Have you ever been seduced by time into misplacing something precious at the core of who you are, and in a manner which makes it increasingly difficult to retrieve? Recently, out of the blue, my thumb-drive came to mind, but I could not recall where I had put it. Although I was not in urgent need of it, not knowing where the thumb-drive was filled me with a disorientating anxiousness as it contains the fruits of my long hours of labour on my dissertation. Replacing the thumb-drive would be easy. Rewriting my dissertation, however, would demand immense resources that cannot be bought at will. Whilst frantically looking for it, I stumbled upon it while rummaging through my belongings for something else.
This rather uncanny event drew my attention to the underlying climate I was in. Being in transition brings with it the struggle of reconnecting with many other things in life in a manner both old and new. Within a fresh landscape, a need to evoke a space for prayer, set up a conducive corner for some rigorous work, discover a stilling view for my spiritual reading, nurture a time and route for regular exercise, and so forth. Not only am I going through my possessions and deciphering my environment, I am also ransacking my waned memories for experiences and images of persons whom I cherished while in Manila 25 years ago. I have faces begging to be named, experiences longing to be continued, and persons waiting to be found in real life. And, there is a certain ache in the soul in not being able to locate in reality what is real in one’s heart.
In the process of becoming, the first human person in each of us must discover a form of being accompanied which transforms our longing into completion, fullness and overflow.
Having been brought into existence, there is a similar primal longing and search in Adam for that which lives in him and completes him. The more Adam encountered the diverse and mesmerising variants of nature, the more he felt this longing in the form of being alone. In the process of becoming, the first human person in each of us must discover a form of being accompanied which transforms our longing into completion, fullness and overflow.
However, our preoccupation with emerging through experiences and in creation may also harden this primal longing into a crystallisation of that loneliness – simmering with patterns of rejection, envy and bitterness. Divorce, as Jesus is at pains to elicit, is a false remedy for that primal longing which reinforces loneliness while refusing an evolving and enduring companionship. When we begin to accept being alone as our fact of security and survival, then persons, things and events around us become either sources of hostility or instruments for use; instead of holding wellsprings of a presence which makes us rich.
Finding God in all things means, discovering in everything around us something overflowing which allows us to emerge into becoming more full and complete than before that encounter; contrary to a persistent reminder that we are not enough.
God suffers the lowering of Himself beneath the angels in order to embrace being human because He desires to be a companion, not to tame or to manipulate us into submission. It is this ability for accompaniment in trusting vulnerability which gives the child exclusive access to Jesus’ embrace and to God’s Kingdom. When being with another human being empties me further, making me retreat and defend, instead of filling me up, allowing me to emerge and overflow, then whatever I undertake in desperation to overcome this underlying alienation and loneliness divorces me further from everything.
Finding God in all things means, discovering in everything around us something overflowing which allows us to emerge into becoming more full and complete than before that encounter; contrary to a persistent reminder that we are not enough.
Lord, for a little while you lowered yourself beneath the angels to delight in the fullness of the human in us; help us also, in those graced moments to find delight in experiencing the fullness of your embrace in all things within.
FR RAVI MICHAEL LOUIS, SJ
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