Author Archives: Eileen
Ordinary Lives Transformed
Father Richard Rohr writes about encountering the Risen Christ in our ordinariness and woundedness. I’ve noticed in the Gospels that even after two appearances of the Risen Christ, the apostles return to their old job of fishing (John 21:3). They don’t join the priesthood, try to get a job at the Temple, go on more retreats, take vows, leave their wives, or get special titles. Nor is there any mention of them baptizing each other or wearing special clothing beyond that of a wayfarer or “workman” (Matthew 10:9–10). When the inner is utterly transformed, we don’t need symbolic outer validations, special hats, or flashy insignia. We can also note that the Risen Christ is never apparent as a supernatural figure, but is mistaken in one case for a gardener, another time for a fellow traveler on the road, and then for a fisherman offering advice. He seems to look just like everybody else after the Resurrection (John 20:15; Luke 24:13–35; John 21:4–6), even with his wounds on full display! In the Gospels it appears we can all go back to “fishing” after any authentic God encounter, consciously carrying our humiliating wounds, only now more humbly. That is our only badge of honor. In fact, it is exactly our woundedness that gives us any interest in healing itself, and the very power to heal others. As Henri Nouwen rightly said, the only authentic healers are always wounded healers. Good therapists will often say the same. True mysticism just allows us to “fish” from a different side of the boat and with different expectations of what success might mean. All the while, we are totally assured that we are already and always floating on a big, deep, life-filled pond. The mystical heart knows there is a fellow Fisherman nearby who is always available for good advice. He stands and beckons from the shores, at the edges of every ordinary life, every unreligious moment, every “secular” occupation, and he is still talking to working people who, like the first disciples, are not important, influential, especially “holy,” trained in theology, or even educated. This is the mystical doorway, which is not narrow but wide and welcoming. Matthew Fox affirms mystical experience as a gift: Deep down, each one of us is a mystic. When we tap into that energy we become alive again and we give birth. From the creativity that we release is born the prophetic vision and work that we all aspire to realize as our gift to the world. We want to serve in whatever capacity we can. Getting in touch with the mystic inside is the beginning of our deep service…. Mysticism is about the awe and the gratitude, the letting go and the letting be, the birthing and the creativity, and the compassion—including healing and celebration and justice making—that our world so sorely needs…. Every mystic is a healer. We are healers all.
Sidewalk Spirituality
Richard Rohr identifies mysticism as a way of knowing accessible to all:
While most Christians consider themselves disciples of Jesus and try to follow his teachings, a smaller number move toward practical acts of service or solidarity. But I’m afraid even fewer Christians have the courage to go on the much deeper mystical path. The most unfortunate thing about the concept of mysticism is that the word itself has become mystified—relegated to a “misty” and distant realm that implies it is only available to a very few. For me, the word “mysticism” simply means experiential knowledge of spiritual things, in contrast to book knowledge, secondhand knowledge, or even church knowledge.
Much of organized religion, without meaning to, has actually discouraged us from taking the mystical path by telling us almost exclusively to trust outer authority, Scripture, various kinds of experts, or tradition (what I call the “containers”), instead of telling us the value and importance of inner experience itself (which is the “content”). In fact, most of us were strongly warned against ever trusting ourselves. Roman Catholics were told to trust the church hierarchy implicitly, while mainline Protestants were often warned that inner experience was dangerous, unscriptural, or even unnecessary.
Both were ways of discouraging actual experience of God and often created passive (and passive aggressive) people and, more sadly, a lot of people who concluded there was no God to be experienced. We were taught to mistrust our own souls—and thus the Holy Spirit! Contrast that with Jesus’ common phrase, “Go in peace, your faith has made you whole” (see Matthew 8:13; Mark 5:34; Luke 17:19). He said this to people who had made no dogmatic affirmations, did not think he was “God,” and often did not belong to the “correct” group! They were people who affirmed, with open hearts, the grace of their own hungry experience—in that moment—and that God could care about it!
Pentecostals and charismatics are significant modern-era exceptions to this avoidance of experience; I believe their “baptism in the Spirit” is a true and valid example of initial mystical encounter.
