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Practice of the Presence of Persons
I’m beginning to think we need more conscious practice for being present to persons.
Though I know that you are a deep mystery and a unique, unrepeatable reality, you enter my space as an object in the environment and I often do not register your presence at all. This is a sad state of affairs, exacerbated by the speedy pace of life, the isolation of persons in cars and suburbs, the barely-there transactional symbology that counts as ‘communication,’ and other obvious factors of reality that I can’t change.
What can I change? What can I suggest to help along this ‘practice of the presence of persons’?
- Prayer before coming into the presence of others. “Dear God, please help me to be fully present to those I am about to encounter, to believe you have arranged for me to meet with the particular individuals who are present, to resist my own inward resistance to showing real heart hospitality to them, and to place my interest truly into the essence of who each person is and yearns to be. And Lord, please help me remember their names!” (I am so bad at this!) “Please bless our time together, help us to edify and encourage one another, and remain undistracted by other concerns during our visit. Please come into the space between us to unify us for your greater glory.”
- Courtesy. I think we should resurrect the courtesy of formal greeting and leave-taking. I’m trying to move into a “Grace and peace to you” format that I usually forget as greetings take a much more casual turn and the moment is lost. I love getting and giving good-bye hugs, but still stand there wondering if I’ll seem foolish, old-lady-ish, or overly personal if I lunge forward with a hug someone doesn’t want. Still, if you come to my Open House, please say hello on arriving and good-bye on leaving, please. And I’ll do the same when we all meet for book groups or meetings or whatever.
- Be affected. I need to do more than see you. To be present to you is to receive you into my own being and to be affected by you, there. I can’t be present to you without that opening that allows you entrance and makes me somewhat vulnerable to you. I hope I can look into your eyes and that you’ll see yourself loved in mine. I need to do more than hear you. You need to sound in me so that I resonate with you, mirror your movements and expressions, sense the meaning beneath the message on the surface. Just the other day, as I was listening to a friend and being deeply affected by him, one word he said in passing seemed to reverberate in me. I couldn’t shake the sense that this word held much more meaning for him and, as it turns out, it sure did! When I asked why that word was somehow very important or meaningful to him, out came the stories and the emotions elicited by them. It was fascinating to experience the reality that one word could ‘carry’ so much ‘weight’. He hadn’t realized it himself, but as we explored it together it was clear that God had helped my own heart be troubled with a message meant for his healing. What a delicate, lovely instrument the open, affect-able heart is!
Naturally, I am very much interested in your thoughts about how we can better practice the presence of persons. Please let me hear from you!
Live Like This
Just thinking about how I want to live…
Live so completely immersed in the Faith that you must be in a life support suit to go out into the world.
Live so deeply embedded in Catholic culture that you are a living artifact of that culture wherever you interact with others – your gestures, collar, habits of speech, prayer before meals reveal your home of origin.
Live so fully in kairos that chronos does not limit the scope of your being.
Live so richly in Catholic community that your tribe goes into the world with you – at your back when you encounter enemies; at the service of those you serve.
Live so well-ordered to the Truth that you cannot be deceived.
Live in such need of grace that you cannot take a step without prayer.
Live in such tender awareness of pain that your heart is a fountain of mercy.
Live with such bubbling joy that you seem a foolish, childish, strangely attractive person to those who don’t know the secret of your Source.
Live with such keen perception of beauty that the world becomes a wonderland, and the distressing disguises of the persons around you cannot hide Christ.
Let the word of God dwell in you so richly that it resounds in your sounding and is realized in your becoming.
My Pavilion
I often think of Mary as a place where I can go to be held, to be with Christ in simplicity. Psalm 27:5 speaks of God as hiding me in His pavilion, His sacred tent, His pavilion, His tabernacle. This shelter, set upon a rock, keeps me safe in the midst of my enemies. The battle may rage around me, but God fights for me with His strong arm while I am at rest – the rest of the eternal Sabbath of the Lord’s presence.
I have the sense of seeing, there, a matrix of woven light that reminds me of the invisible support of the Holy Wisdom, whose light filters through the whole fabric of Creation. That light is intangible, but fully three-dimensional, filling the space with a kind of infrastructure that holds open space, within, for me, for the growing Body of Christ. This place is silent, but vibrates with life, with light. Sound is not far away, but I am buffered from a glory I cannot yet bear. The strands of light here are like crystal strings humming with a music played far away.
Meeting with Christ there, in a womb un-skewed, unstained, un-torn by sin, is to meet where He is most fully realized – Incarnate Word barely veiled by flesh. It is enough for Him just to be, and the effect of His presence upon me is great peace and joy at just being. Love holds me afloat like an ocean, pulsing with the gentle waves of a motherly heartbeat.
Delicious, profoundly restful, beauty-full.
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Humility and Me, Me, Me
If I encounter someone with expertise, or skill, I admire it.
Skill-Shaming
I notice, though, that when the skill in question is one I aspire to, the presence of the ‘exemplar’ feels intimidating. I am called into comparison by my own yearning…to speak fluent French, to play the cello, to be a successful author/speaker (whatever ‘success’ means).
I need to watch out for this form of ‘skill shaming’ I do to myself. I should be able to honor those ‘higher’ than myself without putting myself down in the process.
Becoming Humble
Next to the word “humble” in the dictionary, you will not see my picture. I do, however, have a sense of what it means for me, in particular. That sense has developed in part by contrasting ‘humility’ with this sort of ‘shame’ that is more dis-ordering than rightly-ordering, as true humility must be.
So, from my experience and not from the dictionary, Humble:
- To be hidden, invisible, detached from credit.
