Expanding the Tent

Our prayer during community days in June focused on the four “pillars” that give us an inside view of our Dominican charism. Another metaphor is the beauty of four shades of light within the whiteness that pieces the darkness: Common Life, Common Prayer, Study, and the Mission of proclaiming the just word.

Long ago we learned that common life meant the sharing of budgets, of food, of living space. What will common life mean as we enter the time after our 800^th Anniversary as an Order? I suggest we are being challenged to “widen the tent” of our early understanding.

We live in a world of instantaneous communication. We can be in Syria during the evening news grieving with the refugees fighting famine in their camps. We are no longer just living in our community residences. We are citizens of a world in great pain. Called to this wider sense of family, we extend our love and prayer to wherever it is needed. No boundaries prevent us. We can go to the fringes, to the frontiers. While lovingly aware of our closest local common life, we can widen our tents…we can widen our understanding of common life to our suffering brothers and sisters worldwide.  The evening news just might be our opening to expanding the tent of our common life as we live our way into our next hundred years.

Patience is Faith’s Litmus Test

As the summer readings of Ordinary Time are given to us, we are reminded of what makes for the basic healing and health of our souls. We have been reminded that even our faults and sins, the “manure” of our live, grows wonderful things. To our embarrassment even this is turned to our good by a gracious God.

Another reminder during these ordinary weeks that are not so “ordinary” is the fact that God’s pace in responding to our concerns is not to our liking. God really tests our patience. Why doesn’t God take care of these awful things…right now! How can God put up with all this suffering? Doesn’t God notice how all these people need food?…and on and on. So impatient are we that we are tempted to doubt the very existence of God, and if not this, then we might at least question God’s compassion.

Our faith gets tested. Is God really there, or not? Yet once again we are called to look at the fields and watch things grow. They have their pace, and no amount of our complaining will hasten the unfolding of what will come to be. Sometimes what we consider evil is manure for the growth of something good. God seems to let it be, and we grow impatient. The remedy is trustful faith. I just don’t see the whole picture. God does.

Holy One,

Whisk it away…all the famine, the corruption, the lies.

I want it gone.

Yet you wait…and seem to do nothing.

It exasperates me…and destroys my peace…your Easter gift.

What can I do as I rail at your delay like a petulant child.

Catch me up and calm my soul with trust that

 “All will be well, and all manner of things will be well.”

What do you do with manure...?

                        What do we do with manure…?

We watch with wonder as the farmer spreads it on the fields, and lo…wonderful things grow. But what about the manure of our own lives…our foolish choices, the abuse piled upon us by the judgments of others, the dreaded diagnosis, the broken marriages, the betrayals, the cutting remarks, the sense of aloneness, the car accident, the outright sinfulness? It does no good to whitewash these things…they still smell…as does manure.

So what are we to do as we plunge into this ordinary time, this time of intense growth from the marvels of the paschal mystery? Maybe we can take a clue again from the farmer. He plants, he covers the field with manure so the rains can soak it into the ground and surrounds and feeds the little seed with its nutrients, and then he goes home and takes a nap. He sleeps and waits.

So must we. We offer our little bit. God for some reason mysteriously surrounds it with suffering. Then we need to go home to the depths of our soul where the Mystery holds us safe in its arms. There we sleep the sleep on trust. We wait. The gorgeous flowers and delicious fruit will come, for God is a master gardener. What is so hard is the wait.

Sweet sun of my life

Why do the clouds come?

Why must I water my own field with my own tears?

Why do you hide?

Where are you when my heart breaks with sorrow?

Are you holding me close to your heart until the storm of my life is over?

What can I do but trust you?

You who have bent down so low to be with me…

You who have taken on my misery…

You who have gone before me in my dying…

You who have shown me what comes after dying.

I grasp your wounded hand

And the squeeze I feel gives me peace.

Who is the Spirit...?

