There is a sense, I believe, where life can be viewed as a series of ‘leaving’ and ‘remaining.’  More to the point perhaps, things and people, come and go.  Inasmuch as we seem designed as humans to seek that which is most certain and everlasting, much of life on face value seems to be exactly the opposite of this.  Everything seems to be ephemeral and ever-changing.  Things and indeed people stay for a while and then something happens and they leave or go away.  Nothing stays the same.   This disrupts the comfortableness that we find in the familiar, i.e., that which we can easily categorize and thus be tempted to manipulate.

Our habituated patterns of living many times center around attempting to ensure that things and people do stay the same. More often than not, these attempts are futile and we end up hurt, frustrated, and sometimes angry when we realize that the change has come despite our efforts.  Does such familiarity breed contempt I wonder?  More importantly, I wonder how much we consider whether or not we have a realistic grasp of what or who it is that is changing or leaving and seemingly no longer remaining.

I recall, one day after a run, as I was walking back to my house, I caught sight of a butterfly flitting about and hovering over my neighbor’s flower garden.  I stopped and waited, hoping that the butterfly would alight on one of the flowers, so that I could take a photo of it.  The butterfly just went right on dancing above the flowers, darting about and almost gleefully circling the perimeter of the garden without stopping once.  As I watched the quick yet graceful movement of the butterfly, I began to realize how much I was being controlled by my hope and desire that the butterfly would land so that I could ‘capture’ a ‘frame’ so to speak of this experience in a static image.

I felt myself in this realization letting go of that overriding urge and began to just observe and enjoy the butterfly’s movements and how unconcerned the butterfly was with any expectations that I had of it.  I was able to simply see the butterfly for what it was as it was, regardless of the fact that I was watching it at all.  When I stopped being concerned about whether or not the butterfly would land so that I could get a picture, I could stay or ‘remain’ in that moment no matter the outcome.  Photo or not!

The butterfly did eventually land and, yes, I did get several photos of the butterfly, including a live video.  It’s beauty was astounding, but moreso than any of my photo images could capture, the real beauty of the moment was that the butterfly just showed up and I happened to be there and we had an encounter.  That encounter spoke to me at a deeper level than I could put into words or images.  Indeed, I venture to say that the experience itself touched me at a level that is beyond my understanding and comprehension. It was a joy that was mysteriously complete in its simplicity.

There was a freedom or liberation that occurred simultaneously with my letting go of the control of framing the experience and letting the experience – letting the butterfly – simply ‘be.’  I wasn’t sad or disappointed when the butterfly finally departed because somehow the space that was opened up within me as I let my expectations and preconceived notion of the experience go, provided an abiding presence that stays with me. To this day, it remains.

In today’s Gospel (Jn 15:9-17), we hear Jesus beautifully describing the mysterious and wonderful relationship that he shares with His Father in Love:

Jesus said to his disciples:
“As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love…
This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends…
I have called you friends because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.
It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you
and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain,
so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.
This I command you: love one another.”

This relationship, completely within the context of Love, provides a sense of belonging that hinges upon a mysterious understanding that leaving and remaining are not necessarily contrary to each other.  Remember that Jesus during this discourse is explaining how he will be ‘leaving’ soon, but oddly enough, in this leaving He will remain as well.  How can one leave and remain at the same time?  Something has to change, someone has to be transformed in order that a leaving or departing is also a remaining.

The question seems to be whether or not we are willing to let go of how we expect or want things to turn out, so as to see instead what is happening right here in front of us as something that can transform us if we allow it to do so.  It takes the space of presence to facilitate the possibility of this transformation of expectations that open a new way of seeing and living and being.  Creating this space is not easy and can be painful.  Jesus himself lets us know this when he cries out to his Father, “Why have you abandoned me/”  It is the relationship of Love alone that carries us through, stretches us beyond our comfortable limits, and then reveals the new depth and vision that transforms everything.

Could this be a way of understanding the paschal mystery – the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ?  I wonder if the feeling of abandonment and of being left behind that the disciples felt when Jesus died effectively prevented them from seeing and recognizing him as we hear in the resurrection stories.  They were trapped in that liminal (in-between) state wherein they began realizing that their own imaginings could not possibly capture what this New Life has in store for them.  And then following the Ascension, they had yet another sense of leaving to deal with.  Interestingly it seems that in this series of ‘leaving’ and ‘remaining,’ the leaving itself widens the inner space that is needed in order to see what it is that remains in the leaving.  The beautiful mystery is that what remains, once we can see it through the leaving, is always more – so much more!

There is pain in leaving.  When a loved one ‘leaves,’ there is a feeling that life will never be the same, sometimes a feeling that life itself cannot go on.  But life does go on and truly life is never the same.  My own experience of grief is teaching me, though, that the cycle of leaving and remaining is a cycle of life and death, but always with the possibility of New and fuller life – a joy that is not void of sadness, but a depth that comes from the space created within us, when we can surrender to the Love relationship with our God who IS Love Relating in all time and space.  It takes time and patience and tears, and yes, laughter and work, but most of all…Others.

It’s not that the commandment to love one another is an option.  Love one another is in a sense Who God is and who we are.   It’s a matter of survival for our selfhood.  “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you.”  Now, we can convince ourselves otherwise and think that we can find safety in an ‘upper room,’ where we imagine no one – God included – can find us!  But we know how that turns out, don’t we (Pentecost)?!  If we can remain in the leaving – in the loss – by not wallowing in self-pity, but honoring the presence of Love sacred in the life of the beloved whom we feel we have lost, then the spaciousness of our love can be increased.

I am beginning to experience grief as the New Life that my loved ones are now experiencing, touching the very depths of my heart so that I too can share now in my life with others that same new life.  It is a mystifying but very real experience and it is an experience of the joy of the Risen Life being shared in a way that completes my life now by ‘appointing me to go and bear fruit that will remain.”  What is left behind is always the possibility for new life in the spirit which can only be carried by those who gather in that Love and see in and through that love what we can do to participate in the ongoing creation of freedom and transformation for all.

The Spanish Roman Catholic Priest and inter-religious dialogue proponent, Raimon Panikkar, speaks of this patterned leaving and remaining experienced in life as a way in which “every act is unique and unrepeatable.  Every day contains life in its entirety…a continuous creation.”[i]   As Jesus says in the Gospel, laying down’s one life for one’s friends is the greatest love because it is a creative love, making room for something much greater and more wonderful than we could ever imagine to grow and remain. And these acts of creative love do not have to be anything spectacular, so long as our private space is stretched open wide enough to allow the ‘other’ in – to let the other be, to love the other, to create with God in the Spirit – The Butterfly Space.

[i] Raimon Panikkar, CHRISTOPHANY (Orbis Bks: New York, 2004), p. 131

Peace,

Thomas

(originally published May 14, 2018)