It is God who draws your forehead to the ground

Monday, February 26, 2024

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It is God who draws your forehead to the ground

Be merciful, as your heavenly father is merciful.

As the sun sets, the dusk darkens and it seems very quiet here around me. I can hear my ears ringing. A helicopter whirls away into the distance, rescuing the perishing. Sirens move closer, and past. A fire truck sounds its howling horn. An accident. I 74 is just a mile away.

I had a Chinese buffet lunch yesterday with my high school buddy Jim. He is a few months older than me and celebrated his 75^th birthday in January. His once-scraggly beard is graceful now, bright white, setting off his eyes, which have always been thoughtful and compassionate.

We talked about spiritual people, for whom spirit comes first. But there is a weaving of body, mind and spirit, together in all things, in all places, in all of us.  We are both of us spiritual helpers for others, and especially for our wives.

But still, we both mull over Temu or Amazon purchases every day. Is that spiritual? Jim has 200 strawberry plants to set this spring. His ankle and elbow are sore, and he hopes for a right knee replacement in April. He cannot set the plants with his spirit. His mind often will not stop until it seems to freeze up, like an engine running without oil. He might fall asleep, or not, and then when he awakens his mind rushes off again. O spirit, where art thou?

May your compassion quickly come to us, for we are brought very low.

We think, and then name this “monkey mind,” because his thoughts have many branches, and besides all the branches each thought intertwines with other separate thoughts, and his monkey jumps from one to another, and from another back to the first. This is a way of life for us both. When we begin to name all this and call it out, when we take deep breaths and notice our breathing, then our minds quiet down. For a moment. Not for long, but long enough to remember our gratitude that we are not entirely in charge. Let us now praise famous men. Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

“Your questions cut so deep. Sometimes I feel like I’m in therapy with you.”

We say this to each other, because we have both chosen this as a profession – asking questions to help others ask even better questions of themselves, if not now, then perhaps as the sky darkens into night, as the sirens cease, as the night clock strikes two, then three. Now the helicopter is getting louder, returning from its rescue.

What do you think, should we chase the ambulance, get our kicks out of someone’s ill-fortune?

No no no no no. I must mind my own business.

But still, so much happens out there, and I must turn to God, and let his love come, and flow through me. Somehow.

Here is a poem about others, and about me:

At the foot of the cross

The body of the woman floating down the Rio Grande,

child in her arms, not her own, but whom she had pledged

to carry to safety.

 

The girl in Afghanistan, wondering if she will have a boyfriend

before she is raped.

 

The Indonesian boy, maybe 13, enslaved, laboring in the bowels

of the shrimp factory far at sea, who hasn’t seen his family,

or land, in two years.

 

The black man, strapped by the incomprehensible

to the gurney behind the prison glass.

 

If you don’t kneel and bow your forehead to the ground

before them, you haven’t yet been to the foot of the cross.

 

Pierced by the suffering of the innocent,

and your part in it, and meeting the divine there,

you behold the cross.

 

When you kneel, you kneel, you bow,

but it is God who draws your forehead to the ground. – Steve Garnaas-Holmes

Jesus has so much to say about us, how to live with each other, without chasing ambulances.

Stop judging and you will not be judged.

Stop condemning and you will not be condemned

Forgive and you will be forgiven.

Give and gifts will be given to you, a good measure, packed together, shaken down and overflowing.

It will be poured into your lap.

For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.

This has always been God’s way for me, for me to notice God and not compare myself to those around me. This is God’s way for all of us. And it always will be.

(Daniel 9, Psalm 79, John 6, Luke 6)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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