Compassion

I have many things to be confused about at this point in my spiritual journey. In many ways I know less about God than I did 10 years ago, and certainly less about what it means, personally, to be a faithful follower of Christ. But within that sea of confusion and not-knowing, I am clear about one thing: I want to learn to be a more compassionate human being. I have no idea where else I am going, but I do know that I am being called into learning something about compassion.

In the last few years, God has given me a couple of glimpses of what compassion can be: mystical experiences in which I have been given the supernatural gift of compassion. I wrote about them last October in the entry entitled The Teaching Moment. How, then, do I “learn” compassion? How do I live into the glimpse God has given me of what can be? How can I be intentional about acquiring a virtue that can only be a gift from God?

My desire for compassion started as a small impulse--a quiet but insistent urge. It grew in me almost unnoticed. Even the times God gifted me with compassion, the experience soon became lost to memory in the details of my days. But the impulse to pursue compassion must have been growing deep in my soul for some time, unbeknownst to me. A few weeks ago, that hidden impulse took root and has since become irrisitable.

It seems like it is a paradoxical thing, this learning of compassion. It is not something I can cultivate, only something I can receive. And yet I won’t receive it unless I cultivate it. A quality I pursue until I am captured by it. That’s the paradox—a paradox that creates the need for a delicate balance between agency and receptivity. The paradox that I find at the core of all things of God.

Seduced by God, Part II

Oh Lord, you have seduced me, and I have been seduced. You have overpowered me, and you have prevailed.

This is Jeremiah, the poor schnook God chose to be God’s prophet. Jeremiah discovered, like many prophets before and since him, that it is not easy being a prophet. He becomes a laughing stock of his people; he does not have a normal life with wife and kids, a normal job, identity or place in society. All he has is God and the words God gives him to say to the Israelites. When he tries to stay silent, then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot. Poor Jeremiah. He is not in control of his life or of his destiny. All he has is God.

This is what happens when we get seduced by God: we don’t have a “normal” life as defined by the culture around us. We lose all of that, until all we have is God. Although not called to be a prophet, God has seduced me nonetheless. God swells my heart with love until it feels like it is going to burst, saturates me in grace, showers me with impulses of pure light and in general ravishes my soul until I am besotted with God and for God and beside myself with God’s delight. Even as I revel in God’s grace and mercy, I know I am going to pay for this intimacy with God. In the end, it is a price I gladly pay, because all ego-driven delights pale in comparison.

God is an oh-so-jealous God. God is particularly jealous of those for whom God has a peculiar predilection. For those souls, God will allow nothing to interfere or disrupt intimacy. God methodically destroys all barriers, idolatries, ego projections, and identities that interfere with the soul’s embrace by God. With an exactitude that only the soul’s Creator can imagine, God breaks, chips away at, releases, dissolves, shatters, crushes and grinds into nothingness all that hinders communion with God, all that stands in the way of intimacy, all that is not of God. It is an exquisite torture.

Oh Lord, you have seduced me, and I have been seduced. You have overpowered me, and you have prevailed.

This detaching process is, for me at least, painful and at times violent. My knee jerk reaction is to cling to false idols. But mostly the suffering comes because I forget. I forget that I have asked God to draw me close, to sweep away all that is not God. I forget that this destruction is my deepest desire—I can only see all that I am losing. And so I suffer and complain and despair. That is what makes it torture. Other spiritual writers talk about how the mature soul learns to say “here I am, a handmaiden of the Lord. Let it be done according to your word”. But I am never inclined to that response, and consequently suffer.

But then I remember—because God reminds me. I remember how besotted I am with my Lover, how intimacy with God is my deepest desire. And then the suffering is transformed and the torture becomes exquisite—the fulfillment of my heart’s desire. I quit looking at what I have lost and feeling sorry for myself, and I look to God’s mercy instead. I wait on God’s goodness. God fills me with God’s sweetness, and I am transported into communion with my divine Lover.

It is a paradox. Like Jeremiah, I am overpowered by God, and God prevails. I am defeated as God shapes my will into God’s will. There is a strong theme of coercion, even rape, by God in Jeremiah and in my own experience of God. At the same time, this defeat is the deepest desire of my heart and feeds my most deeply rooted passion—to uproot the not-God so that I may know the incomparable sweetness of God’s grace. That in my own weakness I may know God’s powerful love. That in the shambles of my life I might find the new life my Creator and Lover wants for me. I see God most clearly in the darkness.

Oh Lord, you have seduced me, and I have been seduced. You have overpowered me, and you have prevailed.

A Teaching Moment

I was at the airport, waiting to pick up my honey. A woman and a boy waited with me. They were clearly excited, the young boy dancing from foot to foot as he leaned on the ropes. Then he came back and leaned against the woman, the two of them swaying from side to side. I wondered who they were so eagerly awaiting. A husband and dad home from the war? A couple of beaming grandparents? A sister or brother?

I watched them looking for the one they loved to appear through the revolving door. I became caught up by their longing, their happy hope, their anticipation and yearning for one who would make them complete in some way. That is when God took over.

I was aware of their longing, then of many longings, finally of a world full of longings and desires and hopes and dreams. For that one moment, full of sacred mystery, I saw humanity as God must know humanity--a seething cauldron of loves, impulses, desires and yearnings. No barriers, no need for one to win and another to lose, no differences; simply a cacaphony of hopes and longings. A world of passion and vitality. An amazing moment. A gift.

A gift that came and went in the twinkling of an eye.

God has been trying to teach me compassion. I am not a very good student, so it is good that God is a very good teacher. I recall one lesson in which I was making a purchase in a retail store. The young woman behind the cash register was made no eye contact and wearily asked me if I was paying with cash or credit card. No better at the holiness thing than I ever have been, my normal response is to bristle. But God gifted me with compassion in that moment. I recalled times when I was bored and weary of a job, and God put me inside that weariness. I spoke, she looked at me and for a moment we shared life together. It was a God moment. It was a teaching moment.

