Sunday September 10: Tough Love: Making Room for Love

To Practice

• Slowly re-read these passages aloud in the manner of Lectio Divina, hearing and feeling them in your body and senses. Gaze upon the image. What speaks to your heart?  What is being called forth?
• Pray the prayer from the Jewish tradition as a portal to grace. What do you experience?
• If there is unforgiveness in your heart, you may be interested in this 40-day forgiveness praxis booklet (available in hardcopy and digital PDF).

If you would like to re-read the full reflection, you may do so here: https://mailchi.mp/coutreach/word-of-the-week-sept10

“Forgiveness is simply about understanding that every one of us is both inherently good and inherently flawed.” Many times, it takes me more than seventy times seven to forgive myself or others of things done or undone. To acknowledge my inherent goodness and flaws releases me from my straitjacket of rightness, accesses fresh viewpoints, and sustains my forgiveness practice. <3 linda

I guess I am blessed. There is only one time in my life that I was tempted not to forgive. It involved my siblings. They made a family decision without consulting me. I was tempted to flush them down the toilet, but looked at all we had been through growing up and decided it was better to love them than to flush them. I am a tough bird. Skin like a rhino, so maybe that is why life has not hurt me that much. I remember my daughter in law screaming and yelling at me for some perceived insult that I had given as a compliment. At another time in my life I would have given her both barrels and it would be a moment she would never forget. But age had changed me. I just stood there until she was finished screaming at me. I never had to forgive her. I did not hate her. As a matter of fact she was my favorite daughter in law. I am a great believer in divine Providence. Insults happen to me for a reason that God only knows. Ig God only depended on saints, very little would change in the world. He/She depends on flawed human beings to accomplish Divine ends. For some reason I needed my daughter in law screaming at me, either to point out some fault in me or to let me know that she had an open, psychic wound from her childhood, that my compliment just poured salt on and her pain was unbearable and she let me have it with both barrels. I was like that growing up on the streets in NYC.

Thank you, Linda and Thomas for your sharing just as the reflection for the week are unfolding,  as I embark upon a most difficult situation the likes of which I/we had never envisioned. The meat of this week’s reflection are so appropriate as I with many others sit stunned! I needed to hear your reflection. Multiple thanks! God does provide in mysterious ways, though I know noting of the providing at this time. The stunned me/us  sit in stuntedness!

This is a Visio Divina reflection from Tom Agness.  He has trouble posting, so he shared it with me to share with all of you:

Blood and Wine

The picture of Reconciliation, using the Visio Divina practice, brings many images, thoughts, signs and symbols to my mind.

The red color at the bottom of the picture depicts the bloody sacrifice of God, unspoken, but present in the consecration at Mass. “This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant, given for you, so that all sin is forgiven.”

The blue, or indigo color just above it signifies Advent, Incarnation and Epiphany and the theological gift of divine light, which is present in the picture as white.

Above that is the color purple, signifying Lent, the Passion, Death & Resurrection of the Christ, Easter, along with the feasts of the Ascension and Pentecost.

Above that is again, the color red, symbolizing the New Wine, or the Joy in the New Life offered and given to all. And the theological gift of  Divine or Eternal Life present, as depicted in the Eucharistic celebration of the Mass, a forerunner to the Heavenly Banquet.

Off to one side is the color green, the green of Ordinary Time, where Divine Love grows like flowers in a garden.

The picture looks like it’s stained glass, apropos to a worship space. I spent many hours in spaces like those, gazing at stained glass windows that told stories, or were pictures of various saints. I also see a cross in there, when I let go of the analytical side of my brain and just let the picture speak to me.

Where, how does Reconciliation come into play? Because the whole Eucharistic celebration, in fact, the whole of life, is the re-enactment of God’s simple, single act of self-giving that I witness, and take part in simply by being alive, and being awake.

Some of the Eastern religions and philosophies are what I call, ‘meta-historical’. The smile of the Buddha seems to imply he is enjoying a little inside joke – that while Western Christianity needed  to have God, or the Son of God actually come to earth, die and be resurrected,  what I call the historical principle, for us to get it, – the Eastern religions seemed to already intuitively know God’s unconditional love for us.

Nevertheless, we both wind up in the same place. Enlightenment, Unity consciousness, heaven, nirvana. Different words but the same meaning.

Where it all comes together for me is this description of Eucharist:

Eucharist is

invitation

offering

receiving

sharing

the

Divine

Light

Life

and

Love

of God

now

and

forever.

I believe.

And I am reconciled, not by anything I have done, but by what, as Thomas Keating has said; “God signing on the dotted line.” to show how much God loves us.

It was, is, and will always be God reconciling us to God self.

Thank God!

Thank you WotW for today’s prayer chapel and the Sit, reading and sharing.  And very many thanks Pamela, for sharing Tom Agness’ reflection here.   To be sat with & pondered.  Thank you Tom.

[Adeline Behm]

From the abyss of stunned, the only consolation is in these words from Romans 13:18: Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one anther. Consolation yes, but also a consenting recommitment. And so,  I begin/end my  sits  with these consenting  gestures : I await, I allow, I accept, I attend in humble humility, stunned..

• This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by Adeline Behm.

Through much Welcoming Prayer-ing , body consenting and correctly naming my anger I am moving beyond the experience of being held captive i.e. stunned, to accepting the path through  Lamentations 3:21-26 as  this “inside/outside” kind of person that I am, accept my place as part of a multitude in mourning.

Thanks for this thoughtful reflection, Tom. And thanks for passing it along, Pamela.

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