Mercy and Humiliation

God, out of his infinite mercy, made himself equal to us in the incarnation by identifying with the human condition. God makes us equal to him by transforming us into his own unconditional love.

-Fr. Thomas Keating 

Somehow I knew I wasn't done with blogging about mercy. It's following me around apparently.

Keating seems to be suggesting that one way in which God expresses mercy is by making himself equal with us. I suspect some will read that and consider it blasphemy. The idea of God lowering herself to the status of created humans is understandably insulting, and is likely one reason why other religions and sects have rejected this Christian doctrine. But if you think about it, the incarnation is sort of a blasphemous idea if we try to wrap our heads around the idea of Jesus being fully human and fully divine. Even if we consider it a part of our orthodox Christian faith, I think it's still an idea that we resist. 

But if we can tolerate the perceived blasphemy of a God who becomes equal with his own creation, there is perhaps a deeper understanding of mercy to be found. If one way God expresses mercy is by becoming equal with us, perhaps we too must express mercy by becoming equal with others. Maybe one of the biggest barriers we face in extending true mercy (not condescending "help" or pity), is that elevation of our selves above others. Maybe we can distinguish mercy from pity, in recognizing that in mercy we become equals rather than superiors who are nobly refraining from executing our version of justice.

I think I was stumbling around with this idea earlier in blog posts when I was bringing out Father Greg Boyle's idea of embracing kinship. In kinship we are reminding ourselves that not only do we belong to each other, but that we are equals in the human family. 

So mercy requires us to humble ourselves. It requires a certain "humiliation" of our egos if you will. 

Developing this concept, Fr. Keating says:

"The most productive effort is to accept the endless humiliations of the false self. The spiritual journey is not a career, but a succession of “diminutions of self,” as Teilhard de Chardin put it. This has nothing to do with the neurosis of a low self-image. It is simply the fact that we are completely dependent on the love of God. We are always in the arms of the beloved, whatever we may feel or think." (Contemplative Outreach, December 2015)

It seems to me that unlike God we don't become equals, we actually just learn to recognize that we already are equals with the rest of humanity. After our false and elevated selves have been broken down, we recognize ourselves as being just like everyone else - completely dependent on the love of God. 

So today I'm confronted with this profound mystery that God, and the people I look down on, and the people I think are better than me, are all in some respect equal to me through our shared humanity. I'm not suggesting the equality means we are all identical or even the same. I recognize that God maintains a superiority over me in some certain aspects because she is also divine. And just because I'm equal in my dependence on God's love doesn't mean I'm the exact same as ISIS or Desmond Tutu. But in so far as I am equal to all of these, I become more capable of mercy. 

As a person in a helping role this seems rather crucial to me. Professional health care can easily take on a dynamic of the helper being elevated and/or looking down on those seeking help. But as we tap into the flow of mercy we are changed into people who care for others out of equality rather than  responding to weakness from a place of superiority. 

God, help us all to see who we really are. Give us the courage to consent to having our false selves stripped away so we can recognize our equality with you and all humanity. Help us to receive your mercy and be changed by it so that we can extend mercy to others. 

Clinging to fragile things

Life is fragile.

This is both its tragedy and beauty at the same time.

Life seems like a hibiscus flower to me. Unfolding with astonishing beauty for only a day or two before it withers. It's delicate features so easy damaged by a harsh touch or damaging winds. And it happens so quickly that we can easily miss it - preoccupied as we so often are by unimportant things. But the fact that it is so quickly passing is also what makes it so precious. That it lives only briefly, is part of what makes it so beautiful to begin with. The cold and dismal landscape outside as I write this, makes me appreciate all the more the fleeting exquisiteness of June.

Months back I wrote about my obsession with pictures - with my foolhardy attempts to capture the past and keep it from...well, passing. Since then I've been trying to use photos instead as something to help me reorient myself to the present moment. Rather than yearn for what's passed when I look at them, I remind myself of what's still here in this moment.

That 5 year-old with the electric smile, whose picture is on my desktop reminding me of a happy time at San Diego's famed sunset cliffs. Now she's closer to 6, a lover of school, 3 inches taller, and a little more sassy. But her love, her joy, her laughter are still with me tonight. I can revel in them anytime I choose. Pictures have become something that point me towards revelling in the present moment.

It's so easy when we are confronted with the fragility of life to want to grasp hold, to cling to things so tightly because we fear losing them. That same 5-year old has a tendency to pick up flowers that have fallen and want to bring them home with her. Often in the process of clinging to her treasure she accidentally ruins them. Her attempt to protect and preserve by holding it tight in her hands, leads to crushed and wilted flowers. It's understandable - I cling to things in my own life - and in my attempts to preserve what is beautiful or precious I end up I clinging too tight just like her.

What strikes me now and again is my human tendency to want to cling to, and even worship the created things of this world instead of the Creator. I want to save the short-lived splendour of a flower, which is of course impossible. But that splendour points to something deeper, something eternal and omnipresent. I cannot keep the flower. I cannot preserve my precious and innocent 5 year-old. (Attempts to keep her a permanent 5 year-old would no doubt destroy her) But beauty and joy are experiences that point to the presence of the divine. And God, woven into the fabric of the universe, is not something I need to grasp or cling to, because God is always there. The same God that brings joy and delight through flowers or the blessing of a daughter, is always around me.

If God is love, than whenever I experience love, I also experience God.

There is no need then to grasp onto love from a particular person or in a particular experience, because love can be found wherever and whenever we have "eyes" for it.

