Birthing Compassion

"You can't force the heart. Genuine compassion cannot be imposed from without. It doesn't happen simply by hearing a sermon on love, or being sent on a loving mission. How often have we set out to love the world -- or even more difficult, to love some tiresome, undeserving, mule-headed person on our street -- and given up, feeling exasperated, unappreciated, used, tired, burned out or just plain cynical? The point is, you don't arbitrarily make up your mind to be compassionate so much as you choose to follow a journey that transforms your heart into a compassionate space. Compassion, which is the very life of God within us, comes through slow and often difficult metamorphosis deep within the human soul. It happens through a process. If we look closely at the workings of creation, we find God nearly always works through process and passages. Think of it. First, there is a seed, then a sprout, then a blossom, and finally fruit. God does not begin with a butterfly, but with a larva that becomes a chrysalis and finally a creature with wings. Neither does God speak a star into existence but sends dust floating in space, then interstellar gas, slow heating of temperatures and eons later, a star. Perhaps most mysterious of all is the unfolding process of ovum, fetus, baby, child, adolescent, adult. The universe is designed to move stage by stage, from incompletion to completion. Now why should we suppose that God designed the heart any differently than the rest of creation. It, too, has its stages. Meister Eckart, the fourteenth-century theologian and mystic, used imagery which highlighted the truth that divine life, like human life, is implanted internally and comes about through a process of gestation and birth. "We are each meant to be mothers of God," he wrote. For Eikhart, birthing God essentially meant birthing compassion. He believed compassion to be the ultimate fruit of our birthing, a slow breaking out of divinity from within us. God is compassion, he insisted; therefore, as God is born more deeply in the soul, so too is the compassionate life." (Sue Monk Kidd, article in Weavings)

"We are made clean by contrition, ready by compassion, and worthy by our true desire for God. These are three means, as I understood, by which all souls come to heaven, that is to say, those who have been sinners on earth and will be saved...For our courteous Lord does not want his servants to despair over falling often or failing deeply. Our falling does not prevent him from loving us. Peace and love are always working in us, but we are not always in peace and love. God wants us to take heed that God is the foundation of all our whole life in love.. Furthermore, God is our everlasting protector and mightily defends us against all our most dangerous and fierce enemies."
(Julian of Norwich, died 1416)

A word from the readings of the lectionary:
Genesis 24: 34-67        successful
Psalm 45: 1-17             beauty
Zechariah 9:9-12          triumphant
Psalm 145: 1-14           upholds
Romans 7: 15-25          rescue
Matthew 11: 16-30       learn
Jeremiah 10                  true

"We don't always have to like Your (God's) will do we? Help me want what You want for me. Only I don't know what it is that You want...My soul thirsts for Thee...So, help me O Lord. You have to help me, it is so dark." (Mariana, convent nun in Madeleine L'Engle's novel The Love Letters)

July 3 - Prayer for the day:  "Heavenly Father, may I keep my eye focused on you, also in my labor for daily bread. Spare me from running after that which does not last. Let me not seek my crown in material things but honestly strive toward that which is above. Amen.

"Love is a four-letter word. And you have been wrapped in the cotton wool of those damn convent schools all your life, know nothing about four-letter words. Love is the wildest one of them all. We take it and we separate it and we are too cowardly to accept the violence of the union of all its parts. And a marriage that is a marriage has to accept this fusion. It has to be done. It cannot be evaded...Passion is part of a marriage, and a necessary part, but it does not endure unless it is sustained by a foundation of love that is __" Endurance, for one thing. Acceptance. All people are impossible to live with, don't you know that...So what a marriage is founded on is a commitment to this impossible. You make promises when you get married and you stand by them. You stand by them no matter what. You stand by them even if you have broken them. And you break them over and over again, in intention, if not in act. And it doesn't matter. You still stand by them...Love me for what I am, not for what you would like me to be. That is how you must love Patrick. You must love him for what he is. And you must love him for no reason. You must love him simply because you love him. It is an act of commitment. You have committed yourself to it. And you can do it. (Violet to her daughter-in-law Charlotte in Madeleine L'Engle's novel The Love Letters)

"Your turning away from God doesn't mean that He can't love you. Love doesn't always flow in two directions. It takes only one to love." (Madeleine L'Engle, The Love Letters)