“…the Spirit of truth…will guide you to all truth.” John 16

 

Who is this Holy Spirit? We here in the West have very vague notions of the Holy Spirit. For some of us the Spirit is an afterthought in the Trinity…a “trailer-child,” or the dove that hovers over Jesus. But we sell ourselves short. This third Something in the divine Mystery is the actual love-gift of God given to us. Just as the Father is the Singer, and the Word is the Song, so the Spirit is the Singing. They are distinct but cannot be separated. Remove one, and the whole relationship falls apart. And more, this relational wonder is going on within us.

 

The Church uses wild and wonderful images to try to express this in human terms. There are eight powerful biblical images that refer to the Holy Spirit. The images point to functions, the actual activity of the Spirit in our lives.

 

The most common is the dove. The image speaks of comfort and peace. Then there is fire, which cauterizes and consumes. The tongues indicate that this presence within us will erupt in speech about the wonders of God. Then there is water, which washes away and cleanses, in addition to making growth spring up everywhere. Oil softens and makes movement easy and smooth. It also allows wrestlers to slide out of the grasp of an opponent. Blood is our very life, and such is this Spirit the eternal life that has been won for us. Wine makes us drunk on God, intoxicated with love that spills out onto others. The wind-breath is both power and fragrance, like lilac in the springtime. Put these all together and we have just a glimpse of the Love-Gift of the Spirit who is our Advocate and Comforter when life weighs heavy on us, and we are submerged in darkness. Because this One is the Singing of the Singer’s Song, maybe we all can learn from this Gift to at least whistle in the dark.

 

 

 

 

Fire to burn away my resistance

Tongue to give me a voice

Water to wash away my arrogance

Oil to smooth my response

Dove to calm my fear in the dark

Blood to give me life

Wine to intoxicate my soul

Wind-breath to lift me up…

Brand me with the Truth that is my Jesus who has found a home in me.

 

The Spirit...

I will send you …the Spirit of Truth…John 15

As Dominicans, we are flexible indeed. We move like dancers taught by a founder who chose white for the color of the religious habit for his Order, symbol of grace, light, and the baptismal garment. Dominic is also the Doctor of Truth.

But what is truth? (We sound like Pilate!) First and most important, for the Dominican, Truth is a person, not a proposition. Truth is not a statement of belief about God, about Jesus. It is far more. We are referring to the One who is Truth itself, the fullness of Truth. Once we realize our Dominican life is all about a relationship with a person, then we can ask again, “Risen Lord, what are you the Truth about? Let’s take it step by step…

Truth is the real…as known by the mind. Now what is real is real, whether we know it or not. But when we do know it, it gets inside us. We are bonded with it. Our mind is bonded with it. When we come to know this One who is the fullness of Truth, then we are in him, and he is in us. So John is spot on in putting these words into the mouth of Jesus in his gospel.

There is nothing as real as this One who is Divine Love itself in our skin. There is nothing more concretely real than God, even if God is not material. We Dominicans have Truth as our motto: veritas! Wonder of wonders, we are talking about our relation with this Christ as the motto, the focus of our Dominican life. This is no airy-fairy head trip. This is no abstraction. We are referring to our ever-deepening relationship with the One who the realist of the real.

No wonder then, that Jesus refers to the Holy Spirit as “the Spirit of Truth.” He’s talking about sending us the Spirit of his very self. The Risen One, who is the very Truth about himself and the   life he has restored to us, becomes the gate, the door, and the way in. Into what?  Into the very heart of God.

So is that what you are the Truth about, Jesus? You are my way, my truth, and my unending life? And you are giving me your own Spirit so I don’t ever forget it? Then I think I get it. You’re all I’ll ever really need.

Too Good to be True...

They just didn’t get it. He comes, he says, “Peace be with you…” yet they are terrified. But wait just a minute. We have 2000 years of acquaintance with the idea of resurrection. They had no idea of what happened to a human being after death. No wonder they were incredulous and full of fear.

