you create me and so i live
an oak of consciousness
you uncreate me and so i live
a ray of light
you create me
Repentance is the cry of the Hebrew prophets, of John the Baptist and, to a lesser degree, of Jesus. In Hebrew the two common words for the verb to repent either mean to go back, to turn from one position to another (shuwb), or to feel remorse, to sigh (nacham). In Greek, the word used is (metanoia), to turn around and move in a different direction. What has part of our story is that we carry an ancestral pseudo-memory about repentance that suggests guilt and shame. This tradition has its origins in the orthodox interpretations of the story of the garden of Eden. As it has been formed in us, it is the story of disobedience and indelible error, redeemable only through human blood, the sacrifice that we have come to associate with the death of Christ. We have a sense that some extraordinary penance is necessary if we are to avoid punishment for trespasses that are either intentional or inadvertent. For us to become more fully the people of Christ in this time, we must examine what we have meant by repentance and what we could mean. We need to move to a crreative understanding rather than the isolating idea of shame that has dominated much of our thinking about matters spiritual and ethical.
This sense of shame is closely allied to grief because it has been how we have often made sense of our pain, our sense of being exiles from the love of God. Indeed, the external expressions of penitence look much like those of grief (Psalm 38:1-2,49-10,13-14,17-18):
O God, do not rebuke me in your anger,
or discipline me in your wrath.
For your arrows have sunk into me,
and your hand has come down on me.
For my iniquities have gone over my head;
they weigh like a burden too heavy for me.
O God, all my longing is known to you;
my sighing is not hidden from you.
My heart throbs, my strength fails me;
as for the light of my eyes—it also has gone from me.
But I am like the deaf, I do not hear;
like the mute, who cannot speak.
Truly, I am like one who does not hear,
and in whose mouth is no retort.
For I am ready to fall,
and my pain is ever with me.
I confess my iniquity;
I am sorry for my sin.
The emphasis in this psalm, as in many other styles of penitence, is on the humiliation of the penitent and on the graciousness of God to forgive. All misfortune is understood to be the result of sin, or at the very least, inattention to the demands of the faith.
One of the most painful experiences I have had in hospital chaplaincy was helping people whose loved ones, babies in particular, have died. The pain was not in the death, although that was deeply sad; the pain arose from people’s sense of having been at fault somehow and that this was the consequence. One young couple asked me if their baby’s death was due to their common-law relationship; another couple confessed that they had not been in church in so long and this was perhaps a message. Our “folk” wisdom about misfortune is that it is a direct consequence of actions that displease the God of rewards and punishments. This idea still has such currency that innocent suffering cannot be easily explained and the prosperity of the rich sinner is to be seen as an injustice on the part of God. The story of Dives and Lazarus in heaven is how we make sense of the good fortune of the selfish or wicked: they will get punished in the end!
This is not new thinking, but it becomes less and less helpful as we explored in “In Suffering, Wholeness”. Actually, repentance as a punitive humiliation for wickedness in “thought, word and deed” is so unpleasant that mostly we avoid it or think of it as unhealthy morbidity. Much of the self-mockery of those who do feel shame has to do with a sense both of our own unworthiness and an idea that the punishment far exceeds the average crime of simply being born in a human body. One of the most poorly attended rites of the church is the Good Friday service in which we remember the courage and love of Jesus or his atonement to God for the sins of humanity. Some of our discomfort has to do with powerlessness in the face of an accusation that is larger than a single human life. Most of it has to do with feeling blamed for the need to propitiate an angry and demanding God who has yet to forgive humanity for being who we are made to be. This si the God who therefore requires the blood sacrifice of Jesus, something for which we continue to be responsible, even when we attempt to slough off some of the guilt onto others –Romas, Jews– to ease the spiritual pressure. Good Friday is often experienced as lose-lose: we cannot be saved without Jesus’ death and we are to blame for his death.
We need to separate repentance and suffering and disentangle our ideas of reward and punishment. Hair shirts, wailing, and torn scalps notwithstanding, repentance is not so much about guilt as about awareness and empathy. In other words, repentance arises from identification with the suffering of another or from an insight into the consequences of our behaviour in the life or lives of other(s). The change in the equation is that there is no triangulation; God does not intervene to mete out consequences. The situations and their resolution, or their tragedy, lie in human hands. God does not wave the wand of punishment or of prosperity. The world and its peoples are our responsibility. Jesus dies because he is fully human, because people of integrity in situations of oppression live dangerously. Jesus dies not so much for us as with us in our struggle to be free and aware. Jesus suffers in solidarity with humanity not simply because of humanity. Suffering is either an experience in which we express solidarity, like Jesus, or one which we exacerbate by our actions or by our indifference.