Life is fragile and passing, but love is eternal. While the finite and temporal qualities of human existence are both tragic and beautiful, they are only passing reflections of the more eternal and omnipresent qualities of the divine. I want to cling less to God's reflection, and delight more in God herself. Maybe this is the "eternal" life Jesus offer us - that we can experience the eternal reality now if we connect with the presence of God in all the various forms it takes in our lives.

I've been looking for ways to preserve my photos to protect them from the passage of time and decay. And while this is a perfectly fine thing to do, what I realize is that attempts to preserve temporary things is no substitute for regularly bringing my heart and mind back to the eternal life I can encounter in the present moment.

May we all have eyes and ears and hearts that experience God's presence in the forms of love, joy, mercy, grace, beauty....and all the other ways we can experience him.

First World Problems

Over Christmas I was grumbling to myself about not having enough space in my fridge for all the food we had. As I honed my Tetris skills trying to find places for all of it to go and still be able to shut the door without food falling out, I realized I needed a much bigger fridge. Ironically, I have also complained at times that the fridge is too big - we are prone to losing things in it and finding them months later having evolved into life forms too awful to talk about.

Sometimes it's helpful to say these things out loud, so you can hear how ridiculous you're being.

"my fridge is too big" or "I have too much food".

Try saying these things out loud while watching a news report about people fleeing their country and living in refugee camps.

When I'm actually paying attention to the absurdity of my complaints, I'm convicted by how ungrateful I am and how entitled I seem about my life.

Sometimes we use the label "first-world problems" to describe the kinds of ridiculous things many of us get upset about.

Rohinton Mistry, in his astounding tale of life and suffering in India entitled, A Fine Balance, captures it well in this little dialogue:

“I've done lots of jobs. Right now, I'm a hair collector."
"That's good", said Ishvar tentatively. "What do you have to do as a hair-collector?"
"Collect hair."
"And there is money in that?"
"Oh very big business. There is a great demand for hair in foreign countries."
"What do they do with it? Asked Om skeptical." 
"Many different things. Mostly they wear it. Sometimes they paint it in different colors - red, yellow, brown, blue. Foreign women enjoy wearing other people's hair. Men also, especially if they are bald.  
In foreign countries they fear baldness. They are so rich in foreign countries, they can afford to fear all kinds of silly things.” 

Fearing baldness - a "first-world problem" indeed.

It's rare that a line I read in a book sticks with me for years, but that idea about us being so rich we can afford to fear silly things has stayed with me, perhaps one could even say haunted me.

So let me continue to own this (although I know I'm not alone): at times I complain about things of insignificance and even believe I am truly suffering over them.

I close my eyes to the images in the news, and block out my memories of what I saw in the developing world so that I can ignore the kinds of suffering that go on for two-thirds of the world's inhabitants. To be perfectly honest, sometimes I don't really want perspective on my problems - I'd rather complain and feel justified in doing it. I don't think many of us want to perceive ourselves as privileged or even unfairly blessed.

But as I recognize my kinship with all of humanity I'm forced to consider the fact that I might be like Cinderella's older step-sisters - complaining about my dress to wear to the ball while someone else in my family is doing hard labour.

A friend of mine forbids her kids to use the phrase "I'm starving" because she feels it disrespects the suffering of people who are actually starving around the world. It's probably the least we can do.

But here's the other side of the coin with "first world problems"....

...sometimes they do represent true suffering, and we are foolish to quickly dismiss them merely because they do not appear to have the gravity of physical deprivation that much of the world suffers.  I would even argue that when we ignore those true instances of suffering by labeling them as insignificant first world problems, we do a harm not only to ourselves, but to those in developing countries.

Is baldness truly a form of suffering? Obviously not. But it's not just about hair is it? Many people fear baldness because they fear being isolated, rejected, even being unloveable. Our vanity in wealthy nations is so often a product of deeper fears: symbolic, rather than literal dangers. As Mistry points out in this passage, wealth means we can afford to be afraid of silly things.

However, our wealth also creates some of the conditions that make us vulnerable to these symbolic fears in the first place.

We fear abandonment and isolation based on loss of sex appeal because social bonds are weak in countries like ours where individualism has become a dominant ideology. Where families and tribes are no longer the chief organizing principle of social arrangements, connection is now based on the ability to attract social bonds, rather than on the basis of birth into a particular group.

I have no interest in defending my absurd complaints about having too much food in my house. But my contradictory complaints (fridge too small and too big) are a symptom of bigger problems - problems that shouldn't be ignored but rather magnified and addressed. And when we minimize the cultural sickness of living in North American society, we overlook the brokenness of our cultures and remain wounded in ways that I think actually perpetuates our mistreatment of the developing world. If we constantly de-legitimize the problems of loneliness, consumerism, individualism, and lives controlled by technology, because they don't seem as devastating as human-trafficking or lack of access to clean water, we run the risk of missing how wealth and overabundance create their own forms of suffering and brokenness.

I appreciate that we must be careful not to enter into pity for ourselves and equate our suffering with many of those in the developing world. The truth is, suffering cannot be compared. But to write off the problems associated with over-abundance entirely because they're not devastating to human life in the same ways, is also a problem. I think it's a mistake to focus exclusively on the starvation of some in our human family, while ignoring the spiritual illness of our own gluttony.

I do think it's high time we looked carefully at how our overabundance is shaping us and harming us. Not so that we can ignore the problems of those in poverty or make ourselves feel less guilty about our participation in their repression, but so that we can pursue our own healing and restoration for the good of the world. Sometimes we have to fix what's broken in ourselves before we can offer help to others. But before we can fix it, we have to acknowledge that the values and systems we participate in that cause such inequality, are also harming ourselves.