A little
story from Henri Nouwen’s life:
Henri
Nouwen describes how, one day, a differently abled community member named Janet
came up and asked him for a blessing. Henri was distracted by other things, so he
quickly traced the sign of the cross on her forehead.
“No,”
protested Janet. “I want a real blessing!”
Henri
understood, then, how he had been insensitive to her need. He promised that, at
the next prayer service, he would have a special blessing for her.
At the
end of the prayer service, about thirty people were sitting in a circle on the floor.
Henri announced, “Janet has asked me for a special blessing.”
He didn’t
quite know what she was seeking from him, but her next move left no doubt. She walked
up to him and wrapped her arms around him. As he embraced her in return, her slight
form was almost covered by the folds of the white robe he wore while leading worship.
As they
held each other, Henri said “Janet, I want you to know that you are God’s Beloved
Daughter. You are precious in God’s eyes. Your beautiful smile, your kindness to
the people in your house, and all the good things you do show what a beautiful human
being you are. I know you feel a little low these days and that there is some sadness
in your heart, but I want you to remember who you are: a very special person, deeply
loved by God and all the people who are here with you.”
Janet
raised her head and looked at him. Her beaming smile told him that she had truly
understood and received the blessing.
What
happened next was unexpected. As Janet returned to her place, another woman raised
her hand. She, too, wanted a blessing. She stood up and embraced Henri, too, laying
her face against his chest. After that, a great many more of the differently abled members
of the community took their turn, coming up for the same sort of blessing.
For
Henri, the most touching moment was when one of the assistants, a twenty-four-year-old
college student, raised his hand and asked, “And what about me?” John was a big,
burly young man, an athlete. Henri did the same with him, wrapping his arms around
him and saying, “John, it is so good that you are here. You are God’s Beloved Son…”
John
looked back with tears in his eyes and simply said, “Thank you, thank you very much.”
When
things are difficult and life is hard, remember who you are: you are a special person.
You are deeply loved by God and by all those who are with you.
We
are God’s Beloved; we belong to God. We are already the children of God.
We
need to reclaim this Belovedness of ours. Again and again.
1 John
3:1-2. “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called
children of God! And that is what we are! Dear friends, now we are children of God,
and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears,
we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”
It
is easier to belong to a group than to belong to God. Both these must go hand in
hand, but it goes without saying that belonging to God is more important than belonging
to a group.
In
our ministry what do we insist on? Belonging to God, or belonging to our parish/
our community/ our congregation/ our church…?
Do
people come to church out of fear or out of love? Do they/we know that they are
the Beloved of God? That God loves them without conditions or expectations?
We
seem to be worshipping the Way, more than walking the Way. Jesus said, “Follow me,”
and didn’t want any worship. Doing the journey is more important than worshipping
the journey.
Do
not pull Christ out of the Trinity? Cosmic Christ. John 1:1. Colossians 3:11. God
is continuously speaking to / communicating with / revealing himself to / relating
with you. This is the Word of God. Image Became Flesh. Christ. We can touch God.
God reveals himself through: nature, parents, sisters, enemies, church, bible,
sacraments, other religions, atheists.
Often the very things that don’t appeal to us have the most to teach
us spiritually. So much of our lives is dictated by our preferences, what we like
and don’t like. We all naturally gravitate toward what we find attractive, and there’s
nothing inherently wrong with that. But we need to be aware that there are things
deeper than our preferences. If we do not recognize that, we will follow them addictively
and never uncover our soul’s deeper desires.
Christianity
should not be an evacuation plan to the next world. Or we priests and religious
should not be merely involved in “sin management.”
In
unhealthy religion, we’ve felt this pathological need to make everybody the same;
church has become an exclusionary institution instead of this great banquet feast
where Jesus constantly invites in sinners, outcasts, the marginalized, the ne’er-do-wells.
Matthew 22 gives this story.
How
much are we able to include the bad people in our circle? This is the true
test of our religion, of Christianity? Am I able to love all the wrong people?
Samaritans, prostitutes, tax collectors, Hindutva and ISIS fundamentalists, Mr Modi,
and all the wrong and unjust people that I can think of at this moment. Am I able
to love all the bad people, wrong people, the people who are not worthy of any love?
The true test of spirituality is about including the outsider.
Church
is a collection of sinners and saints, bad and good people, dirty and clean, disobedient
and obedient, virgins and prostitutes, unruly, uncouth, and refined persons, LGBTQIA.
Let
us celebrate differences.
I’m
advocating for openness: let us accept and celebrate truth, goodness, beauty, holiness
wherever it’s found.
