Golden rules

Friday, August 21, 2020         Memorial of Saint Pius X, Pope        (today’s lectionary)

Golden rules

Sitting in the parking lot waiting for Marc to finish his first physical therapy session on his neck and shoulder, I talked with our friend about the golden rule, which has saved the lives of some of us. And that Jesus had two:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind.

And the second? Love your neighbor as yourself.

My version of the first three of AA’s Twelve Steps is:

1. I cannot manage my life on my own.
2. God can.
3. I think I’ll let him.

Embracing each of those steps requires great sacrifice and courage, always in the face of great suffering. Then further along the twelve-step path: “Man up and admit your mistakes, then go find those you’ve hurt and make amends.”

Love God, love yourself, and love your neighbor.

Talking about this with my friend Don yesterday next to another parking lot, this time beside a beautiful Illinois lake under a crisp blue sky, we talked about Saint Bernard, or Bernie as we called him. Bernard of Clairvaux spoke well, prayed well, organized well, and besides that he wrote eighty-six sermons on Scripture’s Song of Songs about  the love relationship between God and each of our souls. Bernard described our experience with that endless love (“God doesn’t love us, God IS love,” Don said) as a gradually deepening lesson from God about how to be a lover:

1. Learn to love yourself for your own sake.
2. Learn to love God for your own sake.
3. Learn to love God for God’s sake.
4. Learn to love yourself for God’s sake. This last one, especially, is worth looking into. Bernard writes, “When will I learn to be unconsciously self-forgetful, even for an instant, and simply be a broken vessel?”

David and Jan Stoop adapted this lesson in love for us to use with each other in intimate relationship:

1. I love you for how you make me feel.
2. I love you for what you do for me.
3. I love you for who you are.
4. I love myself because of who you are.

Lists of steps and stages are great for organizing thoughts and plans, but they only consist of words. As even Jesus’ statements to the Pharisees were only words, there isn’t much point in understanding if my life doesn’t change. The first two stages of loving relationship, whether loving God or loving Margaret, are all about me. I move beyond this sometimes, but I also fall back, over and over. I am never fully free to be unselfish.

I have gone astray again and again in the desert.

I am hungry and thirsty, and I watched my life ebbing away.

If I am ever going to leave the parking lot and move on, I must fall down on my knees and confess my powerlessness. When I do and encounter, even for an instant, God’s humility in myself, what happens then?

From my straits you rescued me

And then in an instant you led me

By a direct way

To the inhabited city.

The promises abound. Scripture is crammed full of the smells, tastes, sights and sounds of promise. Love wins. God is love. Fill up your tank and get ready to rise.

Give thanks to the Lord

Because he satisfies the longing, hungry soul with GOOD things.

Ezekiel’s vision of a valley full of dry bones lends itself to children’s songs. You don’t want to be a dry bone! But God told Ezekiel to “prophecy over these bones,” and Ezekiel did. And then, oh, Lord, what a noisy din they began to make.

There was a rattlin’ as the bones come together,

Skin covered ‘em, and the muscles grow’d.

Still no spirit, though.

COME, HOLY SPIRIT!

Ruah, blow your way into this valley from all four corners of the sky.

And the spirit come, and the graves is opened up,

And all the people rise! Dey rise! O my people, rise!

I have promised, promised, yes! And I will do it, says the Lord.

             (Ezekiel 37, Psalm 107, Psalm 25, Matthew 22)

#