Blast From The Past
Stories from the past are important to society. They remind us of
former struggles, gains, and losses so that we can learn from them
and try to avoid earlier mistakes while at the same time building
on the good foundations laid by our ancestors. The stories told in
monasteries serve the same function, and are an important part of
monastic education and formation. Most frequently, these are heard
in informal settings such as the times before meals when those
monks assigned for the week are putting food on the plates to be
served to the other monks and guests, or at times of recreation
when the community gathers in the common room for conversation.
One story that I heard as a novice has stuck with me ever since,
and has greatly influenced my understanding of love. The story
involved two junior monks (those between their years of novitiate
and profession of life vows), one of whom told the other, "If this
were truly a Christian place, people wouldn't do things that upset
me." The one who said it didn't stay in the monastery very long.
He was confused about love.
We all suffer from the same confusion at times. We mistakenly
think that others who profess to love God and follow Jesus will do
so only in ways that we understand and approve. We wrongly expect
people to show their love for God and neighbor by behaving only in
ways with which we are comfortable and that buttress our own
beliefs, rather than causing us to question our assumptions. The
life of Jesus teaches us how wrong we are. Jesus upset almost
everyone at some point, and yet he loved them all. His example
teaches us how to truly love by seeing people as they are and
accepting them as they are, while expecting them to grow, hoping
and praying for their growth, and joyfully respecting their
ultimate maturity as images of God--all unique, beautiful images
different from each other but still images of the infinite God.
Many times we think we love someone or feel loved while in a
certain group, but are actually merely enjoying the emotional high
that the person or group brings us. Once again, Jesus showed us
that is not true love, because he loved even those who hated him
and made life miserable for him. To love someone truly, we must
love the person, not just the way the person makes us feel. True
love is based not on subjectivity, but on the objective desire
that everyone reach their full potential, no matter how different
it is from our own. Adopting that understanding of love does not
excuse wrong behavior, but it does involve being concerned with
the difficult task of correcting such behavior and preventing it
in the future. Healing the victims and perpetrators of wrongdoings
is more important than with the easier and quicker option of
punishing people out of anger or righteous indignation. Punishing
people might make us feel better, but it rarely solves problems,
and love is much more concerned with solving problems than with
feeling good. Love consists in expanding our hearts in order to
give everyone a place there, no matter how uncomfortable it may be
to invite some people in.
The expansion of our hearts in love is important, because we
must avoid the opposite habit of gripping things tightly to our
chests out of fear. We must never confuse love with control. Love
wants the best for people, but realizes that what is best for them
is not necessarily the same as what is safest and most comfortable
for us. Love is supportive of the other person's path, and allows
that person to travel it, even though it would seem easier if
every one were on the same road. (We do have the right and the
obligation to intervene carefully in lives that are
self-destructive or that hurt others.) There is a good story about
these different paths from Dorotheus of Gaza, a 7th century monk
from Palestine:
Imagine a circle marked on the ground. Suppose that the
circle is the world and that the center of the circle is
God. Leading from the edge to the center are a number of
lines, representing ways of life. In their desire to
draw near to God, the saints advance along the lines to
the middle of the circle, so that the further they go,
the nearer they approach to one another as well as to
God. The closer they come to God, the closer they come
to one another. Such is the nature of love: the nearer
we draw to God in love, the more we are united together
by love for our neighbor.
Love allows our neighbors to follow their paths; fear tries
to control the paths that others follow so that we are never
confronted by the discomforting possibility that we ourselves
might be heading the wrong way. Love holds everything and everyone
dearly in our hearts, always expanding so that others can grow in
their unique vocations. Fear grips others tightly to our chests so
that they don't have a chance to be different from us.
One way we can stop fearing and start loving is by heeding
Jesus' advice to not worry about the speck in our neighbor's eye,
and instead to deal with the log in our own eye. We often use the
log as both a telescope and a club--a telescope to magnify the
speck in our neighbor's eye, and a club to beat that neighbor over
the head. The only way to come to terms with the log in our eye is
to admit to ourselves and to God that it is there. Then it becomes
much easier to live with and to work to heal it. We might find
that the log in our eye is something that is truly harmful and
needs to be corrected, but until we admit that it is there,
nothing can be done about it. Then again, it might simply be part
of our personality that we were embarrassed by but which we can
now come to see as part of our unique being to be embraced and
allowed to flourish. But as long as we keep gripping it to beat
others with, or polishing it to magnify the specks in other's
eyes, we can't really love, because having a log in our eye blocks
and skews our vision, and love is not blind. Love sees all quite
clearly and still loves. Love loves the person, not just the way
the person makes us feel. By coming to terms with the log in our
eye, we can then truly begin to love ourselves and follow the
command of Jesus to love God and our neighbors as ourselves. But
until we love ourselves, we can not love our neighbors as
ourselves, and we can't love the God who made us the way we are.
People may upset us from time to time, and while it may be
true that they do need to change their actions, we must also be
ready to accept the fact that perhaps their ways are exactly as
they are meant to be. In those cases, we should be happy for them
and grateful for their existence as individuals growing into their
vocations as children of God. Doing that frees us from the
crushing burden and smothering bondage of judging and controlling
others so that we can instead joyfully take on the easy yoke and
light burden of Jesus as we follow him in our own unique way.
Jesus' yoke of freedom unites us all to himself so that we do not
need to worry about the way that others are united to him, as
Dorotheus of Gaza reminds us. We are then free to hold the world
in our hearts in love. We are then free to truly love people,
instead of hoping that they will make us feel good and
manipulating them in order to prolong the feeling. We are then
free to see everything about each person and love them anyway,
because we know that God knows us more than anyone else ever could
and yet loves us more than anyone else ever could. We are then
free to differ with individuals and groups while still affirming
their integrity, so that we can avoid saying embarrassing things
like: If this were truly a Christian place, people wouldn't do
things that upset me.
St. Gregory's Abbey is truly a Christian place, but sometimes
people here do things that upset me (the vast majority of the
time, the source of the distress is my own skewed vision caused by
the many logs in my eyes). More often, I do things that upset
others here. Fortunately, the other monks are much more securely
grounded in love than I am, so they forgive my wrongdoings and
forbear my idiosyncrasies, while still expecting me to mature in
my actions and attitudes. I only hope that my own struggles
learning to love may someday be of help to others, as the story I
heard as a novice in the common room about the upset junior monk
from years past has helped me. I am grateful to him, wherever he
is and whatever he is doing. May we grow together as we grow
toward God.
-- Br. Abraham
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