But this moment today--this was an even deeper insight into compassion--a glimpse of a compassion so projound it took my breath away. I hope that it leaves even a trace on my soul and a lingering bit of light in my life.

Suddenly the woman and young boy began dancing from one foot to the next, pointing through the revolving door and hugging each other. A smiling older woman strode through the door. The boy flung himself into her arms, then danced to one side as the two women hugged each other. Whoever they were and whatever they meant to each other, they were reunited, hopes fulfilled, longings satisfied, happiness overflowing.

Seduced by God

I recently saw Into Great Silence, a movie about the Carthusians. The movies attempts to capture the silence and sensibility of the life practiced by the monks. Occasionally a printed statement will flash onto the screen, and repeated throughout the movie. The statement that captured me was "You have seduced me, Oh Lord, and I have been seduced".

Although not a Carthusian monk, God has seduced me and I have been seduced. During this Holy Week, I have been reflecting on what that means. God has seduced me--drawn me into God's love; pulled me into an interior life centered on the presence of God in prayer. I have been seduced by God to shift my center of gravity from the concerns of the culture around me to the concerns of God.

As a result of God's seduction, I am seduced into a radically different life from that shaped by white middle class values. I am besotted with the one who is besotted with me, and my life is shaped by that crazy, upside down gospel-culture known as the realm of God. All of which puts me in a precarious position vis a vis the culture that surrounds me.

You have seduced me, O Lord

and I have been seduced.

Lent

Another year, another Lent. Some people talk about "giving up" something for Lent--like candy or cussing. Other people talk about giving up something AND taking on something--like a daily devotional or a weekly fast. I've done both. There is no magic formula. Lent is simply a time to prepare for the crucifixion and resurrection of the one in whose footsteps we follow.

Part of my spiritual practice is to make a confession before Ash Wednesday, to my spiritual director who is also my confessor. This year he said that I need to do something to prepare for Holy Week and Easter, and that it would occur to me--the thing I need to do. As usual, I forgot all about it (I flunk the holiness test on a daily basis!). A couple of days later I was hiking in the coastal hills close to my house, stewing over some injustice in my life and struggling to even WANT to forgive the people involved. I mean, I didn't even want to forgive them!! (like I said, about the holiness thing....). That is when God touched my heart (which always makes it melt) and I realized that what I need to "take on" for Lent is the practice of forgiveness. Whenever it is really God "talking", God makes it happen even as God speaks. That is one way I know it is God speaking.

Of course, my heart hardens again later, and I am into a struggle again. But for the moment I could actually forgive the injustice I was stewing about. And that experience, and the committment to practice forgiveness for Lent, has freed me from some of my more onerous ruminations.

God is such an outstanding Lover!

My Standing Date with God

Every day, I spend a few minutes in the evening talking over the day with my partner. Every Saturday we go out for breakfast--just the two of us. We spend other times together, but these are "standing dates". These standing dates create the backbone of our 25 year relationship.

I have a standing date with God as well. Every morning and every evening I say the daily office and spend some time in contemplative prayer. Some days it is quick, others I can spend more time. Like my standing dates with my honey, my standing dates with God provides the backbone of my relationship with God.

Sometimes I am eager to run to my date with God. Other times it is a chore. Sometimes it is routine and I have to repeatedly re-focus my mind on what I am doing. For the last few months, I have found myself looking forward to these times, fleeing to them as a haven. I am in one of those periods in which God is pulling me into deeper and deeper contemplation. I respond with increased attention and committment. I find a profound peace in my dates with God these days.

However, there are other times when my dates are dry, or boring, or ho hum and I "couldn't get a fire going no matter how many times I re-arrange the logs" to quote Teresa of Avila. Those times make me all the more grateful for prayer that I am currently experiencing: deeply intoxicating and profoundly peaceful

the voice of my beloved

This Sunday the lectionary actually includes a text from Song of Solomon! The church ignores this book--it is good to have a chance to preach out of it. About 15 years ago, it began to be the fashion to decry the "allegorizing" of the eroticism in this book. For most of the history of the church, it has been described as a love scene between Christ and the church, or Christ and the Christian. In an attempt to reclaim sexuality, some authors have insisted that it is actually speaking of two lovers (married? not? who knows?), with a celebration of the erotic aspect of love. These authors deride the allegory, saying it is just another attempt to "spiritualize" sex.

And this Sunday I will probably talk a bit about how it has been interpreted through the ages. (who knows what its original intent was! some historical-critical questions can't be answered). But the bulk of my sermon will be on how a major theme in mysticism is erotic mysticism (or bridal mysticis)--that in some way, communion with God is so very erotic, and yes, very sensual.

Some people look at Teresa of Avila and scoff as some of her descriptions of her interactions with "His Majesty" (as she likes to call God). These writers like to point out how Teresa is "obviously" sublimating intense sexual feelings. These authors have clearly never had a genuine encounter with God with erotic overtones. In my experience, spirituality and sexuality can be next door neighbors--I daresay they share some of the same neuronal pathways. And why not? Consolations and the like are spiritual experiences that are in some way similar to physical experience. Erotic mysticism is another valid expression of God's closeness--not something generated by our psyche. What is peculiar about all of this kind of talk is that you don't have the foggiest idea what it means until you have had the experience.

Having said all of that, it also seems to me such experience is more commonly found in beginning mystics. It is always dicey--trying to talk about development in contemplatives and mystics. God dances with us in so many different ways. Nonetheless, in my own experience, erotic mystical experience was more common during my spiritual awakening than it is now.