Love Your Enemies? – Get Real!

As Lent has ended and we are approaching Easter, the commandment of Jesus that we should love our neighbours and, yes, our enemies, seems to loom very large on my horizon.  The apparent defeat of the Good Friday Passion and the triumph of the Resurrection put this commandment into focus.  Jesus was able to ask his heavenly Father to forgive those who were executing him so violently.  He didn't say that he loved them, but I must conclude that he did love them.  This begs the question, is it possible for us to actually do the same and love our enemies?  I don’t know about you, but it seems almost  impossible for me.

So, I want to delve into this commandment which is seemingly impossible to keep.  Fortunately, I have had access to a few reflections which I have found helpful in exploring this conundrum.  First, there is the perspective of Rabbi Shai Held; author of Judaism is About Love.  He makes the helpful clarification that love is not a feeling - rather it is a disposition:

I can have a disposition to love, but if you actually ask me what I’m feeling right now, what I’m feeling is grumpy and heartbroken. Right. When people talk about, you know, the spiritual life being built on a feeling, that’s by definition a dead end because feelings are fleeting. You can’t have any feeling … no one feels love all the time. 

The understanding or belief that love is a feeling is, I believe, generally a widely accepted one.  However, to realize that you can love someone and not feel warm and fuzzy to them all, or even most of the time, is very helpful. 

The next perspective on love that is a helpful clarification is that love is not in opposition to justice. Zoe Matties notes:

Dr. Cornel West speaking at the University of Winnipeg on the power of love in the face of great evil. One line from his impassioned lecture sticks with me to this day: “justice is what love looks like in public.”   

It is a common misconception that forgiveness – which is intricately bound up in loving someone – means that the person being forgiven an offence avoids the consequences of their actions.  Matties expounds on this concept quoting Saint Augustine, “Hope has two lovely daughters, Anger and Courage. Anger so that what cannot be, may not be, and courage, so that what must be, will be.” Following on this she quotes theologian Dorothee Soelle, “Loving our enemies is impossible if we do not first name our enemies and tell the truth about the injustices we see.”

Finally, I will close with one of the Daily Words from the Society of St. John the Evangelist (SSJE):

Abide: Jesus tells his disciples, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” Jesus’ love is such that he willingly lays down his life for us. As we turn our hearts and minds to Holy Week, let us choose to abide in that love, a love that lays itself down, not to conquer empires, but to conquer death. Br. Jamie Nelson, SSJE

Abiding in, or having a disposition of love, seems to me to be a way of living that I can make an effort to attempt.  May you be blessed this week and always.  

 

 

An All-Embracing Perfection

Last week, I came across a couple of things which addressed the desire which we have for perfection.  Psychologically and culturally, we are averse to making mistakes.  We want to go through life with nothing but wins rather than losses.  We want to be right rather than wrong – we want to be perfect.  This, of course, is impossible and it probably would not be a great or even good way of being even if it were possible.  The first thing that came to me was one of the offerings by the Society of St. John the Evangelist (SSJE) which sends out a daily short reflection, Brother Give Us a Word.  The word that was given to me was Failure:

Remember that your weakness doesn’t disqualify you from God’s love, but instead opens the way for God to act in and through you. Let your failures or your fears remind you of your need to rely on God for all things. God’s strength is made perfect in your weakness.  Br. David Vryhof, SSJE

The second offering to me was an interview on CBC Radio.  The interviewee was a scientist – unfortunately I didn’t get his name.  He was speaking about the development of vaccines and the criticism that some people had for the changes in advice that was given during the COVID pandemic by officials.  He noted that science makes progress by making mistakes.  My understanding of what he was saying is that if a hypothesis is proven not to be true, that is a step forward in scientific knowledge.  A quick Google search produced the following applicable quote by Paulina Kuo, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)., “Making errors in science is just part of the process and allows scientists to learn and broaden what we know. It’s only by being wrong that we ever learn what’s right.”

We are given many messages in our culture that mistakes are not okay.  We often see people honoured for what they have accomplished but there may be no mention of the challenges that they have had in accomplishing what they are being honoured for including the mistakes they have made.  There seems to be a greater tendency to knock people from their pedestals when past mistakes are revealed.  Acknowledging them and asking for forgiveness doesn’t cut it anymore.  Even Jesus seems to support the drive for perfection. An alternative to being perfect was offered in a little book I came across some years ago - A Prayer for the Cosmos by Neil Douglas-Klotz.  This little gem is a translation of The Lord’s Prayer and other sayings of Jesus from Aramaic sources.  One of the passages that the book addressed was from the Gospel of Matthew (5: 48).  This is traditionally translated as ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’.  However, the translation by this author is, ‘Be all-embracing, as you heavenly Father is all-embracing.” 

This passage and similar ones direct Christians to seek perfection and the understanding of God, as all good.  I could not reconcile them with my understanding of humanity as creatures of God, created in the image of God.  This new translation reconciled that dichotomy for me.  This enables me to reconcile these passages with my understanding of the human psyche.  We are to seek wholeness not perfection.  To quote my all-time favourite song writer and philosopher, Leonard Cohen,

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in

I will continue to offer my imperfect offerings to the source of my being which desires my wholeness and not my perfection. My you also be so blessed on your journey. 

Let Go and Let God

 I receive a daily word – “Brother Give us a Word” - from the Society of St. John the Evangelist (SSJE)  https://www.ssje.org/  This is a short-focused comment, by one of the brothers, on a word to reflect upon for the day.  I find it quite a good way to start the day.  One of the words this week was “Let Go”; Okay for those who are that way inclined - it’s not ‘a’ word but it is a thought for you to ponder:

Each season of fall reminds us again of Jesus’ invitation to us to an autumnal experience of letting go and of dying – if we want to truly live, and be filled with the fullness of God.  - Br. Geoffrey Tristram

 

Rereading that this morning, what came to mind was the phrase ‘let go and let God’ which was so very popular a few years ago.  This seemed to me to be a good follow up to my reflection on Centering Prayer last week.  In Centering Prayer, we have, in my experience, the challenge of giving up the control that our ego wants to maintain.  We have the message that this type of activity should have a goal – we should make progress in the activity and should progress i.e. getting better and better with practice.  Otherwise what is the point of doing it?  You might even want to give each session of Centering Prayer a mark out of 10. 

Is there any point in just letting go and making space for God in our goal-driven lives?    I did not have much luck in Googling or origins of the phrase ‘let go and let God’ but I imagine it has some connotation that you put everything in God’s hands and all will be well.  I think that, as with any simple idea it can become simplistic so there not any need for us to be active in bringing about God\s Kingdom or following the commandment to love your neighbour through action such as feeding the poor and the orphans. 

To my way of thinking, the goal of letting go and letting God is to be silent and make room to listen to God - listen not with our ears but with our hearts and minds and bodies – our whole selves.  That is more and more difficult in these times when our lives – even in this time of the COVID pandemic.  There is so much we can fill our time with – so much that is accessible to us to fill up and minute where silence manages to break through the cacophony of social media. 

I will close for a quote by Cynthia Bourgeault, one of evangelists for Centering Prayer, “Silence is not absence, but presence. It is a “something,” not a nothing. It has substantiality, heft, force. You can lean into it, and it leans back. It meets you; it holds you up.”

Give time to let go and let God on your journey.