Reconciling the Opposites

The story of Noah and the Flood and the Ark (Genesis 6-8) is not a cute children’s story merely. It is a story for the adults mainly. God tells Noah to bring into the Ark all the opposites: the wild and the domestic, the crawling and the flying, the clean and the unclean, the male and the female of each animal, and locks them together inside the ark. God puts all the natural animosities, all the opposites together, and holds them in one place. This is about balancing the opposites. How important that is in our lives! But this story is also about “holding” things even when they do not make sense.

Mother Mary is a beautiful example of this practice. Even when she does not understand many things (during the Birth of Jesus or when Jesus is lost and found), she holds (keeps) them in her heart and ponders over them. In fact, the Bible says, “Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19) and once again, almost repeating the previous verse, “she treasured all these things in her heart” (Luke 2:51). So the story of Noah is not about God punishing “bad” people, but it is about us: that we need to befriend all the opposites that we encounter in our lives. Like Mary we could treasure and ponder in our heart all the contradictions that come our way, and one day we may know why all “those things” good and bad happened to us.

Therefore, when Jesus asks, “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44), it is about befriending our enemies both outside ourselves and inside ourselves. We are called to accept those people whom we don’t like; to accept people who are different from us. Similarly, we are also called to befriend our inner enemies of anger, resentment, vengeance, greed, hatred, selfishness, restlessness, violence, irritations, disrespect, emotional chaos, bitterness, cynicism, impatience, etc. That’s when we can fulfill Isaiah’s prophecy: “The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra’s den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest” (Isaiah 11:6-9).

Whether it is the story of Noah or the life of Mary or the life of Jesus Christ, each of them is an invitation to us to expand our hearts. And that we may hold and even treasure in our hearts not just the good things but also all the opposites (light and darkness, good and bad, right and wrong, likes and dislikes, virtues and vices, positives and negatives) that we experience in our lives. Ultimately, it is love that can reconcile opposites. It is God’s love that can unite and reconcile everything in the world and in our hearts; it is God and His love that can help us accept, own, integrate and reconcile all the shadows.

(Inspired by Fr Richard Rohr OFM’s meditation on Forgiveness, August 30, 2017 .)

Relationship, Love, Mystery

When you submit to love, you lose control.
In relationships you always lose control.
If prayer is relationship you always lose control, you become passive.
When you even skim the edges of relationship, you submit to mystery and lose control.
Mystery isn’t something that you cannot understand—it is something you can endlessly understand!
If you have control over your relationship, then it is not friendship or marriage, it would be abuse, it might even be rape.
Love is not love if I don’t lose control, give the reins to the other person.
Marriage or friendship or intimacy would be so much easier if there wasn’t another person involved, but then it would be meaningless, too.
When and if you love, you lose control.
Without love and relationships, life has no colours, and no meaning.
In the beginning was the Relationship. God is Relationship. God is Community. God is Love.

(Thanks to William Paul Young and Richard Rohr.)

Digital Authenticity

We carry our obstacles in our pockets now, vibrating and notifying and emoji-ing us about everything and nothing. And let’s be honest: most of our digital and personal conversation is about nothing. Nothing that matters, nothing that lasts, nothing that’s real. We think and talk about the same things again and again, like a broken record. We do everything possible to avoid being in the present, and even “kill” the presence by means of more and more entertainment, more and more highly excitable and sensational stuff. We need always something that entertains us, that excites us more and more because being in the present is boring.

Even the videos that we share and the picture-quotes that we share have to excite us on the sense level. (I’m not talking of pornography, mind you.) We are not worried about the truth. Remember how we shared the news about Fr Tom’s crucifixion, the sudden death of Jackie Chan or other celebrities… we don’t know what is true, what is false. Our television channels keep bombarding the news that are negative (sometimes only negative), sensational, and their business seems to concentrate on all the “bad” news in the world, and also gossips about movie stars and sportspersons.

It’s amazing that we have enough and more time for WhatsApp, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and all social networking. At our dining tables, we give more attention to the messages received than to enjoying the food at hand or in our mouth.

