By Sister Doreen, SSJD
“Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things … When you are left alone, pray. Love to throw yourself on the earth and kiss it. Kiss the earth and love it with an unceasing, consuming love.” (Fyodor Dostoevsky in ‘The Karamazov Brothers’ quoted in Thomas Berry’s “The Universe Story”)
Dostoevsky’s quote made me ask myself questions: I wonder what it would be like for me and for everyone in the world to love so generously without holding back? As I look around and listen it seems to be that what I need, what we need, is a love earthquake! – a love revolution! – that shakes us up to the understanding that we are all “united in our createdness, given to one another as companions, sacraments of ‘the love that moves the sun and other stars.”
In pondering Dostoevsky’s quote, I felt drawn to Psalm 85, one of my favourite psalms and the verses in particular, 10-11: “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven.” In the message translation these same verses “Love and truth meet in the street, right living and whole living embrace and kiss! Truth sprouts green from the ground. Right living pours down from the skies!” There seems to be summed up in Dostoevsky’s and the Psalms quote the truth that miracle and mystery are a mixture, new life springing up from whatever situations or season of life we happen to be in. Mercy, love, and truth when mixed together with righteousness, right living, and peace – all of these embracing, creating, that ‘miracle mystery recipe’ which is the foundation of our vocation. It shouts with hope, the possibility and the potential for a new life, a new way of living together on this earth, a new freedom for the whole cosmos! And it shouts with hope and it shouts with ‘it can be done’.
Jesus said it loud and clear in Matthew 25:31-40 … summed up in the last part of the gospel story, “When you did it to the least of these my people, you did it to me.” Sally McFague wrote: “Christian discipleship for the twenty-first century North American Christian means ‘cruciform living’, an alternative notion of the abundant life, which will involve a philosophy of ‘enoughness’, limitations on energy use, and sacrifice for the sake of others. For us privileged Christians a ‘cross-shaped’ life will not be primarily what Christ does for us, but what we can do for others. We do not need so much to accept Christ’s sacrifice for our sins as we need to repent of a major sin – our silent complicity in the impoverishment of others and the degradation of the planet. In Charles Birch’s pithy statement: “The rich must live more simply, so that the poor may simply live.”
Micah 6:6-8 proclaimed humankinds’ vocation in answer to the question “What does the Lord require of you?” It is not a lot of offerings or things to impress God, instead we are to listen: “God has already made abundantly clear what “good” is, and what God needs from you: simply do justice, love kindness, and humbly walk with your God.”
There is a hymn in Common Praise, Anglican Church of Canada #171 that is a meditation to ponder:
What does the Lord require for praise and offering? What sacrifice, desire, or tribute bid you bring?
Do justly; love mercy, walk humbly with your God.
Rulers of earth, give ear! Should you not justice know? Will God your pleading hear, while crime and cruelty grow? Do justly; love mercy; walk humbly with your God.
All who gain wealth by trade, for whom the worker toils, think not to win God’s aid if greed your commerce soils.
Do justly; love mercy; walk humbly with your God.
How shall our life fulfill God’s law so hard and high? Let Christ endue our will with grace to fortify.
Then justly, in mercy, we’ll humbly walk with God.
The Season of Creation which we have been pondering over the last few weeks leads us to that place where we know that we are called to discipleship – to partners with God. We come, however reluctantly at times, to that place where the flame of God’s love for us fills us with a passion for truth and justice. I sometimes think that what we want is the reassuring feelings of God’s closeness, God’s nearness but not the challenge, the risks, the unknown that this closeness asks of us: to confront change, to change our life, to a a radical reorientation of our entire perspective and way of living. Such is the message of Micah, and such is the message of Jesus in Matthew 25: 31-40.
How do we keep the love of God aflame in us? How do we keep the fire of our enthusiasm and longing for new growth, for that more of ourselves, for that more for the world and the cosmos alive? I believe that it is by keeping close, day by day, to the heart of God, through prayer and through a continual yearning to be at one with ourselves, each other, the world and whole creation, and God. To really hear Micah’s words – to do justice, to love kindness and mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. We need each other to help keep the spark of love alive within us. Ours is a great yearning for an enthusiasm for life, a longing for God, an openness to truth, and a hunger for transformation.
Joyce Rupp wrote a beautiful poem called “Instrument of God” – I share it:
A small, wooden flute, an empty, hollow reed, rests in her silent hand.
It awaits the breath of one who creates song, through its open form.
My often-empty life rests in the hand of God; like a hollowed flute,
It yearns for the melody which only Breath can give.
The small, wooden flute and I, we need the one who breathes, we await One who makes melody.
And the One whose touch creates, awaits our empty, ordinary forms
So that the song-starved world may be fed with golden melodies.
She based her poem on some of Rabindranath Tagore’s poems, in ‘ Gitanjali’. He talks about yearning to sing a song that never happened because he was so busy stringing and unstringing his instrument. Tagore, Joyce, and I all ponder how preoccupied we get, how busy with details, work, how our calendars become crammed, and our life so full that we miss the song that God wants to play in our lives. We struggle with getting things done, completing projects, facing the demands of meetings and responsibilities. We miss the opportunities to be an instrument of God, we miss ‘when you did it to the least of these my people, you did it to me’ and we bypass opportunities to ‘simply do justice, love kindness, and humbly walk with your God’.
To be a disciple today in our world, so broken and so beautiful, is a call to a sacrificial – cruciform lifestyle. The season of creation has opened up a desire to participate in a positive and constructive way, to explore new possibilities, to awaken undiscovered potential, and to discover new ways to bless, and inspire, and enliven new life for the whole cosmos. For me and for you it will mean that we make the road by walking it – a way out of old and destructive patterns into new and more creative ones. It is a task that is never finished. We will spend our time falling down and getting up, over and over again, always held in the heart and hands of a God who is always with us in unconditional and tenacious love. Always ready to pick us up and lovingly setting us on our way.
I share a hymn for pondering: Sing a New Creation, Anglican Church of Canada #2:
Longing for light, we wait in darkness, longing for truth, we turn to you.
Make us your own, your holy people, light for the world to see.
Christ be our light! Shine in our hearts. Shine through the darkness.
Christ be our light! Shine in your Church gathered today.
Longing for peace, our world is troubled. Longing for hope, many despair.
Your word alone has power to save us. Make us your living voice.
Christ be our light! Shine in our hearts. Shine through the darkness.
Christ be our light! Shine in your Church gathered today.
Longing for food, many are hungry. Longing for water, many still thirst.
Make us your bread, broken for others, shared until all are feed.
Christ be our light! Shine in our hearts. Shine through the darkness.
Christ be our light! Shine in your Church gathered today.
Longing for shelter, many are homeless. Longing for warmth, many are cold.
Make us your building, sheltering others, wall made of living stone.
Christ be our light! Shine in our hearts. Shine through the darkness.
Christ be our light! Shine in your Church gathered today.
Many the gifts, many the people, many the hearts that yearn to belong.
Let us be servants to one another, making your kingdom come.
Christ be our light! Shine in our hearts. Shine through the darkness.
Christ be our light! Shine in your Church gathered today.
Yes! Yes! “Arise shine for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.” Isaiah 60:1.