But what about our couples with the babies? They need to know that the connection between their children’s deaths and the Holy One exists only in God’s compassionate love, which permits death when suffering is too extreme. They need to know that their actions have not brought about their children’s deaths, that God wanted these babies to live and prosper as much as they did. They need to hear that God is their consolation and comfort, not the One who takes away, but the One who receives, not the One who punishes, but the One who forgives.
If suffering belongs not so much to events as to our response to and definition of certain experiences, then why be concerned with the suffering of another.? Why not leave them to their misery and deal with our own, the “look after number one” ethic? Inevitably, suffering will become a shared experience; it is part of the price of consciousness. And if we hide from our complicity with those who have caused the suffering, it will be delivered to our door in a package that cannot be refuted. Jesus promises that those who are persecutors will be known by their deeds. “So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. (Matthew 10:26-27)
This is wonderful news for those whose oppression has been hidden, and also good news for those who need to be redeemed from their selfish, evil ways (whether they like it or not). This is the message of the historical punishment of sin, “unto the third and fourth generation of those who hate me”; the vulnerable will be avenged, perhaps not individually, but collectively there will be an accounting. Until they are, the sin will continue to haunt and blemish for succeeding generations. We are all both victim and perpetrator, caught up in the systemic nature of evil, that which denies life and growth. Sin is a condition in which we find ourselves on the side of the oppressor, on the side of power rather than healing. Sin means holding the gun, withholding the food, causing the pain.
Suffering is a consequence of sin; repentance is the corrective measure that will redeem the sinner, that will return the sinner to the side of the suffering where there is also a growing holiness and wholeness. This message then of repentance comes to us as good news, that where we have erred, we will be corrected and where we have been sinned against, we will ultimately be vindicated. All things return to the primary value which is goodness; evil is transitory and cannot withstand the urge to be reborn into wholeness. This is the judgement and the deliverance of the societies and cultures of all times.
At an individual level, we are invited to a different perception of reality. When we see another suffering, we are able to connect to our own sense of alienation, the isolating quality of our own pain. As we move through our suffering, we come to recognize the ways in which we are part of the whole unfolding, or labour of creation,
“For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies”. (Romans 8:19-23)
Both the healing of suffering and the momentum to pass through this tunnel of pain require a recognition of the way in which suffering has brought us back into community, the way in which alienation itself has been the vehicle to return us to our sense of belonging. But there is one difference: we will never again see others as intact, invulnerable, but we will see all of creation, and particularly other humans as contingent, friable, delicate yet ultimately resilient and filled with potential.
When we see ourselves as participants in the health and healing of the world, so we see ourselves as part of the problem as well. To accept repentance as good news means to acknowledge our own pain, isolation and helplessness in the face of the enormous complexity of the systems we have created. We come to understand that in this web of life, we are all caught in the moment before the apple, the moment of choosing the apple, and then experiencing the consequences of this awareness.
As Susan Griffin remarks in The Eros of Everyday Life,
“Yet the communion is here. Even as I touch my hand to my face I can feel it. That radiant love that is an undeniable part of the body. What June Jordan calls an “intelligent love.” Seeking to see, to know, to take in all that is, as it is. To meet all that exists. It is by such a sacrament that wounds will heal us. Any healing will require us to witness all our histories where they converge, the history of empires and emancipations, of slave ships as well as underground railroads; it requires us to listen back into the muted cries of the beaten, the burned, forgotten and also to hear the ring of speech among us, meeting the miracle of that. And if we weep in the apprehension, let us take the capacity to weep and marvel as proof of a wisdom in the stuff of our existence, at one with the redwood forests…as it is with the watery cells of our own bodies, or the star, just bursting into a distant brightness. Our sorrow and joy belong to this history, have evolved from the cooling planet of earth…. The tears and laughter with which we meet this moment are as much a part of intelligence as any reason and can move us deeper to the core of things.”
