A special vocation for kindness...

Yesterday I came upon a headline about the Bishop of Rome called, "A special vocation: showing us how to love."  That's a beautiful description not only for Francesco I, but for how I've come to understand my own small ministry.  Please understand, I am NOT trying to make any comparison between the Holy Father and myself; rather I am confessing that in my 30+ years of ministry, my understanding of calling has changed profoundly.  Where once I believed I was supposed to live a Cornell West-like public and prophetic type of ministry, I now know that my calling is most authentic when it is grounded in simple acts of presence, creative acts of imagination and gentle acts of worship and prayer.  There is still a need for bold and challenging public voices, but most of the time mine is not one of them.

Over the years I have come to see how this special vocation gives shape and form to the counter-cultural way of Jesus using my true gifts.  Last night, for example, at our small "centering prayer" discussion group, one person said that she was taken with the connection Fr. Keating makes between the inner and outward journey.  "The more our false self is healed and transformed, the more energy and authenticity we have for bringing healing and hope to our public lives," she said.  This is part of what the gospel of John means when he writes:

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.

"That means," said another, "that my quiet prayers are part of a peace making ministry, right?"  And with that we were off and running into a thirty minute conversation about what our false selves look like, how they are created early in life and what it means for justice and peace in our community to "die to the false self and live in God." We also explored the many and seductive "idols" in our lives that keep us from resting more in God's love.  "Why is it," I wondered about myself, "that I know I ache to rest in God's love but don't make more time to do so?"  The wisdom of St. Paul came to mind:

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very

thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.

So what's a 21st century person to do?  The same as a 1st century person, right?  Spend quiet time letting the Lord love us from the inside out - centering prayer - letting God's grace fill and heal us patiently and humbly.  "The reason why we're exploring this form of meditation," I told the group "is because it is the most like God:  quiet, tender and full of grace.  There are other forms of asceticism, to be sure, but most no longer make sense in our era. What many of us need is an encounter with grace that helps us rest and trust.  We need ways to simplify and slow down."  Our discussion ended with the Prayer of St. Francis - a call to the paradoxical path of dying to the false self so that true life and love might fill us all and bring a measure of light into the darkness - it is at the heart of this special vocation.

Wendell Berry has written that "kindness is not a word much at home in our current political and religious speech, but it is a rich word and a necessary one. There is good reason to think that we cannot live with out it." (CC, April 3, 2013)

Kind is obviously related to kin, but also to race and to nature.  In the Middle Ages kind and nature were synonyms.  Equal, in the famous phrase of the Declaration of Independence, could well be translated by these terms:  All men are created kin, or of a kind, or of the same race or nature... the wealth of this idea of kindness is not exhausted by kindnesses to humans. It is far more encompassing. From some Christians as far back as the 12th century, certainly from farther back in so-called primitive cultures, and from some ecologists of our own time, we have the idea of a great kindness including and binding together all beings: the living and the nonliving, the plants and the animals, the water, the air, the stones.  All, ultimately, are of a kind, belonging together, interdependently, in this world... Much happiness, much joy, can come to us from our membership in a kindness so comprehensive and original.

Think of Psalm 104:

O my soul, bless God!

God, my God, how great you are!
beautifully, gloriously robed,
Dressed up in sunshine,
and all heaven stretched out for your tent.
You built your palace on the ocean deeps,
made a chariot out of clouds and took off on wind-wings.
You commandeered winds as messengers,
appointed fire and flame as ambassadors.
You set earth on a firm foundation
so that nothing can shake it, ever.
You blanketed earth with ocean,
covered the mountains with deep waters;
Then you roared and the water ran away—
your thunder crash put it to flight.
Mountains pushed up, valleys spread out
in the places you assigned them.
You set boundaries between earth and sea;
never again will earth be flooded.
You started the springs and rivers,
sent them flowing among the hills.
All the wild animals now drink their fill,
wild donkeys quench their thirst.
Along the riverbanks the birds build nests,
ravens make their voices heard.
You water the mountains from your heavenly cisterns;
earth is supplied with plenty of water.
You make grass grow for the livestock,
hay for the animals that plow the ground.

 

A special vocation of kindness - of giving shape and form to compassion - a way of quiet presence... for this I give thanks to God on this second day of rest after Easter.