Experiencing God - Do we understand 22

"Jesus said: It has been given to you to know the secrets of the Kingdom, but to others, it has not been given.  To those who have, more will be given, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.  But blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear."

Chapter 13 of Matthew is full of Jesus' parables.  We find there the parable of the sower, the parable of the weeds among the wheat, and several of the parables that give us insight into the Kingdom of God. 

"The Kingdom of God is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, but when it is grown, it is the largest of all shrubs, and the birds of the air find comfort in it and nest in its branches."

When Jesus was asked by His disciples why He spoke in parables, He gave them a rather unusual answer:  It has been given to you to know the secrets of the Kingdom, but to others, it has not been given.  To those who have, more will be given, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.  But blessed are your eyes, for they see; and your ears, for they hear."

Even the answer Jesus gives is somewhat of a parable.  Do you know the secrets of the Kingdom?  We know, we perceive, and we understand through faith.  Without faith, Jesus' words fall on deaf ears.  Many hear the words, but they do not understand them, or at least, they fail to act on what they hear. 

We live in a world that largely does not listen and understand what Jesus is saying; so they follow other voices.

Lately on the news, we have heard a lot about the web site "backpage.com" that is under investigation in the United States and Canada.  It is a site that advertises in the sex trade, particularly with under age children.  This site makes millions of dollars per month on this type of advertising.  I was listening to a woman who was being interviewed in this morning's news, a twenty-six year old who advertises on this site.  She said that she wishes she had discovered the site years earlier because she can make in excess of $1,000 per week as a result of her advertising.  This, she says is more than sufficient to pay for her education and living costs. 

Do you think that this woman and the people who run this site understand Jesus' parables on the Kingdom of God?  If they continue to be deaf to God's word, then even that which they have now will be taken away from them. 

In another of the parables found in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus is saying:  "The Kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field, which someone finds and hides.  Then in joy, they go and sell all that they have and buy the field. 

Is the Kingdom of God your treasure?  Are you willing to sell off or let go of all the other things, which pale in comparison, in order to possess that treasure? 

Where your treasure is, there also you will find your heart.  If your treasure can only be found in the transient and temporary things of this life, like $1000 per week illegally earned to cover education and living costs, or $1,000,000 a month in illegal advertising fees, then even the little that you have will be lost.  Our true treasure can only be found in God, and the life that God has prepared for us now, and to come.

"Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear."

Experiencing God - Surrendering 21

"To whom then will you compare me, or who is my equal? says the Holy One.
Isaiah

The act of submitting usually means surrendering power to another, to yield to the control of another.  In our culture, submitting or surrendering is not a popular thing to do.  We want to be in control, particularly in regards to the decisions we make enforcing our individual rights.  We want to exercise power over our lives and not submit to anyone.  Submission or surrender are seen as signs of weakness. 

And yet, in scripture readings, we see submission to God as something favorable, something beneficial. 

"Young men may grow tired and weary, youths may stumble, but those who hope in the Lord renew their strength.  They put on wings like eagles.  They run and do not grow weary, walk and never tire."

"Come to me, all you who labor and are over burdened, and I will give you rest.  Put my yoke upon you, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light."

Jesus proclaims that His yoke of submission is easy, and his burden is light.  So how can we reconcile these apparent contradictions between what we are inclined to do and what we are asked to do. 

The best way to answer this question is to examine our own experience.  In surrendering to God, or submitting to Jesus' yoke, we make a free response to seek the way of love in all of our decisions and actions.  What would Jesus do?  How would God respond to this or that particular situation?  Out of love!  Our response need not be a clinging to power, a clinging to things, a clinging to our often misguided thinking to justify ourselves; but a surrender to a wisdom and a direction that is so much greater than anything we may ourselves possess.

"Who made the stars if not He who drills them like an army, calling each one by name.  The Lord is an everlasting God.  He created the boundaries of the earth.  God does grow tired or weary.  God's understanding is beyond fathoming."

Think of the time when you were struggling with a critical decision with dire consequences, perhaps having to do with a health situation, a financial loss, or a loss of a relationship.  And you didn't know what to do.  So you went to the Lord in prayer and discovered what you must do.  Was it not a response of love?  Did you not experience a sense of peace?  Was not the Lord with you in the decision you had to make?  Was there not a letting go, a self-surrender that led to peace and a oneness with God? 

