Who is mystery beyond our minds, but who comes so close to us in each moment of our heart, yet we won’t see God…we won’t see the Christ to whom we do “belong,” which I believe we fail to see is right here in our midst all the time. We allow our preconceived and comfortable notions about our world and one another dictate judgments that always leave someone “outside,” wherein we tell each other, not always literally, that “your kind does not belong here.” The extent of the anxiety that this causes within us comes out in exaggerated expressions of hateful attitudes toward each other and our world.
I wonder if this could be another way of looking at what Jesus is saying in the Gospels (MT 6: 24-34):
“Jesus said to his disciples: “No one can serve two masters.
He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.”
What if the “two masters” are precisely that dualistic mind that tell us falsely that “I am right and you are wrong” and “I belong and you do not?” This is not a Christ-servant model here. In fact this is a “servant” who insists on “mastering” the world and others with a mindset of rigidity that disallows accountability, diversity, unity, and, most importantly, compassion.
We hear Jesus go on to speak some more about what Paul has told the Corinthians, i.e., about the freedom that allows the wonder of mystery, where we begin to see ourselves not as vanguards of selfish protections but as stewards or “care-givers” and “care-receivers” of the wonderful mysteries of our God:
“Look at the birds in the sky;
they do not sow or reap, they gather nothing into barns,
yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are not you more important than they?
Can any of you by worrying add a single moment to your life-span?
Why are you anxious about clothes?
Learn from the way the wild flowers grow.
They do not work or spin.
But I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor
was clothed like one of them.”
Yes, this is a consoling position, but it is also an invitation to live and love differently than what we may be “used to.” The anxieties of our lives are so often caused by unreal expectations of ourselves that we end up projecting out on our world and others. What does all this mean with regards to Love? What does this mean to God, who is Love? Not a thing! This is what Jesus and Paul are saying to us. Judgements as functional exclusion excludes precisely that which it thinks it is protecting – the mystery of God – Who is Love!
Paul says that it does not concern him in the lease how he may be judged by others. This is not an expression of individualistic arrogance that opposes all others, but more so an authentic expression of the futility of perpetuating attitudes which condemn, exclude and tear down. There is just no room for this in the “stewardship of the mysteries of God.” We are the mysteries of God, and Paul is inviting us to remember this. Jesus is telling us clearly that the very “ordinary” things that we see in nature, like the blooms of the wildflower, are the very things that God sees when “looking” at us. There is not a thing we can do to become more beautiful or acceptable in the eyes of the Christ God. All we can do is “tend” it, take care to give and receive the mysteries of God in our lives – the world and people that we encounter in each moment.
This is not for the fainthearted. It is not surrender in the sense of throwing up our hands and saying God will take care of everything. It is a surrender in terms of letting go of anything that makes us serve “two masters” that are eternally jealous of each other. When we can let this go, we are actively engaged in embracing what it means to be transformed by the mysteries of life to which we all belong – “all kinds” belong here because there is only one KIND God – Love!
I pray you all help me to receive and give the wonderful mysteries of this KIND (of) God!
Peace
Thomas
The soul is the delicate yet durable cloth woven and laced together in loving pattern by the merciful strokes of God’s Passings…
And the sheen of our soul is the ever-glowing awareness we have of this sacred-stitched fabric.