Richard praises the Franciscan approach to mysticism:
In my experience, Franciscan mysticism is a trustworthy and simple path precisely because it refuses to be “mystified” by, or beholden to, doctrinal abstractions, moralism, or false asceticism (although some Franciscans have gone this route). The Franciscan way is truly a sidewalk spirituality for the streets of the world, a path highly possible and attractive for all would-be seekers. It doesn’t insist every person must be celibate, isolated from others, highly educated, or in any way superior to our neighbors. In fact, those kinds of paths might well get in the way of the experience itself. A celibate monk or nun may have a totally dualistic mind and live a tortured inner life—and thus torture others too. Everyday workers and caregivers with mystical hearts and minds can enlighten other individuals, their families, and all they touch, without talking “religiously” at all.
The Timing of Spiritual Journeys Varies Drastically
The timing of each person’s spiritual journey is unique. We may pray and ask for the same things, but our spiritual needs may take us through other aspects of the journey before the timing is right.
Recovering alcoholics have a lot of support at each stage. The average Christian isn’t necessarily open to the same helps. Jesus came to free sinners by sharing the Love of God with them. Those that know they need the grace of that Love are more likely to embrace it and cling to it. Those who are managing to live by the basic ten commandments may still feel they are earning that Love. Sadly the “do nots” are not all that Jesus was about. If unconsciously we are still trying to earn God’s Love we miss out not only on the joy, but the call of the Beatitudes which is a whole different ball game, but is the way to greater freedom and openness to the grace of joy.
My Julian’s take on religion was that if your do right list is greater than your do wrong list, you get to heaven. He only experienced that joy in the last year of his life when he was fighting cancer and could no longer do the things he thought he needed to do. Unconditional love has no pride in it. It’s pure grace. And it’s part of the journey along with using our gifts to help others. Our talents and strengths are gifts from God. We didn’t earn them and some of us are not born with the inner drive and confidence to use them…..whether for all others or even mostly ourselves and family. Some of us need the constant grace of the Love of God. We lack the gift of focus and perseverance. You can see the difference early in children. Some need the grace of God much sooner than others. The older strong and dutiful brother of the prodigal son didn’t know he needed the grace of humility that frees us to love the unlovable like Jesus did. And that’s the unlovable in both ourselves and others. At some point our journey will take us to the “without one plea” point of openness to the Amazing Grace of God’s unconditional Love fleshed out in Jesus. Many Of the Saints reached it pretty early in their journeys, because they were not naturally good, or focused or persevering.
Justice Means Fairness to All, not Payback for Sin
As parents we get frustrated when our young children do irritating or harmful things. We don’t punish them because we are angry even if we are. We punish them so they will learn not to do that. And we get scared when they do something dangerous. So, we try to come up with a punishment to keep them from harm. Punishment is not about payback. It’s about teaching and learning. Unfortunately, many times it takes consequences to teach us enough to change our pattern of behavior. As we age, if we have learned enough times from consequences, then it may just take a verbal warning.
A lot of us, perhaps even most of us, must learn some things through consequences.
When we talk about hell as consequences for sin, sometimes that experience of hell happens in this life until we get the message.
The point is the word justice is about fairness. It’s not payback. As an imperfect human being in the heat of hurt or anger, I may want payback. I don’t think God needs justice in the sense of payback or evening up a score. Humanity projects our own human anger and desire for payback onto God.
If you believe in evolution and God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit you see humanity as unfinished and ourself as unfinished. We are in a personal spiritual journey of evolving that falls way short of perfect, but hopefully inches us forward enough to be at least perceptible to God and doesn’t set humanity back.
I recognize that some people can see the light, but most of us need to feel the heat. So, the idea of a Hell may have a use, since many, if not most people, experience a taste of it here. But the idea of a vindictive God wanting the satisfaction of seeing us getting a payback of suffering doesn’t mesh with a Jesus who fleshed out the Love of God and died forgiving not only his own people who got him tortured and killed, but even forgiving God for letting him feel abandoned on the cross.
A funny, yet tender writer, Sean Dietrich, made the light brighter for me. He says, “What we are all about is being love letters from God to each other.” That sums it all up. It isn’t about being perfect. It isn’t about being right. It isn’t about changing the world. It’s about being a love letter from God to the person in front of us at any given time. And that can be those reading our blog, seeing our painting, hearing our song, eating our cake, receiving our smile, gift certificates for a lunch at Wendys, getting our letter or phone call, or a hot bowl of homemade soup. That’s it guys. Do it. But remember to tell them you got it from God. God loves us all. Pass it on.