Surrender is not a sign of weakness.  It is a gift of strength.  It allows us to let go of the internal struggle, to accept what is, and to see the grandeur of God in all things, even things that appear momentarily beyond human understanding.

Experiencing God - Finding a lonely place 20

"When daylight came, Jesus left the house and made His way to a lonely place."
Gospel of Luke

A Jesuit by the name of George Maloney describes Jesus as the freest of all Persons.  In the retreat book of his which I have used many times, Maloney poses a question:  "How do you know you are free?"  True freedom, he would say, is what Jesus possessed.  It consists in freely determining to live your life as your Heavenly Father would wish us to do.  It means in all the choices that we make, we act out of love to please God.  And of course, this freedom only comes as we deeply and personally experience God's love for us through Christ.  Do you experience Christ's love for you in that way?

In the gospel of Luke, we read of a whole list of successes that Jesus experienced in healing those who were ill.  Simon's mother-in-law is healed of a high fever.  And then many sick people begin to arrive at Simon's house suffering from a variety of ailments.  And Jesus cured them.  Despite all this amazing stuff that was going on, I still find the most revealing passage in this Gospel reading is that after all this, when daylight came, Jesus left the house and made His way to a lonely place.  Why would that be?

Because we cannot possibly remain free, in fact we cannot do too much of anything of God's work, unless we take time to pray.  And prayer for Jesus would not be for the purpose of trying to get God's will to conform to His, but to get His will to conform to God's.  True freedom is our determination to live our lives as our Heavenly Father would wish us to.

As we look out at the world, we see much confusion, much suffering, lives turned upside down, people who seem lost, without any moral compass to follow, and most of it is a result of our insistence on doing things our own way, in absence of God's divine plan for us, in absence of even consulting God's loving presence which is all around us.

In the Gospel reading, when the crowds found Jesus, they came with the insistence that He continue on with all the activities of the day before.  Jesus said no, I must go and proclaim the Good news of God's kingdom to others, because that is what I am sent to do.  My will is to do the will of my Father, not chase after empty dreams.

The only way we can change the world, is to change ourselves.  And when we change ourselves through prayer, discernment, and a desire to live in accordance with God's plan for us, then the world will change because we are part of the world.

St. Paul affirms this in his letter to the Colossians - "The Good News which has reached you, he says, is spreading all over the world and producing the same results as it has among you ever since the day when you heard about God's grace and understood what this really is." 

As we recognize Christ's love for us, as we adjust our lives to live in accordance with God's plan, we begin to understand what this is all about.  We become instruments of change for a world in much need of God's grace and light.

Experiencing God - Church and Service 19

Christian servants must focus on their mission, not on what others are doing
Rick Warren - Purpose Driven Life

As God`s people, we all know that service is tied in directly with the teachings of our Christian faith, yet, it is all too easy to develop a wrong understanding of service.  Community can sometimes be a challenging place to be because it is made of people with different gifts, strengths, personalities, and views.  So even in the area of our ministry or service, we can often run into conflicts as to how things should be done. Over the years, I've encountered a few instances where some have moved away from Christian service because of conflicting views with those they were working with.

I really like what Rick Warren has to say about Christian service in his book “The Purpose Driven Life”.  He says: “Christian servants must focus on their mission, not on what others are doing.  In good Christian service, we don’t criticize, we don’t compare, we don’t compete with other Christians.  Rick Warren says that competition among God’s servants is illogical for many reasons.  We’re all on the same team.  Our goal is to make God look good, not ourselves.  The mission cannot be accomplished unless we all work together in faith.

In the book of Genesis chapter 18 we have a perfect example of service and hospitality.  Abraham has visitors, from the Lord.  And in the tradition of the his people, he and his family offer hospitality and service to their visitors.  Abraham invites them in, gives water to wash and cool their feet from the desert sand, and then offers them nourishment. 

Abraham and his family go out of their way to prepare fresh bread, and kill the calf for them to eat.  Abraham did not do it all himself.  He worked with his wife Sarah and his servants for the preparation, each doing their own tasks for the guests.  As a result, they all found favor with God.  What if Sarah said to Abraham: “Make your own bread.  I’m busy right now.”  I don’t think that would have worked very well.  It worked because each sees what needs to be done and contribute to its accomplishment.

