inward/outward

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home….

Relationships show us what’s truly happening in our life, if we have the courage to face it. They reveal this separate, unreal self of ours who wants to isolate us from the rest of the human race…. If we come to church on Sunday with the notion, “I’m here to be alone with God, I’m here to do my private devotion,” we’re living in a dream world. There is no such thing as a solitary Christian.

Because we have received a new kind of love from God–agape–we can love our neighbor in a new way. We can love our neighbor freely without “performance anxiety,” without worrying about results. We can now love, not for success or gratification or happiness or fulfillment, but from God’s love. We can love others not from need but from sheer bounty, just as we have been loved. We become channels of this new living water. We freely pass on this tremendous gift we have received. When we love for some desired end, we are slaves to anxiety and worry about attainment…. Jesus offers a radically different way: “Be anxious for nothing” (Mt 6:25-34). Not even for whether our love works or not.

It is surely an exercise of faith for us to see Christ in each other. But it is through such exercise that we grow and the joy of our vocation assures us we are on the right path. Certainly, it is easier to believe that the sun warms us, and we know that buds will appear on the trees in the wasteland across the street, that life will spring out of the dull clods of that littered park across the way. There are wars and rumors of wars, poverty and plague, hunger and pain. Still, the sap is rising, again there is the resurrection of spring, and God’s continuing promise to be with us always, with comfort and joy, if we will only ask.

We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools.  We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.  And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.  For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.  This is the way God’s universe is made; this is the way it is structured.