The Third Word: Me? You chose me? His invitation!
God takes the initiative to call me and my response is often; What? Really? Are you sure? In truth He calls each of us by name, He chooses us….what is our response. We know how He tirelessly calls us by name, he never stops and invites us again and again to say, in love, one simple word “Yes”.
I can often fear this call. I can often doubt I am worthy of this call. I often run from this call. I often refuse to be embraced by this call. Yet, the insistence of the call continues, the whisper, the breeze, the gentle movement of the heart continually seeks to enter the spaces where the the noise, the storms, the hardness of the world can never fill, can never satisfy, can never bring true peace.
The temptation of loosing oneself in the world is to become the object, something that becomes limited, easily used up, tossed away for the next thing. To loose oneself in Christ is to become the son/daughter, to become someone to be discovered and rediscovered in the infinite love of beauty.
We hear the whisper of “in the beginning God made” as the renewed invitation where he chooses me (each person) to enter into a relationship where the embrace of God brings us home.
It is the moment where we allow ourselves to be embraced, I allow myself to be embraced and held, to be healed by the good where I am discovered and rediscovered anew.
The Fourth Word: At the mercy of….the road of blindness (MK 10:46-52)
I imagine being at the mercy of God and being called in my blindness. I have stumbled about and went by the most difficult road; a path of despair, of fear and of hurt and injury. The path of anger where it becomes normal to confront those who seem to make the journey so much for difficult.
It is here that I hear his voice, faint but strong. A voice that begins to lead me, and if I choose to follow, to discover a road, a way of care and blessing, of hope and trust, and I realize, that I am already there, in His mercy.
As as I move to Him, I hear the laugh of welcome in his voice, the calm certainty of the joy of the final steps of the journey, the feeling you have of taking those final few steps to the pinnacle, where the tiredness, hurt and soreness of the journey slip away into beauty.
It is a journey taken many times because of the stubbornness I have in holding on in the pride of my sins, where in blindness I shout “I can do this myself.” Where I ignore and forget the gentle call of the whisper of love.
The journey is, God’s call. I am called as I am to be renewed in the “I AM” of God’s blessings: healed and called, renewed and called, loved and called—where the shortness of the journey is the reality, I am already there because he has never left me. It is the moment where the tears of joy are renewed in the familial love of the Father.
Jesus sees, calls and loves.
The Fifth Word: Adventures in Grace…at the foot of the Cross
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—Christ
—for Christ plays in ten thousand places.
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the creatures of men’s faces.
Gerard Manly Hopkins, S. J.
from “As Kingfishers Catch Fire”
God’s grace is practical as love is practical. It is not practical as the the world would say practical—but practical as a life of relationship, friendship would say it—it is practical like putting on a well worn and comfortable sweatshirt on a chilly day, it is practical like smiling at a child, it is practical hearing the song bird in the morning or the simple tune of praise in the church.
I get to choose what is best, because God chooses what is best for me. It is the free will of practical love, of practical grace.
The adventure comes from he acceptance of a super abundance—not from scarcity or stinginess—it is the monsoon flowing from the side of Christ on the Cross.
We are reminded once again how God sees as we read the verse from the Hopkins’ poem above. It is how Our Lady of Guadalupe saw when she looked upon San Juan Diego. It is how St. Clare saw when she study herself and the world in the mirror of the eyes of love. It is the practical of seeing the other as a friend.
Practical can often stop us from singing, dancing, loving and playing—God’s practical relishes all of these gifts because the give life—the most practical and wondrous thing ever.
Playing with God isn’t silliness, it is liveliness—it is being, just being, being enfolded in friendship and truth—the liberating of the soul unlocking the chains “for Christ plays in ten thousand places”
It is very practical.