The gospel story In Luke chapter 10 is also about service and hospitality.  Jesus and the twelve apostles make a visit to the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus.  How would you like to have thirteen unexpected guests for supper?  I think I would be a little frazzled at the thought of this myself.  But we must remember, these people are all good friends.  They share the same faith. They are involved in the same mission.  Jesus and the apostles would have stopped at this home many times in the past, and they knew they would be welcomed there.  They were a family.  They would have shared many occasions together, both pleasant and unpleasant, so they were all very comfortable with each other.  And the householders, Mary, Martha and Lazarus, as they have done many times before, set out to make their guests comfortable and to feel at home.  They each set out to do the service they felt was necessary at the moment.

The difficulty that came up had nothing to do with the work that Martha was doing in the kitchen.  The difficulty that came up was that she got distracted by her younger sister who she thought was not being very helpful, was not fulfilling her role.  So she started to complain. 

When Martha complained to Jesus that Mary was not doing her share, she lost her Christian servant’s heart. Her focus was no longer on the service to be done, the mission to be accomplished, but on what others were doing.

For some reason when we hear this gospel, most of us picture this scene as Martha in a hot kitchen by herself, doing all this work, while everyone else, including Mary, were sitting in the living room chatting and having fun.  This certainly does not fit in with Jesus’ model of servant leadership that he speaks about previously in the gospel.  What if we picture the scene with a kitchen buzzing with apostles or neighbors who are all sharing in the tasks of preparing the meal.  And then Martha sees Mary not fitting into what she feels is her defined role.

Rick Warren addressed this issue.  It’s not the job of a Christian servant to evaluate the Master’s other servants.  Martha forgot that what Jesus needed at that particular moment was Mary’s attentiveness, her caring presence, her listening heart.

 

Jesus’s words to Martha were not meant to chastise her for her lack of performance.  What she was doing was critically important, necessary and good.  His words were to remind Martha that service comes in many forms, and at that moment, what Mary was doing was what was needed the most.  "Martha, you worry about many things.  Mary has chosen the better part which will not be taken from her.”  Jesus was challenging Martha to change the way she was looking at things.

To be a servant of Christ requires that we must often make a mental shift in our minds, and change our attitudes.  God is more interested in the underlining intentions of why we do something versus what we are actually doing. 

As Christian servants, this means that a mental shift in attitudes is often required so that we can begin to think in the following manner about our role as servant:

1 Servants must think more about others than about themselves and what they want.

2. Servants must focus on the mission to be accomplished, not on personalities, or being directors of the mission.

3. Servants must focus on their work to be done, not on what others are doing.

4. Servants must see their ministry as a response to serve Christ out of love, not to look or feel good about themselves.

5. Servants must see their ministry as an opportunity to serve, not as an obligation to fulfill.

St Paul summarizes these five attitudinal changes in the reading from Colossians chapter 1:

"I became a servant for the sake of the Body, that is the Church, according to God`s commission given to me for you.  And that commission is to make God`s word fully known, teaching every person in all wisdom, so that we may present every person mature in Christ. "

Experiencing God - Two Poles of Community 18

Human spiritual longing comprises of two needs: for meaning and purpose, and belonging and love.  One could experience some kind of belonging and love without meaning and purpose.  As long as things stay in the realm of personal experience, meaning and purpose is not to be found.  It is only when the experience bears fruit, when it connects one to the rest of the world in service, that the sense of meaning and purpose finds its birth.

Gerald May “Will and Spirit”

When it comes to community and what we hope to experience from being a part of community, two things are necessary.  Gerald May, in his book “Will and Spirit” calls these two things our deep spiritual longings; spiritual in the sense that all people, regardless of their faith orientation, would want and expect to find them in the community to which they belong.  John Vanier refers to them as the two poles of community.  They are (1) Meaning and Purpose and (2) Belonging and Love

No community, whether they are described as a family or a gathering of persons for a specific purpose, will operate effectively as community unless these two poles are present.  In some communities, one of these qualities may be more prevalent than the other, but the other pole must be present to some degree.  For example, a grouping of persons geared to action for a specific task will probably have a greater intensity of “meaning and purpose” to move it forward in the world.  Another grouping of persons who are meeting to enhance a certain way of life or to grow in fellowship with one another will probably place their emphasis on “Belonging and Love”.  Regardless, the opposite pole will need to be present and active to create what we would consider to be community. 

