By Sister Doreen, SSJD
“I wish I could say everything in one word. I hate all the things that can happen between the beginning of a sentence and the end.” Leonard Cohen.
Occasionally, quotes pass through my mind when in situations that stir my own emotional reactions to what happens during meetings and conversations! I think we all wish that we could bypass the messy, complicated, and often treacherous space between the start and end of a sentence. It speaks to a yearning for pure, direct, and uncompromised communication, avoiding the potential for misunderstanding or emotional difficulty that arises over time. It’s a longing and a desire – and when true understanding happens in the depths of what is being said there is the joy of being understood at that deeper level of who one really is – a miracle has happened!
I remember a game we used to play as children and young adults, when the leader repeated a sentence to one person, and that person in turn repeated it to the next person and so on around the circle until the last person repeated the sentence again out loud. After 20 or more repeats, the end outcome often sounded very different from the original sentence!
Richard Rohr points to “and” as a “shining word” that allows for both-and thinking, avoiding dualism and accepting the whole, and in one of his daily podcasts referred to a poem by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer that begins with the words … ‘I want a word that means okay and not okay …’. Words can mean many things at the same time. We all long to be understood in the depths of our being, to be understood in the ‘wholeness’ of our being, personally within our communities and families and amongst our friends. We want it to be true also as we stand in the world in which we live – such a world so beautiful and so broken.
We live with paradox each and every day, and are surrounded in a world where contradiction is sometimes overwhelming – yes, I want a word that could say everything as I live in and confront the beautiful and broken world that we live in.
As Diana Butler Bass wrote on April 7 just after Easter this year “Don’t let evil force us back into the tomb”. As I read her blog below I found myself saying yes, I want a word that says I feel it all all at once. A word that says it all – in response to Rev. Allison Burns-LaGreca comments below:
“This is Jesus, speaking in His own words: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink.” (Gospel of Matthew 25:35)
When He says this, He is not offering a nice illustration about compassion.
He is making an ontological claim about His presence in the world.
He is saying: When you encounter someone who is thirsty, you are encountering Me.
Not someone like Me. Not someone I care about from a distance. Me.
He makes this even more explicit:
“Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:40).
Do you hear what He’s saying?
The child whose oxygen machine loses power because the electrical grid was cut—that is Christ gasping for breath.
The family with no access to clean water because the infrastructure was destroyed—that is Christ, thirsty.
The mother who cannot feed her children because the food systems have collapsed—that is Christ, hungry.
This is not metaphorical identification.
This is not Jesus saying, “Treat them kindly because I would want you to.”
This is Jesus saying: What you do to them, you do to Me. Literally. Directly. Without separation.
The theological weight of this cannot be overstated.
When leaders threaten to cut off water, electricity, food, when they speak casually of creating conditions that will cause children to suffer, the elderly to die, the vulnerable to face impossible choices, they are not merely committing a political error.
They are not simply making a strategic miscalculation.
They are threatening Christ Himself.”
Yes, I want a word that says it all all at once: one word that says it all!
“We stand with the vulnerable because Christ stands with them.
We speak for those whose lives are treated as expendable because Christ has identified Himself with them.
We reject threats of destruction because Christ has commanded us: “You shall not murder.”
This is not political. This is theological.
This is not optional. This is required.
This is not one possible interpretation among many.
This is the unambiguous teaching of Scripture about where God is, who God defends, and what God demands of those who claim to follow Him.
So let the Church speak. Clearly. Boldly. Without apology.
Let us name evil as evil. Let us stand with the threatened.
Let us pursue peace with the same urgency that empires pursue power.
Because the world is watching to see whether we believe what we say we believe.
And Christ is waiting to see whether we will recognize Him in the faces of those our silence would abandon.”
Yea, I want a word that says it all all at once: one word that says it all!
There is such a contrast between sorrow and joy, those intermingled emotions that we all experience sometime during our journey in life. William Blake (1757–1827) frequently expressed the commingling of apparently opposite feelings—such as joy and devastation, or innocence and experience—as a necessary part of human existence and spiritual progression. He saw contraries not as contradictions to be resolved, but as tensions that drive growth. I found this to be an enlightening and encouraging comment – ‘contraries not as contradictions to be resolved, but as tensions that drive growth.’
I want a word that says it all – a tension that drives growth in myself, and in humble prayer and service growth in those around me and in the world in which I live. This is gist for pondering, gist for longing.
This is the poem called “For When People Ask” by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer:
“I want a word that means okay and not okay,
More than that: a word that means devastated and stunned by joy.
I want the word that says I feel it all all at once.
The heart is not like a songbird singing only one note at a time,
More like a Tuvan throat singer able to sing both a drone
And simultaneously two or three harmonics high above it –
A sound, the Tuvans say, that gives the impression of wind swirling among rocks.
The heart understands swirl, how the churning of opposite feelings
Weaves through us like a insistent breeze leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,
Blesses us with paradox so we might walk more openly
Into this world so rife with devastation, this world so ripe with joy.”
Yes! Yes! “Arise shine for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.” Isaiah 60:1.