We even have stopped eating broilers… we keep changing our diets according to the whims and fancies of our WhatsApp groups. Fruits before or after the meal? How many litres of water? Let’s not deny the positives of all these… but are we paying a high price for these? Someone said he even stopped reading books, there is enough and more stuff on WhatsApp. Wow.

We have become restless. We don’t know when and how to end a digital conversation. Ok. Ok. Thanks. Welcome. Ok. Ok. Then the emoticons… then…. Endless almost.

Superstitions galore. Please pass this message to at least 20 more idiots, otherwise something bad will befall you. The black cat era has not passed yet.

If some of us can be blamed for gossip, I think almost all of us can be blamed for “detraction.” If gossip is about falsity and evil, detraction is about spreading evil though it’s true. Do you know what…?

We feel in ourselves the compulsion to answer each and every damn thing. Otherwise what will they feel? When were we so needy for love and attention?

Haven’t we become more ego-centric? Hasn’t the already fragmented consciousness breaking up even more? We are easily distracted. We boast ourselves with our capacities for multi-tasking. What does it mean? We are not able to do one thing properly, are we? Even our meetings (especially the boring ones) warrant our cell phones out… “I’d better reply some messages now, and thus use my time!” And this is no laughing stock!

Aren’t we like Martha “distracted” with all our serving? We are serving the Lord, but we are distracted.

Martha is doing the reasonable, hospitable thing—rushing around, fixing, preparing, and as the text brilliantly says, “distracted with all the serving” (Lk 10:40).

Martha was everything good and right, but one thing she was not. She was not present—most likely, she was not present to herself, she was not present to her own feelings of resentment, perhaps her own martyr complex, her need to be needed. This is the kind of goodness that does no good! If she was not present to herself, Martha could not be present to her guests in any healing way, and spiritually speaking, she could not even be present to God. Presence is of one piece. How you are present to anything is how you are present to everything. How you are present to anything is how you are present to God, loved ones, strangers, those who are suffering.

Unless you are present to yourself, you can’t be present to others, or to God.

Jesus, in the same passage of Martha and Mary, doesn’t lose the occasion to affirm Mary, “who sat at his feet listening to him speak” (Luke 10: 39). Mary knows how to be present to him and, presumably, to herself. She understands the one thing that makes all other things happen at a deeper and healing level. Prayer is not one of the ten thousand things, but it is the one thing necessary to see all those ten thousand things. It is the presence that is needed to live those ten thousand things in a healing way.

(Expanded from Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations on “Living in the Now.”)

Monkey Mind

"I can’t escape my monkey mind even on retreat. Daily contemplative prayer is crucial to helping me live in the now. It takes constant intention and practice to remain open, receptive, and awake to the moment. We live in a time with more easily available obstacles to presence than any other period in history. We carry our obstacles in our pockets now, vibrating and notifying and emoji-ing us about everything and nothing. And let’s be honest: most of our digital and personal conversation is about nothing. Nothing that matters, nothing that lasts, nothing that’s real. We think and talk about the same things again and again, like a broken record. Pretty soon we realize we’ve frittered away years of our life, and it is the only life we have." (Richard Rohr, "Living in the Now: Practicing Presence," Daily meditation of Friday, November 24, 2017.)

Unless I am present to myself, I can't be present to others or to God. Unless I'm present to myself, I can't realise that God is not out there, but God is in here: He is right here right now. All that I need is right here right now. The only way to access these is to be present here, to be present now, to be present to myself. I know the hardest place to be is to be here, the hardest time to live through is right now right here. Unless I am present to myself here and now, I can't be present in a healing way to others. In discovering myself, I discover God. In discovering God, I discover myself and my communion with others.

