Living the Truth in Love

I'm involved in a women's ministry in which we support each other in allowing God to heal our emotional and spiritual wounds so that we can live the mission to which God has called each of us.  It took me months to discern my mission -- and I have refined its expression over time:

As a woman walking with Christ I co-create a world of deep connection where we can discover and live the truth in love by opening myself to the Holy Spirit and by communicating with clarity and compassion.

That's it.  That's why God has me alive today, to do that.  Sometimes being able to name it helps me to do it.  But not always.

I'm in a stage of radical transition in my life right now.  It's not the forced kind that might come with tragedy.  It's the natural sort that comes with time.  In short, my children are growing up.  For going on seventeen years, I have been first a mother and then everything else that I may be.  Now my children don't need me like they once did.  It seems like it happened overnight.  Of course it didn't.

Still, I find myself wildly unprepared.  In a devotion I read this morning, Richard Rohr said, "We are told that St. Francis used to spend whole nights praying the same prayer:  'Who are you, O God?  And who am I?'"  I wonder if he received an answer, because those are my questions:  Who are you, O God?  Who am I?

I get stuck on the second question.  Who am I?  I thrash around with a sort of helpless desperation as I struggle to answer it.  I approach it by way of sub-questions:  What should I do?  Where do I belong?  How do other people see me?  It's no wonder I never get to an answer or any sort of peace.  Those are surely not the right questions.

If I really want to know who I am, I need to begin with asking Who is God?  Not that I will arrive at an answer, but it is only in abiding in that question that I have any hope of approaching the question of who I am.

Who I am only makes sense in terms of who I am in God.  And who I am in God only makes sense if I have some notion of who God is.

I may not have a complete answer, but I do have a partial one, and that might just be enough.

I know that God is love (1 John 4:8).  I know that God so loved the world that He gave his beloved Son to die so that we might live (John 3:16).  And I know that the way to God passes through Truth (John 8:32 and 14:6).

So, love and truth it is.  Thus, my personal life mission.  I will never fully uncover the mystery of who God is or who I am.  I don't know where this journey is leading.  I know only that the path is paved with truth and with love.

Lenten Journey: Dying Before We Die

Brothers and sisters:  I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having any righteousness of my own based on the law but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God, depending on faith to know him and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.  

Philippians 3:8-11

For Reflection...

She was as good as dead.  She stood before the mercy seat awaiting the just judgment, which she knew was death by stoning.  But then she didn't die.  Or did she?

In a powerful talk entitled The Authority of Those Who Have Suffered (as well as in many other places in his body of work) Richard Rohr reflects a central message of the New Testament:  The journey into Christ passes through death.  Jesus himself talks about the grain of wheat (John 12:24) and the sign of Jonah (Matthew 12:39-40).  Paul says it in Philippians 3:10-11.  Until we descend into the earth, unless we are swallowed whole and end up in the belly of the whale, we cannot become the bearers of life and God's word of mercy.

Isn't this the case for the woman caught in adultery?  From her ordinary, admittedly sinful, life she is dragged forth into the harsh light of judgment.  From her complacency, she finds herself suddenly in the throes of suffering.  She is in the belly of the whale.

It is a baptism by fire this suffering of hers, of ours.  While she escapes physical death, her suffering is a death nonetheless.  When Jesus tells her to go and sin no more (John 8:11), he is acknowledging that her life cannot be, is not, what it was.  Something has changed.  Some part of her has died.  He is inviting her to recognize it.  She has lost something that was once of value to her -- her lover or her sense of safety, perhaps -- but what she has gained, Christ, is so much more.

For Entering In...

- Enter into the presence of God as the woman caught in adultery.  Can you use your imagination to see the face of Jesus, the face of Mercy, before you?

- Reflect on these questions:

• Have you experienced a crisis after which your life could not be the same?  Maybe it was something big -- a death of a loved one or some other significant loss.  Maybe it was more subtle.  Maybe it was a series of experiences over time.  Remember your life before.  Remember the dawning awareness that nothing could be the same after.