Community is a complex structure.  We may as well face that fact up-front.  What makes community complex is the fact that it is made up of people with, seemingly, an unlimited variety of personality qualities.  I've read that there are 174 varieties of bamboo.  One variety blossoms every 143 years.  To understand bamboo, considerable research is necessary.  Well imagine how much study would be necessary to understand people who make up community.  The variety and combination of characteristics and needs would truly be mind-boggling. 

In establishing community, it is never a matter of sitting down and saying:  Let’s bring in activities that will enhance “meaning and purpose” and programs that will give us a sense of “belonging and love”, and we will have a perfect community.  The fact is we all have different levels of needs in each of these areas, and being community requires that we be sensitive, as best we can, to those different level of needs in our members.  In addition, as we begin to look at these two poles of community, we discover that there is a complex interplay that happens between them that we cannot always control, at least as much as we may want.  This will become clear as we continue with this discussion on community.

First, let’s take a deeper look at the qualities of these two poles of community.  To explain the first, “meaning and purpose” I have referenced an article from Fr. Jim Sullivan’s book, “Journey to Freedom”.

One of my stronger expressive-assertive needs is one that has deep roots in my human nature.  I need to feel that my life makes sense.  I need to know that my life has meaning: proximate meaning, here and now; ultimate meaning---meaning that lasts into eternity.

I have a longing, if I’m honest with myself, for prestige.  I need to know that people in my world consider me to be a person of worth, someone whose life makes a difference.  It’s hard on me to be “lost” in a crowd, to be considered just another person.  When I think that people see me that way, I feel an awful emptiness.  I need those around me to appreciate me as someone special.  I long for my neighbours and fellow workers to see me as a person of worth, as someone who makes a real contribution to their world.

It is hard for me to fulfill this need if I do not have real job satisfaction.  If I feel that my role is not an important one, that the “real action” is somewhere else, then I feel poorly about myself---even though my job, objectively speaking, may be one of importance.  And the same is true when I feel that what I am doing is the “bottom of the barrel” I don’t feel that I’m someone special.  I feel like a clod.  I need job satisfaction, role satisfaction.  I need to sense that I am appreciated, that my life makes a difference in my world.

The roles we play, the goals we establish, the actions we undertake are the things that meet our need for meaning and purpose.  They are the things that recognize our gifts and talents, and the opportunities to express them.  When we do this in love, then something good happens in community.  Please hang onto these words “when we do this in love”.  Recognizing and expressing our talents and gifts in love gives us, as members of community, the meaning and purpose that we seek and require.  But we must recognize, first of all, that these are gifts, and secondly we must offer these gifts for the good of others.  When our roles, our goals, and our actions are performed for reasons other than the good of others, in other words for egotistical reasons, then they create an adverse effect on our need for belonging and love.  This brings us to the second pole “Belonging and Love”. 

To get a sense of “belonging and love” we have to go beyond fraternity, social activities and entertainment.  Belonging and love encompasses the whole person.  A sense of belonging and love in community implies a sense of being at home, feeling of safely and security, to be comfortable in one’s own skin.  This is the environment of community where well-being and growth can take place.  To bring out this broader sense of “belonging and love”, I have quoted an article from a book “Please Understand Me” called “Different Drums and Different Drummers”.

"If I do not want what you want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong.  Or if I believe other than you, at least pause before you correct my view.  Or if my emotion is less than yours, or more, given the same circumstances, try not to ask me to feel more strongly or weakly.  Or yet if I act, or fail to act, in the manner of your design for action, let me be.

I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me.  That will come only when you are willing to give up changing me into a copy of you. 

I may be your spouse, your parent, your offspring, your friend, or your colleague.  If you will allow me any of my own wants, or emotions, or beliefs, or actions, then you open yourself, so that some day these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, and might finally appear to you as right – for me.  To put up with me is the first step to understand me.  Not that you embrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or disappointed with me for my seeming waywardness.  And in understanding me you might come to prize my difference from you, and, far from seeking to change me, preserve and even nurture those differences."  

