Peace

Peace

Saturday 9 May 2015

Is Your Life Grounded in a Community of Love?



Education is not wisdom, just as age is not maturity. Power and influence do not always equate with capability or competency; and intellectual ability is not the same as understanding. But we often forget all of these things. I am refreshed when I read the story of the Ethiopian official. I wonder sometimes if our leaders both in Church and in society would do well to observe the Ethiopians approach to seeking understanding. Well the Ethiopian is a man of means, a person of influence in the court of a queen, and he is perplexed in his attempt to grasp the deeper meaning of the sacred words he is reading; yet he willingly opens himself to learn something new from someone else.

In fact, he seems to understand a basic principle of a life lived in humility. We need guides. We need mentors and conversation partners and covenant commitments in community. We need other voices who have heard other stories. We need other people willing to share their successes and their failures, their faults and their virtues. None of us, no matter how educated or powerful or influential or smart, will be able to navigate a life let alone a life of faith on our own. And for my part, I offer my thanks to the Ethiopian, who accepted the grace of Gods intervention in his life without asking Philip, Where did you earn your degree? What is your most recent successful project launch? How long have you been in ministry? Who do you know that I know? Perhaps, instead, he simply said, Please share with me what you think. I want to know.

You know as we ponder the glue that creates community and enhances our interior life we cannot but be drawn to the love our God offers to us and through us. Talking about the deeply interior one is lead to the understanding that it touches the universal. It touches God and it touches us into the depths of the love that is God. Here I am off on a little tangent reflecting the mystical tradition of the Christian church from which I come. Evelyn Hill once put it that the contemplative life, with its long slow growth and costly training, prepares the human person for the life of compassion, union with the Holy and with people. Life is grounded in community a vineyard of neighbour planted with neighbour. 

We can then say that vines and root systems enmesh. We drink the same water and breathe the same air. Humans live in overlapping spheres of human interaction in one global community and an increasingly fragile ecosystem. Jesus taught that you cant love God and not strive to love others. What you have done to the least of these links us completely and totally to God. But growing in love is extremely difficult, often stunted through false starts, twisted mistakes, and well-meaning disasters. If we factor in poverty, addictions, mental illness, disordered loves wilful, ignorant, and biological we could get horribly depressed about our chance of failing our God and not receiving his love. Then add the usual character flaws of greed and envy and fear. 

Also note what happens to the human person during war, famine, displacement, stress of all kinds. Every stress affects every part of the vine. You are not born mastering or being an expert at the impossible standard of loving neighbour as yourself, loving enemies, honouring the stranger in your midst, and laying down your life for your friends. Those lessons come at a cost, often through tragedy and pain, a tremendous suffering for such awakening and growth a life lived in Gods love and on our journey of faith is a long, slow growth with often costly training.  There is much pruning, practice and prayer. Loves impossible enterprise finds nourishment deep in the darkness of Divine Love where we find the strength to bear blights. The times when we might have too much rain and too little sun, or too much sun and not enough rain. 

Love demands deep roots for the length of days to withstand generations of loves disasters. Where do we find such a love to strengthen and support us on the journey? Like me I hope and pray you will find it in our God.

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