Monthly Archives: April 2022

Hand Them the Chalk

Think of that person who gets under your skin.  Maybe they do something that you do not like.  Maybe they do not believe what you believe or think how you think.

What would happen, though, if you became genuinely, intentionally curious about them?  What if there was no aversion, only an intense desire to learn how they see the world?

Here is one way in.  Picture yourself in a classroom with them.  Now, hand them the chalk and go sit down.  Let them teach you.  Don’t interrupt them.  Don’t prepare a rebuttal while they are talking.  Let them really sketch it all out for you.  Let them cover the whole board.

When we are able to listen like this, a whole world opens up.  Our vision becomes expansive.  We see that they, like us, carry fear, and this fear makes us all do things that don’t make sense.  We see a way forward in relationship.   

These days, I think this is what is meant, in the prayer of St. Francis, by the lines: “O Master, let me not seek as much…to be understood as to understand…”

The Empty Tomb

Have you read Pope Francis’ Easter Vigil homily?  It is worth it.  

This part was a gift to me.

“The first proclamation of the resurrection was not a statement to be unpacked, but a sign to be contemplated. In a burial ground, near a grave, in a place where everything should be orderly and peaceful, the women “found the stone rolled away from the tomb; but when they went in, they did not find the body” (vv. 2-3). Easter begins by upsetting our expectations. It comes with the gift of a hope that surprises and amazes us.” (emphasis added)

How can contemplation of this image, this sign, be a gift to us in places where we are stuck?

One More Paradox

Can I add one more paradox to the list of apparent contradictions that, when lived into, lead to a life of deep love?

Here it is.

That we have to feel and believe that we are enough in this moment in order to be transformed.

Put another way, the Spiritual Exercises have us, “know well that I’m loved even though oh so flawed” and lead on to “offer all I possess, beg for my stony-heart thawed, and act from a deep love, the love that is God.”

The Opposite of Hope

What if we understood presumption to be the opposite of hope?

The presumption that only “we” have anything of worth to say.  That if it is not our truth, then it is a lie.  That truly listening to those people is not worth my time.  That fatalism is the only honest way to face the facts.

Presumption is one way to buffer ourselves from the weight of reality which, considered with clear perception, is quite heavy.  

Hope, though, entails a creative impulse that holds our engagement of reality ajar to love, to courage, and to daily commitment to take charge of the weight of reality.  

I do not think this “hope-holding-us-ajar” movement is something we do on our own, but it is possible to pray for.