Now once we understand this broadened sense of “belonging and love”, we can begin to see even more clearly the interplay that happens between it and our need for meaning and purpose.  As I said before, we have a need to recognize and express our gifts and talents to find meaning and purpose in our lives and our life in community.  It is out of love that we offer our gifts and talents to others, but we cannot impose them on others.  We can propose, but not impose.  To do so, we have shifted from love --- to power.  And the cause of much fallout in community comes from the misuse of power.  It undermines the fulfillment of our need for belonging and love, and it can creep in, in the most subtle ways.

For the contemplative, the way of discovering meaning and purpose is to discover how to be of service, and the service that leads to belonging and love is through surrender.
Gerald May “Will and Spirit” 

Experiencing God - New Community Models 17

“Without understanding the source of suffering, human beings strive to gain happiness by possessiveness and greed, through violence and hatred.  We act out of delusion and ignorance, creating pain as an inevitable result.  Our grasping, our aggressive entanglement in the world brings with it unavoidable struggle and loss, yet all is done purportedly to seek safety, to find happiness.”

Jack Kornfield “After the Ecstasy, the Laundry”

If we ever hope to make this world of ours a better place for all who dwell here, now and in the future, then we must come to the realization that there is a way of life we must renounce.  This way of life that we must renounce is largely a way of life that most of us choose to live.
  

I’ve recently read some statistics that are quite alarming.  I’m not sure if they are completely accurate, but they do make their point.  During the twentieth century, the 100 year making up nineteen hundreds, throughout our world communities, over 100 million people were killed by acts of war and violence.  Currently, the nation’s communities have enough build-up of weapons of destruction to kill the remaining population ten times over. 

In the Catholic Catechism we can find a detailed analysis of what constitutes a “just war”.  Many contemporary writers now are saying that because of our nation’s destruction capabilities, there can be no such thing as a just war.  Any war with the capability of totally destroying humanity cannot be just. 

The model of community that has been used in our nation and world for thousands of years no longer works.  These are macro communities, large and complex.  We also have smaller communities, such as our family and church.  These are micro communities, small, less complex.  Regardless of the fact that our small communities or micro community are less complex, if they are based on the same secular model as the large macro communities, they will not work effectively.  There will be fallout.  The fallout will not be as devastating as experienced in the macro communities.  It will not likely result in the loss of life, or destruction of property, but it will nevertheless be there.  It will come in the form of disputes among its members, hard feelings, frustration, and feelings of helplessness and disappointment, to name a few.  Does this need to happen?  I’ve never been in a community yet where this fallout was absent.  However, I do believe it is possible to have community without fallout.  Before this can happen, we have to change our model of community.  By that I mean we have to change the way we see and live community.  And for me there is an element of urgency in this.  This urgency lies in the fact that unless we as individuals begin to see community in this new way, then there is no hope that a change will take place in the more complex macro communities.

First, this “new model” of community, as I describe it, is not mine.  I have adopted it through osmosis; that is through my personal experience of community and by reading and reflecting on writing by Jean Vanier, Scott Peck, Fr. James Sullivan, Willigis Jager, Eckhart Tole, and many others.  In fact this vision of community by osmosis is still taking place. 

Secondly, this new model is not really new.  It just hasn’t been adequately tried. 

It is impossible to give expression to the new model of community without an image, and this image must connect at a deeper level of consciousness.  One such image is given below in the analogy of the twig and the tree taken from Willigis Jager’s  “Contemplation A Christian Path”.

A twig that experiences itself as a twig on a tree and sees the other twigs, trunk and roots as separate, is comparable to our ego-awareness.  That is knowledge stemming from intellectual and sensory perception.  But the twig can also experience itself from within.  It experiences itself as a tree.  That doesn’t mean it stops being a twig, but it is in union with all that makes up the tree.  It is one with the trunk, with the roots, and with the other branches.  To experience ourselves from within, as the twig experiences itself as tree: that is our goal.  To experience this oneness is not to abolish differentiation.

When we allow our ego consciousness to define ourselves as only twigs, then we will not see that we are also a part of the totality; the tree.  Self-defining separates us from the totality.  If we are able to see ourselves as both twig with all of its differentiations and, at the same time, as tree (part of the totality), then we have moved beyond ego consciousness into a contemplative stance of seeing.  We move to seeing reality at the level of mystery. 