Then he asks if they have anything to eat, and they calm down. He deals with them gently, according to their human need. He did the same with Mary Magdalen, with the two on the way to Emmaus, and with Thomas. “You need to put your hand here and your fingers into my wounds, Thomas? OK, here I am…do what you need to do.” He meets them where they are.

In our day, and in our times, he is the same: yesterday, today, and forever. He still meets us where we are. So what really happens to a human being in resurrection? Scripture assures us that as he is, so shall we be. What happened to the physical part of Jesus, and what will happen to the physical part of ourselves?

For one thing we know the no matter goes out of existence. Einstein assures us that it simply changes form. We know that shifting an electron or proton on the periodic table creates a new element. So what happens to our DNA, our double helix, our michocondria, our cell structure in resurrection when eternal life touches it and brings it to the peak of its possibility? What is the peak of its possibility? After all, there’s arthritis, and glaucoma, and palsy, and Altzheimers…and all the rest.

What if, just what if we go through a metamorphosis, a change something like the butter-fly? What if the original recipe of our DNA reassembles and becomes transparent of the love energy, the compassion, the forgiveness that we developed before we died? What if the physical becomes a window into the beauty of the heart? Why didn’t the apostles recognize Jesus? Then suddenly they did recognize him. Did he change, or did they change? How did it come to pass that “their eyes were opened?” Is that what happens with us too?

Is Easter a preview of coming attractions for us? Is Jesus giving us a final revelation, and it is about “what we shall be?” No wonder that when he showed them how we would all end up, they were incredulous. Yes, indeed, almost too good to be true. And you?

Risen Lord,

Your light-some beauty would blind me

If in your kindness you didn’t mute it.

You feed me with yourself and with each sacred banquet I become more what I eat.

Meet me where I am and call me forth to all I can be. Open my eyes so I can see the wonder of your new life peeking through the lattice-work of my time and space.

Who are we...after the 800th Anniversary?

We’re a community of vowed religious women, right? Right, and we are surrounded by associates who want us to challenge them to be everything they can be in their life-styles. Right?

Our communal life-style is shaped by three gospel counsels: living simply so that others can simply live; loving to white-hot intensity with open hands; and binding ourselves to develop an ever-deepening listening heart. Right?

But other religious women’s communities do the same; and other communities have associates who draw strength and guidance from these women who live these counsels. So who are we as a community of Dominican women religious, who have associates? Who are we just having celebrated 800 years of Dominican identity? What is the distinctive mark we bring to the wider Church as we turn our faces to the future?

I’m going to suggest that we stand among the Jesuits, the Franciscans, the Mercy’s, the Redemptorists…carrying our own distinctive foot-washing towel. It has a monogram on the corner. It is “OP.” What are its threads? Why is it an “OP” towel, when all the others have towels too…but with different monograms and different weaves?

Our weave is indeed distinctive. There is none quite like it. Yes, we all have towels, because it’s all about mission in the end; it’s all about service. But there is no weave quite like the Dominican weave.

There are four distinctive threads, and no other religious community weaves them in quite the same way: there is common life, common prayer, study, and finally mission flowing from the linking of the other three. Those in formation call these the “four pillars.” I’m going to use the more flexible metaphor of “threads.” We’ll consider these in future reflections.

Why do I favor a more “flexible” metaphor, even though “pillar” is very firm and secure? Because flexibility is one of our most distinctive Dominican characteristics. We live our lives bending and flexing like dancers. Nothing in Dominican life binds under pain of sin. What? How in heaven’s name are you going to keep these Dominicans in line? How are you going to get them to do what they ought to do? Dominic wanted to put the weaving shuttle in our own hands. The Joyful Friar reminds us who we are as beggars, lovers, and listeners by our vows. Then he expects us to make responsible adult choices. He believed that living with a penalty hanging over your head kept you fear-motivated, and he was a joyful lover, and love drives out fear.

So we begin with flexibility. We are dancers, who bend and sway, bow and turn. We are the weavers of our own Dominican religious life. We dance to the Spirit’s music holding the shuttle in our own hands.