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The Lenten Journey Deserts have a hidden capacity to bloom but need a bit of rain; barren to flowering, like magic, such a bountiful Creator. Perhaps She could tender our souls over a few Lenten weeks. Bainbridge House, a small prayer group, invited some Spirit-filled, grounded people to share their journey, and we listened. Listening can be a revolutionary action imparting knowledge. There is a tension in the desire to know and the fear of what knowledge costs, notes Wyatt Mason in the New Yorker of 11/14/05, quoting Javier Marias, the Spanish writer, “Listening is the most dangerous thing of all...Listening means knowing, finding out, knowing everything there is to know; ears don't have lids that can close against the words uttered, they can't hide from what they sense they're about to hear, it's always too late.” For simplicity sake, the people will remain anonymous, their thoughts too intermingled for accurate credit. Silence, stillness, solitude, necessary as air to breathe in so noisy a world. A spirit of thanksgiving can nurture and expand us; adoration, a word hard for a modern, reminds us we are creatures, not the creator. That can be a relief. In Iraq, so brutal a war where bodies are daily broken, bloodied and, burned, we can incarnate our compassion by literally embracing the wounded here in our midst. We are grateful that our religion takes bodies seriously, how we treat them, a signpost of our souls. A serious search for some begins very early, age six or seven, for the missing piece of life, must be more than these broken adults; the call to the great Mystery. To be “saved,” a foreign expression to many of us, even humorous, but when the bearers possess an authenticity, a transparent goodness and a generosity that is touching; it is good to be associated with them. An ancient truth: only in humility and simplicity can we begin to find our humanity, to find a “foundational happiness in who I am” in the words of Richard Rohr, “to live in the sacrament of the present moment,” another of his expressions. Many of us in our more mature years find judging others a habit best abandoned. Nothing is more biblical than the plight of the blind, relentlessly seeking sight, seeing men as trees on to full-sightedness, a healing gift of God. The lament of Christ likens his followers' failure to understand, to see, to blindness. Who has not experienced this inability to discern, to see, stumbling in the dark, painfully misjudging the other. Finally transformation, the mystic quality we associate with saints, those whose encounters we have not been privy to experience. Apparently it is everyone's call. As Dorothy Day said, don't dismiss me so easily by calling me a saint. Both the State and religious leaders have mistrusted and persecuted the transformed, the audacity to speak truth to power. Christ tortured and executed, and in our lifetime Christ-like figures assassinated, King, Gandhi, Romero. Radical faith treads on dangerous ground. Archbishop Romero's anniversary is March, 24. Tom Roberts in NCR notes, “He cut through the haze that we all know is the stuff of justifying state violence, and he called it for what it is, sin.” Romero's last words on the eve of his assassination were, “In the name of God, and in the name of this long suffering people...I beseech you, I beg you, I command you in the name of God. Stop the repression.” Roberts notes Romero held us all accountable for the state of affairs. “Present-day society is a sort of anonymous world in which no one is willing to admit guilt and everyone is responsible. We are all sinners, and we have all contributed to this massive crime and violence in our country.” El Salvador, 1980. Iraq, 2006. Resurrection is the ultimate transformation. From Easter to Pentecost, fifty days, our mantra is Christ is risen, Alleluia, a huge act of faith. We have a foot in eternity with our umbilical-like connection to our loved ones. Christ will pull us broken sinners across the abyss to accompany them. Alleluia!! Joe Bradley |