And thus we are called to repentance, to turn to a new way of seeing the world, another chance for ourselves, a new set of responsibilities. Mother Teresa used to say that she loved the poor and could take on even the most extreme physical challenges because she could see Christ in the face of the suffering. But maybe we need to see our own face in the face of suffering. Maybe we need to recognize the genuine pain that we would avoid at all costs in our own lives and the hurts that we all carry, whether lightly or as burdens. To have this interior knowledge of pain is to offer healing when we spot it in others. Jorge Luis Borges wrote: “Perhaps a feature of the crucified face lurks in every mirror; perhaps the face died, or was erased, so that God may be all of us. Who knows but that tonight we may see it in the labyrinth of dreams, and tomorrow not know what we saw.” (Paradiso XXXI,108, Dreamtigers)
We choose to walk back into sharing pain because we would never have another walk the path of suffering alone. Jesus discovers in the garden that despite the fear and grief that makes his friends unreliable, he must walk into his commitment to healing by risking his own body, his own security. Moreover, as we become seasoned veterans of our repentance, at acknowledging both our own sin and the pain that we carry, it becomes easier to reach out to others, and easier to accept the healing of our own souls.
There is a rather funny healing story in the gospel of John (chapter 9) , in which Jesus cures the sight of a young man who has been blind since birth. Despite the fact that this man’s whole life has been changed and he evidently can see, others will not believe this has happened or they suggest that it is impossible because of sin, or because of the man’s ancestral sin and so on. None of these questions has any real validity, as any one who was familiar with the breadth of Torah would probably have known. What is true is that when blindness changes to sight, when isolation resolves into belonging, nothing is ever the same again. This young man is not a miracle but a threat because he can see and in seeing, he can move from his own blindness to affecting the blindness of others.
The world can be changed and is changed all the time by people who turn from blindness to sight, from apathy to action, from indifference to faith. Quite correctly, the powers and principalities of the world fear this healing because it suggests that poverty, war, oppression, and all other political and culturally imposed pain can be eradicated, healed, if you will, by clear vision. You cannot lie to a person who can see you clearly; you cannot deceive the person who has been given wise eyes. A nation of mostly wise eyes would choose differently, would have different expectations of its officials. And then powers and principalities would have to manage and facilitate generosity and sharing, rather than our minds and our information. I am speaking of how we become unwitting cogs in a self-perpetuating political machinery that cannot succeed because it does not recognize suffering and repentance as political acts, as carrying great harm and the potential for ultimate good in their processes. Unfortunately, profit making has been confused with government and the manipulation of citizens with humble service. As long as we allow ourselves to be cocooned from repentance, we will not be healed; we will not learn compassion. We will be like those who “indeed look, but not perceive, and may listen, but not understand….” (Mark 4:12)
The whole question of compassion and forgiveness is fraught with difficulty, but I would suggest that it is impossible to forgive until we recognize our own need for forgiveness. Until we each recognize our own potential to cause great harm, we cannot forgive that potential or actuality in others and so we cannot heal it. We cannot feel compassion until we have experienced in ourselves the need for forgiveness.
One of the most difficult challenges for each human being is to see in oneself the monsters that we project onto others. We must each ask ourselves in what circumstances we might become the molester, the murderer, the liar, the drug dealer, the terrorist. It is not sufficient to say, “Never me!” In our world, these are categories and labels rather than people. And it is no longer true, if it ever was, that people are innocent until found guilty. The second a person is arrested for a crime, we are ready with our noose and our judgement and often feel cheated if somehow the person is found innocent. We in fact incite victims to this sense of righteous vengeance although we know that this sometimes will be more painful to heal than the actual violation that was experienced. This rage allows us to hide ourselves, our complicity, our fear about the monster within.
This painful and systemic lust for retribution has distance and alienation at its heart. We treat despair and pain as disease rather than as a way of experiencing the world at a particular moment in time. There is nothing inherently evil in pain or despair; they can be passages to a new way of seeing the world, of receiving healing. That will not happen, not until a person looks deep within to learn to love their inner monsters, or their potential. It is only compassion that tames the beast, only love that turns a sword into a tool. To have peace in ourselves is to accept the monsters within and to love them until they are responsive and beautiful. This is the ministry of Jesus, to love even the monsters, to defend the vulnerable, to tell the truth, to show us ourselves and show us how we are loved because of and despite ourselves. Through Jesus, we are able to understand God as a good and loving parent who weeps over some of the paths we take, but who cannot resist our appeal. We are connected to our Maker with the umbilical cord of light and spirit and passion. From Jeremiah 31:18-20, we read:
Indeed I heard Ephraim pleading:
“You disciplined me, and I took the discipline;
I was like a calf untrained.
