NOTE: my reflections on a spirituality of tenderness - a work in progress - continues today.
Two of my mentors in
the quest for a spirituality of tenderness are Jim O’Donnell and Jean
After he retired as a
Diocesan priest, Jim went on a lengthy vision quest for discernment. Like
Jesus, he literally went to the desert, the mountains, the waters and then the
cities; through prayer, fasting and conversation he concluded that what he
needed to do was create an oasis house in the heart of the ghetto. It became a
place of beauty and solitude in an area saturated with crime and fear. In time,
people gathered for Mass on Thursday evenings.
There was room in the oasis house for guests to come on retreat. And
after a few years, as strangers started to experience the serenity of this
oasis in the city, they formed a community. The Spirit led them into a
relationship with Habitat for Humanity and soon they were rebuilding a burned
out neighborhood right next door to the ferocious King-Kennedy Projects. Where
houses could not be rebuilt, the land became an urban garden where flowers and
fresh produce flourished. To my mind, this ministry was a clear sign of what a
spirituality of tenderness meant for my generation – and it spoke to my soul. For two years, Fr. Jim was my spiritual
director.
Jean Vanier, founder
of L’Arche, was first called to serve God and community in the Royal Navy of
England during WWII. He sensed the
battle against fascism was essential and gave himself over to making peace
through war. After eight years, he left
military service and began a quest for another type of peace-making. In time, a priest introduced him to a small
community that cared for those with intellectual disabilities who had been
abandoned by society. This led to his own
calling with L’Arche that has grown into an international movement of
compassion. His wisdom, tenacity and
caring presence documents the way tenderness can bring healing to the most
wounded in our world. His is a sacrificial and sacramental way of living that
embodies Christ’s calling. Vanier makes
me think of what Jesus said to the disciples of John the Baptist:
John summoned
two of his disciples and sent
them to the Lord to ask, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for
another?’ When the men had come
to him, they said, ‘John the Baptist has sent us to you to ask, “Are you the
one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”’ Jesus had just then cured many people of
diseases, plagues, and evil spirits, and had given sight to many who were
blind. And he answered them, ‘Go
and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the
lame walk, the lepers are
cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have good news brought
to them. And blessed is anyone
who takes no offence at me.’
Both Fr. Jim
and Jean Vanier are clear: unless the love of Christ becomes flesh something is
missing. Jim was friends with Henri
Nouwen – and Nouwen only truly became himself after starting to live and work
with Vanier in Toronto – and this has shaped my understanding, too. Vanier
taught Nouwen and others that there are seven practical aspects to love that
are crucial to letting the Word of God become Flesh in our humanity. He
describes them in the small book Becoming
Human like this: “There are… seven
aspects of love that seem necessary for the transformation of the heart in
those who are profoundly lonely. They are: to reveal, to understand, to
communicate, to celebrate, to empower, to be in community with one another and
finally to forgive.”
· To reveal: the call is to reveal another’s beauty to
themselves by sharing your “time, attention and tenderness. To love is not just
to do something for them but to reveal to them their own uniqueness, to tell
them that they are special and worthy of attention… The belief in the inner
beauty of each and every human being is at the heart of L’Arche, at the heart
of all true education and at the heart of being human. As soon as we start
selecting and judging people instead of welcoming them as they are – with their
sometimes hidden beauty, as well as their more frequently visible weaknesses –
we are reducing life, not fostering it. When we reveal to people our belief in
them, their hidden beauty rises to the surface where it may be more clearly
seen by all.”
· To understand: all of our brokenness has meaning
but that meaning is often obscured or buried. To love in a spirituality of
tenderness is to know that “all violence has a message that needs to be
understood. Violence should not be answered just by greater violence but by
real understanding. We must ask: where is the violence coming from? What is its
meaning?” The work of L’Arche is clear that all of our wounds point to a deeper
truth that sometimes screams to be undersood.
· To communicate: one of the keys to giving shape and form to
tenderness is helping one another name the source of our pain. “When nothing is
named, confusion grows and with it comes anguish. To name something is to bring it
out of chaos, out of confusion, and to render it understandable. It is a
terrible thing when certain realities, such as death, are never talked about
and remain hidden. When these realities are not named, they haunt us… people of
my grandmother’s generation knew that it was forbidden to speak of sex, so sex,
because it was unnamed, became powerful and controlling.” But as we listen, and
name, and begin to understand the source of our wounds, tenderness becomes a
two way street where we help one another. Vanier insists that in this process
it is essential to “listen to our bodies… and hear our reality through our
experiences.” The same is true of the earth as our own bodies: everything that
has been created has something to communicate to us about tenderness if we
learn to listen.
· To celebrate: “It is not enough to reveal to people their
value, to understand and care for them. To love people is also to celebrate
them… only when all of our weaknesses are accepted as part of our humanity can
our negative, broken self-images be transformed.” To celebrate what causes us fear or shame, to know that we can go on with life without fear, is to become truly free.
· To empower: Our work with those we love in tenderness is
“like that of a midwife: to bring forth and help foster life, to let it develop
and grow according to its own natural rhythm… for as we become more conscious
of belonging to one another in our mutual dependence” we begin to see God’s
plan and order for creation: community. It is not coincidental that one of the words for compassion in both Hebrew and Greek has roots in the womb, the heart and our gut feelings.
· To be in communion: “community and communion is mutual
vulnerability and openness to the other. It is liberation… where we are allowed
to be ourselves and called to grow into greater freedom and trust with the
whole universe.” Trust is at the heart
of communion. “In trust we give ourselves. But we can only give of ourselves if
we trust that we will be well-received by someone… that is why communion implies
the security as well as the insecurity of trust. It is a constant struggle against
all the powers of fear and selfishness in us, as well as the seemingly resilient
human need to control another.” It is a never-ending dance between joy and freedom
alongside vulnerability and insecurity – and this dance goes on forever.
· To forgive: because all of us carry within us
brokenness, “as well as shadow areas, dark corners of the spirit where uncomfortable
things are hidden, human beings cannot be constantly attentive, loving and nonviolent.
If this is true in the greater world, it is even more true in the smaller world”
of our communities. Thus, as St. Paul noted, because all of us have sinned and fallen
short of the glory of God – all of us – tenderness is rooted in forgiveness: forgiveness of self, others, society and all the
sources of our brokenness.
As should be clear by
now to live into the promise and presence of such a sacred, embodied tenderness
requires practice. I will share some of my
thoughts and insights about those practices in the next installment of this quest
for a spirituality of tenderness.
photo credit: Dianne De Mott
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