- To acknowledge the superiority of others and honor it without grudging or self-comparison.
- To be teachable and willing to be influenced by others.
- To put others before myself without developing a ridiculous “I am but a worm” posture.
- To support and promote the work of others and, if called to collaborate, to do so with right good will and excellent hard work.
- To do what I am not good at because of its intrinsic goodness, or just to practice being a beginner. (Hail Technology, thou humbler of the proud!)
- To make no demand for results, but to act in freedom according to my own best judgement (letting the work take place in me even when it does not seem to accomplish things ‘out there’).
- To trust God with all things that involve time: the timing of personal interactions, the time I have to use as a resource, the time that is beyond time and yet can permeate through the craziest-busy day, and the time in which my words may be read and find fulfillment according to the perfect timing of someone else’s life.
- To accept all impedance of my forward motion as from the hand of God, even when it seems to be the slow old farmer on the tractor in front of me, or the publisher who never responds, or the graphics guy who is working on my manuscript.
- To give from my weakness and imperfection and not just to give from my strength.
- To have a sense of solidarity with those I serve, employee, work for, or am served by: to tell their story and not just my own, and to care about what is important to them, not just my own projects.
Humus All Around Me
The best moment in the development of my personal ‘humility definition’ was when I realized the connection between humility and the humus, or soil-filled-with-the-detritus-of-life lying all around me on the ground. What an epiphany to see that whatever ‘fruits’ I produce from my vast store of creativity, it all will ultimately just become humus!
Magnificat!
I love Mary’s phrase, “My soul doth magnify the Lord.”
Like the aligned lenses on a microscope, which boost its seeing power, devotion to Mary magnifies Christ to me. Her perfect alignment and transparency do not obscure Him, but as Scripture teaches, magnify Him.
I want my soul, also, to “magnify the Lord” to the world around me. I need to work on that transparency and alignment. Mother Mary offers lessons in her little ‘home school,’ so I’m moving in that direction!
Find Your Remove
I can be in unity with anyone, at some remove. Perhaps I’m not your cup of tea, or we just don’t sync well, or you’re just ‘not that into’ me, or a little bit goes a long way in our relationship. It may just not be our time yet. We both will continue to grow and change, and maybe the Great Dance will find us, someday, back in phase for a few steps. Or maybe not.
Ultimately, in the kairos of the Eternal present, we’ll reconnect. Meanwhile, we are held in the Spirit’s tether – his net of relationship. It’s a dynamic tension that generates a context between us – a space that we (or even just one of us, with the Spirit’s help) can fill with love.
In the comedy movie Hallalujah Trail, one character tries to keep step with others surreptitiously. The name he gives this maneuver is “maintaining detached contact,” and it’s what I love to do when I feel you’ve dumped me, abandoned me, blown me off, ignored me, or otherwise let go of our unity.
I know from experience that I don’t need your cooperation to hold you in my heart, to fill the space between us with love, to let my yearning for you become a prayer, to offer the pain of separation for your blessing.
If I’m maintaining detached contact with you, watch out! The Spirit is ever at work drawing us closer. One of these days, you may be surprised to find yourself wanting to see me, write to me, touch base with me, or remembering me fondly. I wish you well, and look forward to our reunion.
My Desires
I want to help Catholics:
Build Community
(not to be self-sufficient or satisfied with virtual relationships)
Network
(not to circle wagons or schmooze superficially)
Trust
(not to be suspicious or gullible)
Dialogue
(not to lecture or debate)
Be Creative
(not to be ‘artistes’ or to scribble)
Bear Tension
(not to collapse or snap)
Respond
(not to react or to be silenced)
Be Interested
(not to remain confused or indifferent)
Be Teachable
(not to over-rely on experts or be self-referential)
Take Risks
(not to remain afraid or be foolhardy)
Start Small
(not to wait for big but hold hope for great possibilities)
Smile, have fun, play, enjoy other people, live life as an adventure
(not to be self-righteous party poopers or satisfied with inane amusement)
Living in Plain Sight
Consider the lure of the Ring in Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. The power of invisibility has its advantages, but does it grant any of the pleasure we associate with habit-forming addictions? As I pondered the attractive menace of the Ring, I realized invisibility is actually a highly-sought pleasure, for ancients and moderns alike.
From the Buddhist’s desire to release all personal boundary and immerse the Self in nothingness, to the Gothic teen masking her vulnerability in studded leather, invisibility, or the yearning for it, seems to drive human behavior past reason – like the false promises of chemical happiness, sexual indulgence, or bloodlust.
Over-exposed, bared, naked, raped and violated souls crave the pleasure of darkness, privacy, anonymity, masquerade, and disembodied virtual existence. Please, please,” they seem to say, “Shield us, veil us, return to us our human dignity and personhood.” But they have difficulty emerging into the ‘danger’ of being real, being free, being visible, from the seeming safety of life in hiding – even as they grow ever less able to inhabit the sphere of encounter with reality.
Flatitudes and Floatitudes
Do You Suffer from PERS?!?!?
In a recent talk – Home Schooling to Rock the World – I mentioned some symptoms that a person may be suffering from ‘post-Enlightenment reduction syndrome,’ (PERS) or ‘flattening’. This is the atrophy of one’s analogic sense – a reduction in the metaphoric dimension of human being. The problem is a disconnect in the person’s capacity to relate concrete and abstract reality. Its source is the cultural vacuum caused by man’s attempt to believe there is no God. Man without a context for being (In Him I live and move and have being) is like an astronaut untethered from the space ship – dying for lack of a life-supporting atmosphere.
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