Bring me back, let me come back,
for you are my God.
For after I had turned away I repented;
and after I was discovered, I struck my thigh;
I was ashamed, and I was dismayed
because I bore the disgrace of my youth.”
Is Ephraim my dear son?
Is he the child I delight in?
As often as I speak against him,
I still remember him.
Therefore I am deeply moved for him;
I will surely have mercy on him,
says the Holy One.
Repentance begins by wondering at how our actions affect others. This does not mean a kind of gentle dishonesty, but rather an engaged honesty, “my small truth” spoken with compassion. In repentance there are no big truths, only the little truths that we glean for ourselves as we walk the path. Repentance is recognition of both our power and the limitations of our wisdom. Remorse is always accompanied by humility as we see the effect of what we have done compared to the satisfaction of the action we have undertaken. In a novel I was reading, a young thief steals a rich girl’s jewellery — that is his occupation — but as he leaves the room, he notices that her nakedness is partly revealed. He finds this both disturbing and compelling as he escapes. What he learns from this experience is how in stealing, he is robbing people not just of their possessions but of their sense of privacy and security. “Crokus shared something of… sardonic reserve for the pretence [of the wealthy]. Adding fuel to this fire was a healthy dose of youthful resentment towards anything that smacked of authority…yet he’d never before understood the most subtle and hurtful insult his thefts delivered — the invasion and violation of privacy…. Eventually, Crokus grasped that the vision had everything to do with —everything. He’d come into her room, a place where …innocence didn’t just mean a flower not yet plucked. Her sanctuary…. In his mind the once-stalwart walls of outrage were crumbling.” (Erikson, p.234)
What he has taken is so much more than the value of the merchandise he has stolen — and he repents. Nobody could steal or harm another if we knew that we would feel the wound in our own experience. Nobody could resist repenting if we began to experience life through the eyes of another, particularly one who has less because of our more, or who hurts because of what we have said — no matter how righteous we may feel about it and no more how right we might genuinely be. Engagement with another is not a question of rightness, but of understanding. When Jesus meets the woman at the well (John 4), he teases her about her marital situation, but is still engaged, not judging, but caring.
Repentance is the corrective then for that which causes suffering and is the sign that compassion has come to make a home in a person or in a group of persons. Repentance will not stop natural disaster, or grief or illness, but it will affect the way in which we experience these losses and pains. We will cease to see ourselves as separate and begin to see ourselves as part of the whole, affecting and being affected as life twists and turns through the eternal moment. We come to experience both humility in the face of our self-absorption and awe at the power of the individual to effect change through the slightest action. Dr. T. Crowley of the University of Guelph sees in the study of history the power of the individual to affect the course of events. No one is insignificant, although our role may never be known, our participation hidden in history, but we each carry a piece of that history. What is also true is that each of us is the product of genetic variables, the time and conditions of our birth, and the influences and experience that surround us. We cannot separate ourselves from the flow; we can only decide how we live in the stream of God’s life as we witness it opening in this world.
Repentance is the sign that a person is forgiving and has begun to forgive themselves for having the knowledge of good and evil, but lacks the maturity and wisdom to see in a larger perspective. To turn from one way of being to another is a reflection of the deeper and inner change that marks the way to seeing the self as an active and responsible participant in the universe. Perhaps, the greatest barrier to true repentance and compassion is this curious combination of feeling powerless along with our sense of isolation, our sense of ourselves as individuals capable of acting without reference to others, capable of living separately and independently. There is no such thing as a self-made person; there is no one who survives one day of life without the assistance of others, whether or not those others are recognized or known.
“We are not alone,” the United Church Creed says, but the truth is that we cannot be alone: that would be a different reality and not the one in which we exist. Why defend our isolation from the healing of community? To be alone suggests control over our lives, allows us to deny dissolution while pretending that we are the deities of our own lives. Even so the DNA that is in us is shared by everything else that lives, trees, other creatures and so on. Humanity is neither so different nor so separate from the rest of creation that we can sever our ties to the world, no matter how much we may abuse it and hold it hostage to our greed and fear.
For this reason, we cannot forgive others until we experience the depth of healing that is forgiveness of self. Forgiveness of self is the path to solidarity with others. In this experience, we see ourselves as unfinished, needy, dependent on the affirmation of others and of the Divine, as children only beginning to take our first steps toward responsibility and active participation in the unfolding of the universe. The most humbling reality is that the Divine has chosen humanity despite our slow maturation to be these participants, perhaps to be the creatures who bring all other creatures into the awareness of love and mercy.