Our Differently Timed Spiritual Journeys from Need to Love
As a first time mom, I made lists of worries about my baby, but my pediatrician laughingly said, “Everyone should have a practice child!” After my second child was a few months old, I informed the pediatrician that it would not help at all, since my second child was absolutely nothing like my first! God did not make us with a cookie cutter. We are born with very different ways of both perceiving and responding to the world. But obviously we are ALL born as needy little babies and we’re all unfinished. Our lives are a spiritual journey from need to love. Some of us need a moment in time fairly early in life when we experience the unconditional love of God so we can cling to that love as a source of grace. Others are more logical and find the law to be a road map source of safety. Some of us tend to trust the known and traditional, while others explore possibilities of all kinds. Over our life spans, our different journeys will finally challenge us to experience a very different way of being in the world than we are used to. It’s scary and we may resist it, but it will free us finally to recognize the validity of our differences. This is grossly oversimplified. But whether we try to lock everyone into a law and order path or an emotionally healing conversion with miracles, or a social justice focus, we are like the three blind men each trying to picture a whole elephant by one only touching its floppy ears, another feeling it’s large firm side, and the third just feeling it’s skinny little tail. We see through the glass of our inborn personalities darkly. We are loved, but we are unfinished. It’s a lifetime process and we start at different place, so it’s a circle, NOT a hierarchy. And the journey isn’t to perfection, but to the balance of wholeness.. We are not only born unfinished, but some of us get broken along the way. The journey of Jesus is also OUR journey and he is with us every step of the way whether or not we recognize him. He fleshed out BOTH the Love of God for us, and the Way for us to become loving. It’s a process that will include loving those like ourselves, those who seem strange to us, those we consider spiritual lepers, and not only our enemy, but even our own Religious Leaders” who want the power to control us just as His once did him. “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do.” Those words of Jesus ultimately will sum up our spiritual journey from need to love.
When we try to limit the Spiritual journey to the phase we are in, it creates a toxic religion for others. The timing is different because we started at different places. But we are ALL unfinished. So it’s time to begin trying to understand those on different pages, for our own sake, as much as theirs.
Finding Grace in Old Age
The challenges of old age can put me in a downward spiral sometimes. But lately I think my beginnings of dementia are showing a positive side. In volunteer work at my local Help Center to aid my granddaughter Hadley to get used to working with people she doesn’t know, I get pretty tired after standing for a couple of hours. But I recover more quickly than I used to, because I both enjoy the people we work with and it’s a good feeling at the end of the day to have helped not just my granddaughter, but other people too. Hadley has Autism so she is very good at detail, while I never was and am definitely not getting better since my brain leaks. We work well as a team now that she’s learned to remind me gently and kindly when I am forgetting. She loves to shop for hours, though often she doesn’t buy anything. I usually take a book to read with coffee somewhere. Today after I took her to see her cats and her dad a half hour away from my apartment, she ended up shopping for over an hour with me drinking coffee sans book. After a while I started focusing on the people coming and going. Soon, this led to praying for each of them. It kind of connected me to them and I actually began to care about them in a way. Some people were obviously from Arab countries, others looked and sounded like they came from Slavic countries, some were white and others black. It touched me particularly when two young men who weren’t together came in and sat near one another. One was wearing an earring and had a hat with a rainbow on it and the other had a sweatshirt from a Christian college that I get emails from. The emails have very enthusiastic reflections about Jesus and prayer, but are very politically conservative. Watching these two young men who are probably very different in many ways, because of my own experiences of the Love of God expressed in Jesus and also having two gays sons and a trans grandchild that I love very much, it gave me a feeling of an affectionate connection to both of them. I don’t know if my prayers for or my kind feelings toward the very varied and different people I saw there made much difference for them, but it transformed my day and somehow healed some of the fear and pain that today’s world has put in my heart. Sometimes I really do feel that if I am open to the world in the new ways in the amount of time that being 86 gives me, these may be the best years yet.
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 