Dear Friends,
Have you ever pondered the idea of becoming a monk or a nun? For a while, as a young teen, I seriously entertained the idea of becoming a nun. Yet, not being Catholic presented a quite a roadblock and I really didn’t have a desire to change that. As I grew older, I came to realize my desire to be a nun was partly because I was at an awkward and uncomfortable stage in my life—so difficult and troubling to me—that I wanted to find a way to escape it.
I think many of us tend to think that monks and nuns reject, or at lest intend to escape, the present world, while the rest of us seek to live and find our way—our salvation—in that same world they attempt to escape. Yet, in actual fact they and we are not so different.
The concerns that led our Christian ancestors to take leave of their lives “in this world” are also things we are concerned about: earning a living in a Christian fashion; the responsibilities of family life; temptations that prevent love of God, self, or neighbor; temptations that destroy the self; consumerism; the desire for power over others.
Some, no doubt, really may have thought of themselves as escaping the world. But most, on the contrary, rather than escaping responsibility, “left the world” to get to the real struggle within themselves in order to deepen their relationship with God that they might put their full energies into what God was calling them to do for the world. Monastics believed then, as they do now, that the goal of Christian life is love of God and love of neighbor.
Let me share with you one of my favorite stories about the early monastics:
Once, the brothers in the monastery of Dorotheos of Gaza
forgot what they were about in
the monastic life. Dorotheos used this illustration to remind them of what we, as humans,
are about. Imagine, he asks, that we have drawn a circle with a compass. God is at the center—the point of the compass. Imagine that the outside of the circle is the world, and the lives of human beings are represented by many straight lines drawn from the outside to the center. (Like spokes on a wagon wheel.)
To move toward God, then, human beings move from the outer edge along the lines to the
center. At the same time, the closer they are to God, the closer they become to one another; and the closer they are to one another, the closer they become to God.
For the early monastics, love stands at the heart of the Christian life—as its staring point, it’s goal, and its purpose. It was to be a concrete part of their daily lives. What they wanted was to be able to love the ordinary people around them as images of God on an everyday basis.
We are all made in the image of God. We are meant to have an intimate relationship with God. And in the same manner, we are meant to also have an intimate relationship to each other. The bonds that connect us are the bonds of love—God’s love—for us, but also our love for God… and neighbor… which can never be separated from one from the other.
Such an understanding has real significance for helping us make sense of our human situation.
No doubt, we all have times when we wish we could escape this world. Perhaps we would be wiser to get to the real struggle within ourselves, and in the process deepen our relationship with God that we might find a way to put our full energies into what God is calling us to do for ourselves… for others… for the world… and, so ultimately, for God.
Loving the ordinary people around us as images of God requires being attentive to the people with whom we spend most of our time—people whom we may find irritating from such close contact! Or people whose presence we might so much take for granted that we hardly really notice them any more! How often we find it much easier to love in a crisis situation!!
Yet, as the story of Dorotheos of Gaza shows, it is good that we all are unique human beings connected to God, thus, we should value each other accordingly as individuals. The bonds that connect us are the bonds of love—God’s love for us, but also, our love for God—and in the middle of that connection is our neighbor. In God’s eyes that’s what we, as humans, are all about.
God bless,
Pastor Deborah
A Prayer For The World
Let the rain come and wash away
the ancient grudges, the bitter hatreds
held and nurtured over generations.
Let the rain wash away the memory
of the hurt, the neglect.
Then let the sun come out and
fill the sky with rainbows.
Let the warmth of the sun heal us
wherever we are broken.
Let it burn the fog so that
we can see each other clearly.
So that we can see beyond labels,
beyond accents, gender or skin color.
Let the warmth and brightness
of the sun melt our selfishness.
So that we can share the joys and
feel the sorrows of our neighbors.
And let the light of the sun
be so strong that we will see all
people as our neighbors.
Let the earth, nourished by the rain,
bring forth flowers
to surround us with beauty.
And let the mountains teach our hearts
to reach upward to heaven.
Amen.
-- Rabbi Harold S. Kushner