In his new book, Spirit Matters (Hampton Roads, 2000), Michael Lerner says, “… we can understand ourselves as one of the billion ways that Spirit has chosen to pour its love into existence. We are at once a manifestation of all the love of the universe, and an opportunity for the universe through us to manifest greater loving, cooperation, and harmony.… While we are here on earth, we have an incredible opportunity—to recognize and rejoice in the Unity of All being, to stand in awe and wonder at the glory of all that is, and to bring forward as much consciousness, love, solidarity, creativity, sensitivity, and goodness as we can possibly manifest. Developing and refining this kind of consciousness is a central element of what it means to develop an inner life.” (Tikkun, Vol.15, No.3 p. 34)
In accepting this role, we come to see that what is eternal is goodness and growth and what is temporary is pain and loss and evil. If evil is ultimately the loser, then where should we place our energies? If pain is for the moment, but as Paul trusts, will be swallowed up in glory and joy, then we can say with him, “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:54-55). If loss, has to do with how we view time rather than how we view relationship, then our grief as it heals can be resolved into thankfulness for what we have had rather than greed for what we think we deserved. Repentance (turning) from our anger and bitterness and regret to the healing embrace of Christ’s love places us within a universe of becoming, within a cosmos of healing change, within the promise of Julian of Norwich’ s vision:
“All this trusting in the real comfort is meant to be taken generally…. It is God’s will. This word, ‘You will not be overcome’ was said very distinctly and firmly to give us comfort for whatever troubles may come. He did not say, ‘You will never have a rough passage, you will never be over-strained, you will never feel uncomfortable’, but he did say, ‘You will never be overcome.” God wants us to pay attention to these words, so as to trust him always…. For he loves us, and delights in us; so he wills that we should love and delight in him in return, and trust him with all our strength. So all will be well.” (185)
We have spoken frequently of healing as one of the signs of goodness, but what do we mean by healing? Healing is the result of true repentance. Healing comes as we accept the joys and challenges of the experiences as we choose them and as they come to us unbidden. Most of the popular understanding of healing has to do with cures which may or may not be good in themselves. The difference between healing and a cure is that healing covers a wider expanse of the human soul whereas a cure affects only a localized problem.
There are several fallacies with the whole idea of a cure. The first is an unrealistic expectation that we are “owed” a long, problem-free life. The second is that for good people, all problems have directly applicable, effective solutions. The third is that problems are errors in the universe, or mistakes. The fourth is that these mistakes are either God’s errors, or God’s judgement, or our error, but someone is definitely to blame. Julian of Norwich notes the first fallacy about having a comfortable life. Indeed, most people who commit themselves to the spiritual life find that honesty, compassion, and vulnerability are antidotes to any blind comfort, even if their personal lives should escape the usual experiences of conflict and pain. Good people can be hurt, killed, oppressed, become ill, experience loss and betrayal. There is no seal that prevents good people from the pain of being alive in a world where all life is in flux and change. These expectations of spiritual vaccination are human constructions that serve either social controls or assuage the fear of being really alive and really engaged.
If we want to fix the blame on God rather than ourselves, for a world which may not meet our expectations as a species, then we have to see ourselves as robotic rather than free; we are simply part of a dream that God had once and now is analyzing. In this scenario, everything that happens has a preexisting meaning and purpose which presupposes a kind of sadistic and arbitrary judgement by God on an unsuspecting world. This idea of divinity has more to do with the Greek pantheon of anthropomorphic gods than the engaged, yet mysterious Creator “who is becoming” of Moses and of Jesus. There is no room for randomness in the configuration of reality that says it is all planned out. In a configuration in which healing, rather than punishment is the dynamic, there is room for the randomness of life. There is opportunity to give meaning to our pain and loss so that we may live with new strength and purpose. In the first case, we are victims of a providence that does not consult us and in the second case, we are allies with an unfolding hope of radiant life. In a universe of potential, rather than a detailed plan, there is also, tragically, room for us to be enemies and attempt to sabotage rather than promote life and healing.
The difference between healing and a cure is that for a cure we are dependent upon the skill of others or the capriciousness of “God’s” will. In healing, we turn to find the Divine growing within us despite our illness or pain and we turn to others in our life to restore relationship, to experience the possibility of new beginnings, to comfort and be comforted, to make connections that cannot be destroyed by our physical circumstances.