Boundaries
are important, identities are significant; but nothing is absolute except God. Making
anything else absolute except God is called idolatry.
There
are no boundaries in nature, only lines. They are merely contrasts. Perhaps the
divisions are in our mind. Therefore, growth is expansion of our consciousness,
expansion of our horizons. It is about collapsing all boundaries, to integrate all
the alienated aspects of ourselves.
In
God’s sight, there are no divisions. In his sight, there is nothing ugly. Everything
is beautiful.
We
discover God within a group or a structure. We have God-experience within a group,
that does not mean that the group is greater than God Himself. This is the mystery
of our lives.
Group-think
should not become a substitute for God-think. Otherwise, we will believe that God
is found only by our group. We then claim that identification with our group is
the only way to serve God. If that is the case, what is the difference between other
religion fundamentalists and us?
People
who talk like me, who look like me or think like me don’t threaten my boundaries.
My ego wants this uniformity; my ego is comfortable with uniformity, not differences.
But my point is not to break the boundaries or our indentities.. they are needed.
Yet they are not absolute. We need to keep expanding our boundaries.
Let
us not become some pujaris who are interested in serving our own selfish interests.
Let us go out on to the streets, even get dirty as Pope Francis would advise us;
the church is not about locking ourselves in and not getting ourselves dirty. The
church is a field hospital. We are wounded healers.
Our
people have the right to know that they are loved by God unconditionally, even when
they don’t pay their monthly subscriptions. Even when they are not regular for the
church services. Not regular for meditation or prayers. You see, love is a dangerous thing: it brings in
a lot of disorder. Be happy with the disorder, rather than the artificial order
that you can bring about. I’m not concerned about the order or the disorder, but
my focus is the re-order that only one, only Him who can bring about. My God is
a God of history, who is incarnate flesh and blood in this material world.
Interestingly
such a work is not an outside work, but an interior, inside work. Without this solid
interiority we cannot work for others’ good. In fact, I had started my talk with
this topic: Belovedness. We are God’s Beloved, His loved ones.
Unless
we affirm ourselves on this, I don’t think we will able to give our best. We are
loved unconditionally by God. We need to experience this unfailing love of God,
shown in Jesus Christ, our Saviour.
God
is for us. 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 do anything is how you do everything.
The
world is good. God is good. God is for you. The world is for you, not against you.
The world is not gloom and doom as our television channels and newspapers and “bad
news” media project minute after minute. I’m not denying there is evil, injustice,
war and violence… but isn’t it also true that it is not the whole picture of the
world or of reality?
Talking
about the different ways in which we can work about our inside, about our interiority:
I said, am I able to open up to at least one person—who knows all my secrets, and
who can receive me unjudgmentally, unconditionally. This is not easy. You need to
lose yourself, die to your false self, let go of your ego.
All
spirituality is about dying or letting go. Every Eucharist, every sacrament is about
dying, about letting go. Even love is about letting go: about emptying ourselves,
kenosis. True community living is also
about emptying ourselves. Emptying our pre-judgments, biases, giving up our blindness.
These
are some of the ways we need in order to let go of our false selves: prayer, reflection,
contemplation, meditation, silence, reading a serious book, watching an inspiring
movie, taking a walk, enjoying a sunset or a sunrise or a natural scenery, having
a chat with a dear one, opening ourselves to a spiritual director, and umpteen ways
of getting into ourselves.
Why
my insistence on a life of interiority. St Teresa of Avila: “It is foolish to think
that we will enter heaven without entering into ourselves.”
In the contemplative sit of 20-30 minutes,
as a woman: I am not beautiful. I am not charming enough. I am not capable enough.
Wait and observe, and have patience, and only then
we will hear the thin and feeble voice speaking
of light, joy, peace, and love. It will call you the Beloved. (Praying is
listening. To pray is to listen to the voice that
calls you the beloved.)
Love
the mess that you are. Breathe in and breathe out “I love you” in the mess and disorder
that you see in yourself and in others.
We
don’t like being what we are; and worse, we always want be someone else. We’re mimetic
and envious. We’ve traded our instincts for aspirations, wishing we were thinner,
or taller, or more handsome, or whatever, anything other than this little incarnation
that we are for one gorgeous moment in time. We have a hard time finding grace in
“just this”!
All
I can give back to God, and all that God wants, is what God has first given to me:
this little moment of incarnation, my little “I am” that echoes the great and eternal
I AM in grateful awareness. (YHWH)
You
are precious. You are Beloved. You are special. At the same time, each and every
one is special. You are the centre of history, but also completely indispensable.
Only God is absolute, important, and at the centre. His centre is everywhere, and
his circumference nowhere.
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