Thinking things through

Friday, June 7, 2024
Solemnity of Sacred Heart of Jesus

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Thinking things through

When Israel was a child I loved him,
out of Egypt I called my son.
Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk,
who took them in my arms.

My Texas friend, husband and dad, pastor and Christian school principal, used strong verbs to describe his spiritual journey. I’m wrestling with my schedule. I’m carving out time to be still. We laughed when I pointed out the violence in his verbs.

I drew them with human cords,
with bands of love;
I fostered them like one
who raises an infant to his cheeks;
Yet, though I stooped to feed my child,
they did not know that I was their healer.

My friend is a strong, young guy who loves sports, lives on the Texas Gulf coast, and grapples (see, there I go too!) with extended family and community relationships that have followed him through his life. He loves his human “doing” life, even if it’s too busy. He loves his wife and kids. And he loves God. And he wants to learn more and more about human “being” and all the loves that entails.

Here’s a perspective on being from Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon who wrote Proof of Heaven after his own accident and miraculous recovery:

True thought is not the brain’s affair. But we have—in part by the brain itself—been so trained to associate our brains with what we think and who we are that we have lost the ability to realize that we are at all times much more.

Of course, Dr. Alexander knows the language, and he considers the nuances of the words he chooses. Much more than the words, however, as Richard Rohr summarizes:

The recognition is that the real power, as in the Trinity, is in the capacity for relationship, for communion, for being mirrored, and therefore gaining the ability to mirror other people. This type of thinking isn’t dependent on linear deduction. It moves as fast as lightning, making connections on different levels. It might be hard to verbalize, but it’s experienced as a moment of insight, a spontaneous gift of compassionate, inner clarity. It will never be angry or violent, only a clarity of love.   
In the face of this free inner intelligence, our ordinary thought is hopelessly slow and fumbling. It’s this free thinking that comes up with the radical insight or writes the inspired song.

And you might say it’s this “free thinking” that created the universe and all that is in it. One day at a time.
And this “free thinking” must surely be the path to joy, to contentment as finite mortal beings in a world that often does not satisfy.

This really is or can be the change that changes everything. Contemplation gives us access to our birthright waiting within us. If we stay on this journey, we come to know that we are merely a grain of sand, though a wonderful grain of sand, in this marvelous universe.

Living from the inside out makes all this life flow more freely, as it is intended to flow.

It is Jesus in whom we have boldness of speech and confidence of access through faith in him. For this reason I kneel before the Father.

(Hosea 11, Isaiah 12, Ephesians 3, Matthew 11, 1 John 4, John 19)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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