Another image also introduced by Willigis Jager in his book “Mysticism for Modern times” is as follows:

“Arthur Koestler was the first to introduce the concept of holon.  Holon is a Greek word which means "whole", a whole that does not exist for itself alone, but is always part of a larger whole.  An atom, for example, is a part of a molecule; a molecule is a whole created from atoms, but it is simultaneously also a part of a whole cell; and the cell in turn is part of the whole organism.  Thus nothing is exclusively a part or exclusively a whole; everything is both part and whole. 

The holon thus has two tendencies:  It must exist both for its totality and also maintain its own identity.  In fact, if a holon cannot or will not maintain both its identity as a part and its integration in the whole, it dies and disintegrates into its parts.  The atom has to be “open” for the molecule, the molecule must be “open” for the cell, and the cell must be “open” for the organism.

An eloquent example of what happens in a closed system can be found in the cancer cell.  A cancer cell is one that excludes itself from the organism: In other words, it does not or will not maintain its identity as part and its integration in the whole.  As a result, the cancer and the tissue around the cell begin to deteriorate.” 

When it comes to community, we, as living organisms, are merely a continuation of this process.  We are holons.  We are individuals who have our own identity.  We have our own personalities, our own talents, our own physical makeup, but in order for community to exist, we must also be open to the totality.  We do not exist for ourselves alone, but are always part of the larger whole.  Just as the atom has to be “open” for the molecule, and molecule “open” to the cell and so on, we must in much the same way be “open” to community. 

Often times in communities, we become too much identified with and place too much important on the individual roles, and we think that by fulfilling our individual role, we are community.  But this is not so. 

Community is not about a bunch of individuals doing their individual thing.  It is about our openness and awareness that we are a part of something bigger than ourselves.  It is about knowing that our health and well-being are contingent upon this awareness.  And the quality that draws us into this awareness, this openness, is love.  Love is the very substance that draws the “self” out of isolation and separateness, and creates the totality that we cannot possess by ourselves.  The greatest gift we can bring to community is our love because its only love that gives witness to the totality of community and transforms those who are a part.  The transforming agent is not anything we understand by way of concepts through use of the mind.  What transforms is the experience of seeing and being a part of community where love is present.  It is the experience of community itself.  Without it, we cannot exist.  We just disintegrate into our individual parts and we cause the overall community to disintegrate with us. 

In this sense, community is sacred.  It is the place where God not only dwells corporately but also individually.  We become holy, part of God’s plan for creation as we move from egoism to love, from self-identification to identification with the whole, which reflects our true reality and destination. 

Too much identification with the individual parts, our defined roles, are obstacles to our sanctification and the truth that underlies community.  Too much identification with our understanding of doctrines and dogmas of faith that create the illusion of separateness from the totality are obstacles to our sanctification and the truth about community that is trying to find expression in this new reality.  Our minds play tricks on us by creating the illusion that we are separate.  We are holons, open to become a part of a greater whole.  Our very survival as a human species depends upon us operating at this deeper level of reality.  We must allow our consciousness to evolve in order to move away from the illusion that we exist in separateness from one another.  We must accept this as mystery in the same manner we accept the trinity as mystery. (One God, three persons)   We must set aside the fear and mistrust, this sense of separateness created by the illusions of our mind, and move towards the disposition of love and trust.  We must move from “community for myself” to “myself for community.”

Those moments of grace described in chapter 1 are moments when one has passed through the doorway leading from the old model to the new.  These graced moments are brief encounters with the mystery of this new reality. They are also evidence of the illusion that the mind plays on us as to our separateness.  Please go back and read again those moments of grace.  Recall those moments that you’ve experienced these moments yourself.  These are all moments where the mind’s sense of separateness evaporates and there is a movement into unity with “the all” which cannot be explained through reasoning.  The reason it cannot be explained is because it is beyond the limits of the mind’s ability to comprehend.  The marvellous thing about the human condition is that we are given the ability to move beyond comprehension into a deeper level of reality.  We call this mystery by many names: faith, intuition, higher level of consciousness, ultimate reality, God.  But why name it at all.  Names become sources of conflict when we each attach our own meaning to them.

It is through contemplative prayer, the suspension of the mind’s thoughts and feelings through use of a sacred word that we are able to place ourselves before the unknown, and the unknown, which has been waiting patiently for us, becomes all.