Here and Now

Living in the present moment, here and now. That's spirituality. The patterns of resistance and ego-centredness do arise when you sit now, when you are present here. To be in the present moment is a boring thing.  The mind moves forward or backward: either to future to plan or worry about things, or to replay the past. Jesus asks not to worry about times and seasons, not to worry about past or future. He asks us to forgive the past, and not worry about tomorrow. Not even to worry about food or drink or clothing. God's kingdom is not a matter of food and drink, of clothing and shelter. Jesus asks us not to worry or fret or be anxious about anything or anyone or any "time." The Lord reveals himself in the present; only in the here and now we will know that we are already in union. So the spirituality about the here and now is about living the union with God just now just here. All that we need now is here, all that we need for here is available just now. God is available just here just now. He is present. The boundaries around the present keep increasing and the peace too increases. The past and the future don't matter. No boundaries in space and time are needed to experience God. To lose yourself into this present moment, and waste your time into this present moment is the key to living here and now with God. That lonely, deserted place, where you don't expect anything for your past or future is that place you need to arrive at. That place is here just now. Always in the now. And that is the hardest place to be, the hardest period of time (point) to be conscious of. This is the moment where the point or spark of nothingness is revealed (of which Thomas Merton is speaking).

Spirituality is about seeing

"Lord, let me see." Isn't that a beautiful prayer? Yes. Prayer is not one of the ten thousand things. It's that by which we see those ten thousand things. In prayer we see all things in a new light. (Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs, 93.) Spirituality, therefore, is about seeing. It's not about earning or achieving. It's about relationship rather than results or requirements. Once you see, the rest follows. (Rohr, Everything Belongs, 33.)

Love is Your True Self

The love in you—which is the Spirit in you—always somehow says yes. Love is not something you do; love is someone you are. It is your True Self. Love is where you came from and love is where you're going. It's not something you can buy. It's not something you can attain. It is the presence of God within you, called the Holy Spirit, who is uncreated grace.

You can't manufacture this by any right conduct. You can't make God love you one ounce more than God already loves you right now.

You can't.

You can go to church every day for the rest of your life. God isn't going to love you any more than God loves you right now. You cannot make God love you any less, either—not an ounce less. Do the most terrible thing—steal and pillage, cheat and lie—and God wouldn't love you less. You cannot change the Divine mind about you! The flow of divine love is constant, total, and 100 percent towards your life. God is for you.

We can't diminish God's love for us. What we can do, however, is learn how to believe it, receive it, trust it, allow it, and celebrate it, accepting Trinity's whirling invitation to join in the cosmic dance.

That's why all spirituality comes down to how you're doing life right now.

How you're doing right now is a microcosm of the whole of your life.

How you do anything is how you do everything.

Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (London: SPCK, 2016), 193, slightly edited.

At the Margins

Those who are marginal in the world are central in the Church (or that's how it is supposed to be). Going to the margins revitalizes the Church. We thus find ourselves going to the edge, going to the bottom, going to those who are excluded at the margins. This is to imitate our Master who is constantly going to the lepers and those whom society labels "sinners." The Church will always be renewed when our attention shifts from ourselves to those who need our care. If we go out to the edges, to the poor, then we discover that petty disagreements, fruitless debates and paralysing rivalries will eventually recede and gradually vanish. The most remarkable experience of those who work with the marginalized and the poor is that, in the end, the blessings flow through the poor; and the poor are those who give more than they receive. The poor give food to us. "Blessed are the poor." (See Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey, Nov 1; see also Richard Rohr, The Divine Dance, 133.)

Humility and Honesty

Humility is the mother of all virtues; it is mother of all growth. To be humble is to be honest. Humility and honesty are essentially the same thing. One who is humble is brutally honest about oneself and is open to truth. Only those who are humble and honest can grow in truth. Without these two qualities, we don't grow. The only honest response to life is a humble one. Our growth, in other words, is by a letting-go. It is accomplished by the release of our current defense postures, by the letting go of fear and our attachment to self-image. Thus, we grow more by subtraction than by addition. So our growth is not a matter of accumulating more and better information, but a matter of letting go of our ego and "decreasing." Growth, paradoxically, (in spiritual terms) is not about increasing, but about decreasing. I must decrease, He must increase. (See Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs, 120-121.)