Breaking the Chains that Divide Us

"Though no-one can go back and make a brand-new start, anyone can start now and make a brand-new beginning." – Unknown 

I doubt if there is anyone who would examine his or her life and figure it has turned out perfectly well. No one can go through life without picking up an occasional regret here and there for things said or unsaid; done or undone. 

We all make our choices on the fly, and in reviewing many of those decisions, it would be easy to second-guess ourselves, grieving over mistakes, chastising ourselves for things that, ultimately, do little more than confirm what we ought to know instinctively: that we are human. 

Yes, sometimes we are dunderheads, but that’s not a bad thing. We do not have infinite wisdom, knowledge, or grace. Those are things we have to develop. It takes time; it takes patience; it takes reflection; and it takes the love of a community. 

Strangers do not care whether or not you and I learn anything in life. They don’t care whether we live or die. They don’t care whether or not we have jobs, homes, food, friends, family, or the basic necessities of life. 

Strangers do not care if one is hungry, lonely, in pain, or in desperate straits. Strangers care only for what is on their hearts and minds at any given moment. 

But communities care; true communities truly care. 

God did not make us for estrangement, but for community. The human heart yearns for a home. 

From the moment she is born, a child yearns to be held, embraced, fed, and cared for. Children who are emotionally strong are those who have known the loving embrace of parents – the most basic community – parents who have said in word and deed: You belong. 

Too few of us know that kind of love. Too many people go through life having to prove themselves over and over again. One’s value in our Free-market society, is evaluated almost exclusively on one’s ability to meet someone else’s need, or to advance the other person’s agenda. As soon as your stock drops a point, you are at risk of becoming an apple bobbing alone and out of season in the washtub of life. 

Sadly, that’s the world we live in. Doubly sad is that so many of us buy into that nonsense. We judge as we’ve been judged. Out of a fear of being rejected or tossed out with the bathwater, we devote our lives to finding our bubble and living within it and hoping it will be the other bubbles that pop first, before our own; and why not? Who wants to be hurt over and over again? 

Spiritual growth demands that we take risks, however. As narcissistic as our world is, we must learn to break free of toxic isolation and build fellowships that are genuine in their design to be whole and healthy. We must learn to overcome the shame that binds us and blinds us, and to embrace the One whose love is boundless, who loves each and every one of us without reservation, and who insists we love our neighbor, even if they’re not in our bubble! 

How do we do that? First, we must come to accept that God loves us unconditionally. God does not love us for what we bring to the table; God loves us for being hers. Period. God wants us AT the table. Period. 

Secondly, we must come to love ourselves – not with an ego-centric, self-centered love, but a love that acknowledges our human capacity to be stupid, selfish, and unforgiving at times, but equally, our ability to rise above such “stinkin’ thinkin’” for the sake of the greater good. 

Thirdly, we must be able to recognize the full humanity of the person who stands beside us, as well as the one who may stand against us. God died for them, too! Can we dare to do less?

We must be able to look back to see where we’ve been, but more importantly we must be able to look forward to see the world as it can be; for nothing is impossible with God. It just takes time, patience, and a willingness to exchange our reality for God’s reality. 

I love watching bubbles form. I marvel to see them come together, supporting their common existence. I love seeing the rainbow produced by refracted light. The beauty of creation is best seen when the full spectrum of God’s light is present.

What’s true in heaven above is equally true here in this, our valley.

Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available through Amazon in Print and e-book)

There’s a Price We Pay When Asking God’s Help

Be pleased, O God, to deliver me; O lord, make haste to help me … come to me speedily, O God … O Lord, do not tarry … Psalm 70 

Jean-Pierre Chaussade, SJ writes in The Sacrament of the Present Moment, “When God requires action, sanctity is to be found in activity.”

I have always tried to live my life dancing between faith and action. I’ve never subscribed to the idea that we are saved by faith alone, nor to the concept that we are saved by our works. I prefer to tango down the middle of the road with James, who says that “faith without works is dead.” Of course, someone also once said that those who spend time in the middle of the road are bound to get run over.

In the psalm at the head of this column, we find the psalmist begging God to come to their aid. “I need help, and I need it now,” he pleads.

As I read this psalm, I don’t find myself standing in the sandals of an ancient Jew, but in the ordinary sneakers of a Ukrainian man, woman, or child. I find myself moldering in the body bag of the grandfather who was blindfolded and executed by Russian soldiers for no reason other than being alive and in easy reach of his executioners.

We have the luxury of living in a land far away from the tanks, jets, and missiles visiting death and destruction on the citizens of a foreign land, speaking with a foreign tongue – enduring the devastation of homes and lives there, while we bemoan the rise in price of a loaf of bread, gallon of gasoline, or meal out under the golden arches. Ours are Tesla problems when compared to those living in a travois world.

It is a simple thing to sit in our easy chairs, recliners, or love seats while bemoaning world affairs, inflation, or the slap heard ‘round the world. 

“Be patient” we tell them; our leaders snap their fingers ordering more engines of destruction to be sent out to “help” those in distress. Foreigners. Not neighbors. Far away. Not near.

How do “we citizens of heaven” help, though? Isn’t their pain our pain, too?

“Take it to the Lord in prayer,” we suggest to those whose religion may be, technically, the same as ours, but sure looks and feels different, so maybe this is God’s way of telling them to change, and they should listen, and we shouldn’t interfere with the divine “plan” to fix them. 

Isn’t it an arrogant assumption on our part to assume the one in pain hasn’t thought to “take it to the Lord in prayer.” Maybe they have; maybe their pain is there to force open our eyes and hearts – to recognize our common humanity in the face of those atrocities.

“Who, me?” we ask, like Moses (the Murderer), or Rahab (the Harlot of Jericho), or Jeremiah (the Prophet), or Esther (the Queen), or John Wesley (the Minister), or Harriet Tubman (the Runaway Slave). 

“Yes, you,” says God. 

Saint Augustine reminds us, “Without God, we cannot; without us, God will not.” We cannot, in good conscience, look to God without realizing, simultaneously, that God is also looking at us, fully intending to involve us in answering prayer. If we want God to hurry up, we need to suit up, mount up, scramble into the presence of God and declare without grumbling or hesitation, “Present! What are your orders?”

As you read this, we are in the midst of Holy Week. This is the final week of Jesus’ human ministry. He declared to the masses, “My House is a House of Prayer, but you’ve turned it into a buzzing hive of thieves and cut-throats.” Jesus didn’t ask God to fix things. He rolled up his sleeves, tossed ne'er-do-wells out on their ears. He continued to teach. He fed the masses, helped the hopeless, healed the oppressed and, on Good Friday, gave his back to the smiters and, on the cross, gave his “last full measure of devotion.”

The question we are left with is simply this: Will we, too, consecrate ourselves to the great tasks that lie before us? Will we resolve ourselves to live as he lived and, if necessary, die as he died? When God requires action, will sanctity be found in our actions?

I pray it will, God helping, here in this, our valley. 

Keith Axberg writes on matters concerning life and faith. Author of: Who the Blazes is Jesus? Good News for a Vulgar World (available through Amazon in Print and e-book)