Catch on fire, catch the wave

Saturday, December 16, 2023

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Catch on fire, catch the wave

In those days, like a fire appeared the prophet Elijah whose words were as a flaming furnace. By the Lord’s word he shut up the heavens and three times brought down fire.

Time after time I listen to talk about growing up, about “adulting,” and about becoming more serious. But seriously, I want to be more amazed. I want to, as Richard Rohr says, “allow the moment to get some control over me, and teach me something new!”

Elijah received this gift from God and mastered its use. God entrusted the future of Israel to his prophet. King Ahab and Queen Jezebel rejected God, and so God rejected them. Elijah prayed and no rain fell for three years. Elijah prayed alongside Jezebel’s priests, and those priests were burned while Elijah was not.

You were destined to turn back the hearts of fathers toward their sons. Blessed is he who shall have seen you and who falls asleep in your friendship.

Rohr sees contemplation as a path toward amazement with God, but this path is not easy. Not at first:

How do we learn this contemplative mind, this deep, mysterious, and life-giving way of seeing and of being with reality? Why does it not come naturally to us? Actually, it does come momentarily in states of great love and great suffering, but such wide-eyed seeing normally does not last. We return quickly to dualistic analysis and use our judgments to retake control. A prayer practice—contemplation—is simply a way of maintaining the fruits of great love and great suffering over the long haul and in different situations. And that takes a lot of practice—in fact, our whole life becomes one continual practice.  

Are you ready for some humility, or rather humiliation?

To begin to see with new eyes, we must observe, and usually be humiliated by, the habitual way we encounter each moment. It is humiliating because we will see that we are well-practiced in just a few predictable responses. Few of our responses are original, fresh, or naturally respectful of what is right in front of us. The most common human responses to a new moment are mistrust, cynicism, fear, knee-jerk reactions, a spirit of dismissal, and overriding judgmentalism. It is so dis-couraging when we have the courage to finally see that these are the common ways the ego tries to be in control of the data—instead of allowing the moment to get some control over us and teach us something new! 

There might be nothing new under the sun. But most of that is new to me! In one of my favorite plays the main character cries out to those around him. “The important thing is to pull yourself up by your own hair, to turn yourself inside out, and see the whole world with fresh eyes.”

This I do not do well on my own, but it does sound like the kind of thing God can’t wait to empower in me. Rohr invites me to be “at least slightly stunned by the moment until it draws you inward and upward toward a subtle experience of wonder.”

Day by day, let the little children come.

Take care of this vine, and protect what your right hand has planted, the son of man whom you yourself made strong. Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight his paths.

(Sirach 48, Psalm 80, Luke 3, Matthew 17)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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