Experiencing God - Call To Community 16

You are to become holy by the life you live in the world; God’s created material world from which you cannot escape without lessening your chances of becoming fully human.  The world from which you must escape is the worldliness within your heart that sets up your unreal self in false independence of God.

George Maloney, SJ  “Alone with the Alone” pg. 179

It became clear to me how much all of us are involved in the on-going struggle of determining who we are in our relationship with each other.  Our culture bombards us with efficacious signs that have imposed their negative influence upon us.  How many of us still feel that part of our responsibility and image rests on being a rugged individual, one capable of standing on his/her own.  Are we not continually expected to take control, decide for ourselves what is best?  Have we somehow been fooled, and lost our freedom in our pursuit for affluence, power, possessions; yes, and even the quest for happiness through freedom 55? 

When I was twenty-eight and in hot pursuit of such things, I wondered why the freedom and happiness that I sought was missing from my life.  I was very fortunate at that time in my life to find something that would change my focus and start me down a new road.  This “something” of which I am speaking was becoming a part of Christian Community.  How did I find that being a part of Christian community was life changing?  Somehow, deep within I knew that God was calling me to be a part of something bigger than myself.  He was calling me to grow in charity and wisdom, and this is not something one does in a vacuum.  It must be done in conjunction with others who share a similar faith, a similar mission.

As written in the Vatican II documents, “Church in the Modern World”, we read:

“God did not create us for life in isolation, but for the formation of social unity.  So also it has pleased God to make us holy and save us, not merely as individuals, but by making us into a single people, making us members of a certain community.”

Without community, there is no Christian Life.  Why is this?  It is because, through community, we experience the strength that comes from God.  We experience His grace.  We share together Eucharist, spiritual food that sustains us and helps us to grow.  In fact, we become Eucharist for each other, through the friendship and common faith that we share.  We experience, as we work together, a sense of mission, a need to share our community experiences with others.  “Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am with you.” 

When I first became involved in Christian community and gave it an option of preference over the other things that I was pursuing, I told myself; wouldn’t it be great if the people of the world could experience what we do in Christian Community?  Wouldn’t it be great if all our families, the people we work with, or those in our neighbourhoods could see the value of being a part of Christian community?  But as one becomes more involved in community, you begin to realize that we come with baggage, we come with misconceptions of what community really is.  As a result, we discover that community may not be the peaceful place that we originally thought it would be.  We discover that it is a place of struggle.  I connect very much with the words of Jean Vanier in his book “Community & Growth”:

"I have always wanted to write a book called “The Right to be a Rotter.  A fairer title is perhaps, “The Right to be Oneself”.  One of the difficulties of community life is that we sometimes force people to be what they are not.  We stick an ideal image on them to which they are obliged to conform.  If they don’t manage to live up to this message, they become afraid that they won’t be loved, or that they will disappoint others.  If they do live up to the image, then they think they are perfect.  But community is not about perfect people.  It is about people who are bound to each other, each of whom is their own mixture of good and bad, darkness and light, love and hate.  And community is the only earth in which each of them can grow without fear towards the liberation of the forces of love which are hidden in them.  But there can only be growth if we recognize the potential; and so there are many things in us to be purified.  There are shadows to turn into light and fears to turn into trust."

To recognize the potential that exist in community, I believe we have to examine community from a contemplative stance.  By this I mean, we must move beyond the established concepts and ideas we have of community that are deeply buried in our psychics, and begin to experience community from that quiet center that exists within ourselves.  Our secular culture and church have given us all kinds of images of community.  They have been conceptualized and analyzed from many different directions.  Unfortunately, I've been a witness to the hurt, trauma, and confusion that have been caused by those who try to create community using out-dated concepts and ideas based on models that are no longer relevant or understood.  It is only in contemplation, returning to our quiet center  that a new model can be experienced that will meet the needs of our contemporary time. 

One of the obstacles that I see in relation to establishing community is our failure to see beyond the talents we possess which define the role we are to play.  It’s not to say that identifying talents and defining roles are not important in community life. But by becoming overly identified with our perceived role without also exploring the inner essence of community, its underlining sacredness, its ability to transform and fulfill our most basic human needs, we may only open the way to believe we are either perfect, or a disappointment; depending on whether we see ourselves as succeeding or failing in the fulfillment of our particular role.  When this happens, we are a community tied to ego consciousness.  This is community where hurt, trauma and confusion will reign.