Healing can come only to the person who opens themselves to all the possibilities and finds this path within and outside their own consciousness. Others may or may not find cures, but they will not be healed of the deep wound that is our sense of isolation and loneliness in the face of an external, hostile at worst, indifferent at best, universe. True healing is always characterized by a sense of peace, good humour, trust and thankfulness for what has been given. A person must come to see themselves as part of the fabric of a beautiful and unfolding creation; they must learn to see themselves as loveable and ultimately beloved, they must be curious about the greater mystery that is at the heart of the universe. As Christians, we come to know that God is expressed through revelation in the Anointed One, the Christ.
Healing does not have to wait for a crisis, of course. If religion is doing its job, its task is not really about ethics because they are actually culturally and politically bound, but it is about healing. It is about helping people to open themselves in faith and trust, in hope and thanksgiving to an awareness of life that transcends the limitations of our individual knowledge and existence. It invites people into a sense of cosmic belonging that is so radical, that it changes the way we perceive everyone and everything. The cosmos that is suffused with the radiance of God and of which we are a permanent part, whether we are living or have died, suggests to us that we can never be alone and will always be participating in it at a molecular level, at a historical level, at a genetic level, at a cultural level, and if we are believers, at a spiritual level with Christ. This is healing because it brings an end to ultimate suffering which is our sense of betrayal in the face of the reality of our mortality and our sense of separation that began with our birth from our mother’s womb. This is healing of the disjuncture that allowed us to become self-aware and actors in the unfolding of this universe of which we are such a vital part.
Healing is ultimately a way of life. In the wedding ceremony we say that marriage is a way of life that none should lightly undertake and all should reverence. Perhaps more to the point would be to say that healing is a way of life that all should reverence and none should lightly undertake because it will affect not only our primary relationships but how we interact in the community and therefore in the greater Life. Perhaps that should be the citizenship oath for children in school. Instead of asking them to obey or honour the dubious merits of political rulers and systems, we might ask children to commit themselves to a way of life that is healing of the world, respectful of others and open to personal compassion and repentance.
The benefit of the healing lifestyle is that we can say with Paul that whether we live or whether we die, we belong to this hope. For Christians that hope is bound up in our call to follow Jesus, but for others the context in which they experience the healing life may sound different. It seems to me the qualities of person as self, as member of community, as citizen of the world, look remarkably similar from one form of spirituality to another. You will note that I am not talking about ethics but about attitudes, not about morality, but about a spiritual perspective of the world and the universe that sees separation only as a stage of development rather than an end in itself, that sees human societies as all permeable and transient, that recognizes permanence only in the permutation of matter from one experience of itself to another. In “A Spirituality named Compassion”, Matthew Fox defined compassion like this: “to be compassionate is to incorporate one’s fullest energies with cosmic ones into the twin tasks of 1) relieving the pain of fellow creatures by way of justice-making, and 2) celebrating the existence, time and space that all creatures share as a gift from the only One who is fully Compassion. Compassion is our kinship with the universe and the universe’s maker…” (p.34)
To experience this compassion is to recognize the need for repentance and healing. From our awareness that our ego is not so much distinct as common to all other humans, to remember that our urge to live and thrive is like the dandelions, the squirrels, the creatures of the deep sea, we can place ourselves with the Christ at the centre of the cross, the point of connection. From and through his great compassion, we receive courage to see everything that is within us and everything that we are, alive and external to us. In this unity of consciousness, we are unafraid of our past and serene about our future. It is humility and repentance that teaches us to say yes with our hands outstretched in love and no to our warring and fearful egos. It is repentance that welcomes change as the blessing of the waters of baptism, the oil of peace and healing. It is the Holy within and beyond us that surrounds us with hope and clear vision so that we will see more clearly. The mirror will be true for us and we will be whole and we will abide in the heart of the creator forever.
In repentance, compassion.
God of thunder and God of the silent waters, open us, move us,
teach us not to fear your judgement,
but welcome the change that brings us closer to you and to each other.
Broaden our roads, help us to welcome new companions,
let us see the face of your Beloved in those we meet.
Helps us to feel your creative presence within the depths of our hearts.
Teach us not to fear the monsters, but to see the angels in the heights and in the depths.
In our living and in our dying, may your compassion be the meaning of our lives
and the nourishment we have shared with others.
Amen.