Category: Spirituality

The Christian story is essentially about Love answering loves call. This is who God is, and why the Son of God emptied himself and took on our humanity. It is why God suffered in Christ for us. 

Just as love responds to love within God, it also echoes within the interior landscape of each soul. Love is always calling and waiting for a response. The Father calls to the Son, and the Christ within each human person is invited to respond. The formless and hidden God continues to incarnate His Word in the world through our love.

As the psalm says, “deep calls to deep in the roar of waters.” This is the divine love stirring deep within us, and seeking a response from us. We only have to say yes, for it is God’s Love responding to God’s Love within us.  Our yes is Love’s expansion. 

Joy is about connection and acceptance.

Joy is about knowing and being known.

Joy is about loving and being loved.

Joy is about laughter, and irony, and the ability to play.

Joy is about having a sense of security without being in control.

Joy is about discovering the enchantment of ordinary things.

Joy is about kissing the lips of the present moment.

“If there’s one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories, and crashes through barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh, well, there it is. …Life will find a way” (Dr. Ian Malcom in Jurassic Park)

Perhaps a strange quote for an Easter reflection, but one that points effectively without religious language to the deep and hidden power behind the mystery we celebrate at Easter. In Jurassic Park Dr. Malcom was warning the park scientists that even though they cleverly bred all the dinosaurs female, they should not presume they have the ability to control the spread of life. It has a mysterious power that is uncontainable.

On Easter, Christians believe that the resurrection of one man breaks through the barrier of death for all mankind. Christ means anointed one, or in modern terms the universal archetype. This resurrection comes after suffering and death and is forever connected with it, for it is one mystery, a cycle with divine imprint. That death is part of life, but not the final word, because life always finds a way to break out and create something new.

Repressing shame only reinforces it.

Shame grows in isolation, as it gets embedded in our own narrative or interpretation of events.

Shame is only dispelled in the presence of another person.

Transparency and authenticity are keys to overcoming shame.

“It is not good for man to be alone” Gen 2

Shame is woven into the fabric of our nature. It is part of the embodiment of our spiritual nature. It is a kind of emotional inflammatory response to a separation or a turning away from communion and intimacy.

Shame evaporates in the warm sun light of interpersonal sharing, and it grows like deadly mold in the damp shade of isolation.

“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden” Gen 3:8

Why do we hide from the very presence we need and long for?

When I am agitated, and restless, I try to sit still and just focus on my breathing and then listen to the voice ofGod within. The question that often arrises is the same one originating in the garden, “Why are you hiding?”

I think we hide from the true presence when we fear that reality is too painful to embrace. We thing going around and not through will save us. We hide in work, in various activities and entertainments when we cannot bear to be fully present to ourselves. Being truly present to ones self is essentially the same as being present to God.

As Adam hid among the trees, I picture myself hiding in the noise and news of each day, in the Netflix-fix, in the compulsive need to work, when it could easily wait. Why am I avoiding the very thing I need to encounter.

In the words of Henry Nouwen, “We need to drink the cup of our own lives”. There is no other way to experience God’s grace, there is no other visitation but the one your are presently hiding from in present moment of life.

Surrender is the core principle of spiritual growth, but it can be missunderstood as passivity when it is really an active and intentional stance. Detachment and letting go is not a withdrawal but a new form of engagement that springs from an inner freedom.

In the spiritual life there is always a tension between action and contemplation, between withdraw into prayer and service in the world. But this is a false dichotomy. The deeper the self-surrender and detachment we are led into, the greater the call to action, justice, and mercy. Detachment does not remove the imperative to love, but set us free love completley.

The Holy Spirit leads us further into our human nature, and draws us deeper into communion with others. It pulls us out from the isolation of ideas into the duty of love. We are made for community, to serve and be served. As St. John Paul 2 says, “We only discover ourselves in the gift of ourselves”.

In the natural order when something is letting go and dying, it is actively giving life to its surrounding community. The creature who lays down to die in the woods transitions from consumer to consumed, becoming one with the woods, the very fertilizer that fuels new life. We must accept and surrender to life in its fullness and the only way to do this is to love.

I am surrounded by abundance. I have financial and physical security. There is healthy fresh food to eat, clean water and rich wine to drink. I am surrounded by natural beauty and in loving relationship to family and friends.

So why is there still the nagging, gnawing question, “Is there something more I should be doing”? Have I turned away from Christ who lives in the disguise of the poor?

There is so much pain and suffering in this world that I am protected from. Should I feel guilty or grateful, or both?

I feel powerless to effect real change but that is no excuse for not engaging in the struggle and doing something, even just one little thing.

I choose security but my truer and deeper need is for purpose. And that only comes with some measure of risk, the risk of engaging with others, the risk of taking up new challenges. The risk of Love that steps into action and make sacrifices.

The late John Lewis, congressman and non-violent civil rights activist made the striking comment during an interview; “In the end, we all have to be willing to place our bodies in the way of injustice and hate”.

If our commitment to justice lives only in our minds and the sentiment of the heart then it is not the radical love that Jesus invites us into. Love involves the full body, because it is the concretizing of God’s spirit active in our world. True freedom involves a willingness to put our very bodies at risk.