Contemplative Focus
Remembering
Years ago while on a flight to a meeting, I was given a voucher for a meal during the layover. I sat at my table feeling very alone. I think of eating out as something one does with those one loves. And here I was alone in a lovely restaurant, surrounded by people in animated conversation; the chatter loud and happy. I remember the experience as one of being in a desert in the midst of people.
Remember. Perhaps this is what Jesus did. Jesus learned compassion through the things that he suffered. The Jesus who fasted for forty days knew what it was to be hungry. He remembered the hunger, for food, for companionship, for the understanding of those he loved. His human heart must have wept when his mother and brothers came to take him home, thinking he was out of his mind. The experience of these hungers shaped his ministry. He ate with sinners, enjoyed himself at parties, rested and dined in the home of Martha and Mary. He understood that it is often not good for one to be alone. He entered the lives of people who were alone, alienated, anxious, marginalized, sick, or diseased and restored them to the community where they could be nurtured. He traveled with his male and female companions and stole away for prayer, often to be followed and badgered by their incomprehension of his message.
Remember the mercies of God. There are deserts and deserts. There are beautiful deserts of the Arizona Highway magazine type. And then there is the desert that claims the lives of many of our impoverished sisters and brothers from Central America who still cross into our country seeking a better life, only to die in the heat, or be killed trying to evade security forces. There is the desert where God speaks to the heart, and there is the desert of unremitting soul darkness, of affective absence that cries out in agony: Where are you? These latter do not appear to be the mercy of God, but they teach us compassion through the things that we suffer when we endure and if we've become really good at it, welcome! but usually we at least try to endure them in union with Jesus, who drives us into the desert as he himself was driven. If we have the gumption and grace to stay planted, to wither, to feel our soul-soil parched and cracked till there is nothing left but nothingness. And to remain there when no angels come. Even this is the mercy of the God who transforms by fire, the Living Flame who uses our nothingness as fuel to convert our gift into energy for loving more deeply, more selflessly.
Remember. Remember mercy. Remember the mercies of God. Remember that you carry your sisters and brothers. Remember the desert. Remember the angels even when they seem not to come. Remember the God whose call has invaded your soul and makes it impossible to do otherwise. Re-member, which means to put back together again. Remember.
Robin Stratton OCD
Baltimore Carmel