• The Christian view of the spiritual life has the death and resurrection of Jesus at its center.  It is the model for all of reality.  (If you doubt the truth of this pattern, look at the cycles of the natural world.)  Take that in:  Death and resurrection is the pattern of our lives.  What does that mean to you?

• While God does not ordain that bad things happen -- that is a by-product of good creation broken by sin -- God wastes nothing, but uses suffering as the fodder for redemption.  Consider an experience of suffering with which you are familiar, yours or someone else's.  Can you see a way in which God used that experience for good (cf. Romans 8:28)?

• Using your imagination, consider the woman caught in adultery.  How might her life be different going forward?  Put yourself in her place.  Take your time.  Imagine having been on the brink of just condemnation and death and having come through alive.  How might your life be different?

• Every new day is a day we don't deserve; it is always a gift of life from God.  How can you live today in awareness of that fact?  Where can you experience gratitude?  How would you live today if it was the only day you will ever have?  

- Spend several minutes allowing your body and mind to be at rest.  If thoughts come, let them go by.  What if the only thing that mattered was your being, not your thinking or feeling or doing?

Lenten Journey: The Lord Is Kind and Merciful

Psalm 103 

For Reflection...

"The Lord is kind and merciful."  That was the refrain we sang on Sunday as the cantor intoned the words of Psalm 103.  As we wonder together about God's will, it will be our refrain as well.

Yesterday we came face to face with the pain and suffering that are all around us.  Despite the platitudinous words we may hear -- It's all for the best.  It was God's will. -- we stand firm in the conviction that God does not will evil and suffering.  As Franciscan Father Richard Rohr says, "God is never less loving than the most loving person you know."

In order to discern God's will, we must reflect on God's character.  And how do we discern character?  Think of someone you know -- a friend, a parent, a sibling, a spouse.  Or think of someone famous, a historical figure about whom you know something and about whom you have some opinion.  What do you know about him or her?  Is he trustworthy?  Is she loyal?  How do you know?

We may judge one another's character by the experiences that we share together and remember.  We listen to what the other says, and observe how she interacts with others.  We hear what other people say about him.  We revere George Washington, because history tells us he was shrewd and courageous in battle and humbly refused to be made a king.  We look up to Mother Teresa because of the way she lived her life among the poorest of the poor.  These details and many others reflect the character of this woman, this man.

So it is with God.  What do we know about God?  What have we heard God say?  What has God done?  What do others say about God, including the authors of scripture?  What does our own, intimate experience of God tell us about who God is?

Finally, if we believe that God's most complete self-revelation is in the person of Jesus, what does that tell us about God's character?

For Entering In...

- Spend a few moments in silence becoming present to yourself and to God.  Are you getting to know this God?  What does it feel like to be alert and aware in God's present?

- Reflect on these questions:

• Who is "the most loving person you know"?  How would you describe him or her?  How would you describe God if God were "at least as loving" as that person?

• If you spend any time at all reading the Bible, you will discover a challenging variety of data about who God is.  Read what Richard Rohr has to say about clearly unloving words and actions attributed to God.  How does this perspective strike you?  Is it consistent with what you've been taught?  With what you yourself have experienced of God?

• The great hymn in Philippians 2 is thought to be, perhaps, the oldest text in the New Testament.  Read it and spend some time reflecting on or writing about what this passage says about the character of God.

• We may still find ourselves questioning whether, in fact, "the Lord is kind and merciful," especially when bad things happen.  In prayer, can you hold in tension the suffering that touches your heart and the claim that the Lord is kind and merciful?  Don't try to reconcile the difficulty.  Sit with it and see what you discover.

•  Is there any attribute of God's character that has particularly spoken to you in this time of reflection?  Continue to reflect on that quality throughout your day.  What is it that resonates for you?  What does it mean to you or say about you?

- As you finish this quiet time, remember the word that you have fastened to your heart.  Does this word continue to resonate for you?  If not, perhaps there is another word that you are being called to.  Continue to use your word, day and night, to recall you to the truth that God is with you always.