Again, Jean Vanier hits the center of this problem in “Community and Growth”:

"People cannot live as if they were on a desert island.  They need companions, friends with whom they can share their lives, their vision, and their ideals.  So it is that people come together, not because they live in the same neighborhood or are related, but because of a mutual sympathy:  They come together around ideas, around a vision of man and society, a common interest.  Some of them meet occasionally.  Others decide to live under the same roof: They leave their own neighborhoods and relations, sometimes their work as well, to live with others in a community based on these new criteria and this new vision.

At the same time, they want to bear witness to those values.  They feel that they have some good news to offer the world, news which brings greater happiness, truth and fulfillment.  They want to become the yeast in the dough of human society.  They want to work for peace and justice among all men and all nations.

Some of these groupings are geared to action, to a specific task and struggle. They pool their capacity for action.  Other groupings are more geared to the way of life, to the quality of relationships among their members to their life and their welcome.  These are the two poles of community: the goal which attracts and unites, the center of interest which provides the “why” of life together, and the friendship which binds people, the sense of belonging to a group, solidarity and personal relationships.

A community is only a community when the majority of its members is making the transition from “the community for myself” to “myself for the community”, when each person’s heart is opening to all the others, without any exception.  This is the movement from egoism to love, from death to resurrection; it is the Easter, the Passover of the Lord."

In order to see community as that place where the majority of its members are making the transition from “the community for myself” to “myself for the community”, this movement from egoism to love, we need some contemporary images that will help us to understand that which cannot be put into words.  Jean Vanier says: “there can only be growth if we recognize the potential”. Without words or concepts to describe exactly what this underlining essence of community is all about, we need images that will speak to our experience so that this new images of community can be recognized and desired. 

The images that we currently use are good.  They can be found in the Gospels in the parable of the Talents (Mathew 25-14:30).  In this parable, the number of talents given to each servant is not the issue.  The issue is more the inner attitude or disposition in respect to what has been given to the servants by way of gifts.  The two servants who were given the ten and five talents operated from a disposition of love and trust.  Their gifts bore fruit in the world because love and trust was their overall attitude towards life.  Love and trust will always result in one moving out from “self” into community, or as Jean Vanier would put it, moving from “community for myself” to “myself for community”.  The servant who was gifted with the one talent operated from a disposition of fear and mistrust.  His attitude was:  “I had heard you were a hard man, reaping where you have not sown, and gathering where you have not scattered; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground”.  This servant does not even recognize his talent as a gift.  A closed heart filled with mistrust and fear can never be a part of community without a radical change of heart.  And because love by its definition requires that what we have be given away, the little that this servant possesses will be lost unless a change of heart takes place. 

Another image of community can be found in St. Paul’s letters, particularly in 1 Corinthians 12-12-30.

“Just as a human body, though it is made up of many parts, is a single unit because all these parts, though many, make one body, so it is with Christ.  In the one Spirit we were all baptized, Jews as well as Greeks, slaves as well as citizens, and one Spirit was given to all to drink.”

In this description of the body made up of many parts, each part with its individual purpose and, at the same time functioning in unison with the whole, we do gain greater understanding of the inner workings of community.  But do these images go far enough?  Do they meet the needs of contemporary society in understanding the great potential that lies in community for growth, for salvation, not only individually but also as human family?  Society’s increasing movement towards individualism, separateness and isolation would indicate that we are not seeing the potential.  We are focused more on the benefits that flow from personal ambition, success, filling the emptiness we experience within by exterior things and pursuits. We are seeing at the level of the ego, but failing to comprehend that love requires us to move into a deeper level of seeing.  We are becoming more focused on “community for myself”, and not moving towards “myself for community”.

Three things are required in order to enter community at this deeper level.  First, individuals and society in general must be able to see that our current ways of viewing and participating in community based on an outdated model are not working, and is also bringing our human family to the brink of its own destruction.  Secondly, we need a mechanism, technique, a technology, or a means that will assist us to move from our current perception of community based on the old model to the new model.  Thirdly, since the new model of community cannot be conceptualized in the mind at the level of mental ego consciousness, we need to find and be comfortable with other means of expressing it, to give it life.