Loneliness

I lay awake with a sense of malaise. Perhaps it is the feeling that there is much I have left undone, and battles left unfought. Perhaps it is the unknowing, will I pass or will I fail? Will I prevail or fall? I am uncomfortable with who I am.  In any case the result is the same, loneliness borne of desolation.

Saturday night was such a night. I felt I just needed my wife to hold me. Her touch and embrace ironically converted my loneliness to solitude.

Monday, I again felt the sting of loneliness.  This time it resolved in solidarity with other solitary people around the world.  I found myself praying and resting in God.

Contemplating the poor.

Christ is in the poor. Even when we recognize that the poor are not in the least Christ-like He is there in their suffering. If God stands in profound solidarity with the poor as the scriptures affirm shouldn’t we as well?

“Solidarity is the social meaning of humility,” writes Dean Brackley. He applies the ancient rules of St. Ignatius to social justice today. “Just as humility leads individuals to all other virtues, humility as solidarity is the foundation of a just society.”

Henri Nouwen wrote of Christ’s “way of downward mobility.” To follow Him we must reject the council of yuppie culture to climb the ladder of success. The witness of Christ and the challenge offered by Nouwen and Brackley lead us to ask questions. “How much should we have? Better to reframe the question,” writes Brackley, “Do we feel at home among the poor? Do they feel comfortable in our homes? Or do our furnishings and possessions make them feel like unimportant people?” (100)

The solution to our global social crisis is not that the poor become rich, which is neither feasible nor desirable, but that the rich join with the poor. The only solution is communities of equals, resisting pyramids of inequity (see Luke 22:25-26). While some economic differences are legitimate, discrimination and misery are not. In communities of equals, personal talents, instead of advancing some at others’ expense, are stewarded for the benefit of all. Authority is a service for the common good (101).

In my graduate work I have been studying spiritual direction. The director meets with people desiring spiritual direction in an attitude of contemplation. He contemplates God and at the same time the directee, and the directee’s relationship with God. One book, The Practice of Spiritual Direction concludes with an observation of where direction and social action meet.

We need to know how God is experienced by the very poor and destitute. A few directors have begun to work with the destitute. The work is still in its very early stages, but where the director’s contemplative attitude is well developed, it seems promising (196).

I dream of one day studying as a cultural anthropologist the ways faith is formed and transmitted from one generation to the next across culture. I imagine joining with the poor working in the world’s coffee plantations and doing the work of contemplation with them, while also finding ways to get them living wages for their crops.

What is God dreaming for the poor? What is he dreaming for you and I to do with Him about poverty?

9/11 reflection

These are times of global social crisis in which many people feel insecure and alone. Our reflections lead to the conclusion that we find security in community. if we seek first the Reign of God and its justice, ours security needs will be met (cf. Matt. 6:23). Both security and community arise from faith and from the praxis of solidarity that replaces unjust relations and institutions with just ones. To be genuine and avoid condescension, solidarity must be humility-in-practice. Like the gospel, Ignatius assigns humility a central role in our lives. For only in its soil can love take root, grow and bear fruit. To be authentic, however, humility must be solidarity.

-Dean Brackley, The Call to Discernment

Suffering

Deep calls to deep. I feel trapped in the foam by my fluffy gentle experiences. Cut me quick. So oft' the self same self-not comes to me. Let me suffer, not to feel pain, but to be baptized into the death of Mankind. A death I haven't known, knowing only your life - a death you conquered. It is wrong. Wrong for any living person to experience only life while there are dead men walking around. To touch these men is to touch death - to die. Let me truly know I'm alive - feeling the pangs of death. What hard words this self-not is.