The Gold in the Debris of LifeThe Tragic in Life
Trouble will be there until the end. We see this mixture of good and evil in all levels of reality: the family, our community, our parish, our society and most of all within ourselves. In the parable of the weeds and the wheat (Mt: 13:24-30) Jesus captures one of the deepest aspects of our human experience
Despite the evidence of evil that is so pervasive in our daily experience, Carmelite spirituality testifies that God’s love is always present even in the wreckage of life, the time of our deepest trials.
As we continue to ponderer Teresa’s wisdom on the necessity of purification and transformation, the issue of the tragic in life is an essential ingredient. It pervades all human experience.
In the early stages of prayer, we start out seeking an answer to life’s problems. This search is done with a beginner’s faith. However, as the faith increases, we learn that today’s answered prayers all too quickly give way to an avalanche of tomorrow’s new problems.
Eventually, it becomes clear that we must change our approach. We must accept God on God’s terms rather than trivializing our faith journey by thinking of God as someone who is only there to solve our problems. This change is no small task. A great recognition comes when we finally realize that the problems are not the problem. Our approach to life’s difficulties is what needs to change.
Teresa arrived at a point in her life where she accepted God on God’s terms. This acceptance led her to great wisdom seeing life in all its joys and most especially in the sorrows and difficulties as a divine love story.
Teresa came to recognize that the tragedies in our lives hold the possibility of being one of our surest ways to find God. She invites us to discover the God hidden in life’s troubles. This acceptance leads us to the reject the culture’s relentless cry for self-indulgence. Then there is also the distortion of much religious practice that seeks only a “make me feel good Jesus”. These distortions, joined to our ingrained sinfulness, draw us into ever deeper deceiving illusions.
Eventually many people come to the awareness that they need a spirituality that addresses the tragic and broken elements of life. Jesus was clear about this in his call to join him on the road to Jerusalem.
Our brokenness leads to critical choices in life. We hold the options of peace or conflict, reconciliation or division. Teresa’s teaching about this is clear. Prayer at the moment of our crisis is important. However, there is something more important than the prayerful response to the immediate predicament. It is the habitual and continual practice of deep and personal prayer. This creates a reservoir of patience, insight, and prudence to help us with the unplanned eruptions of the debris of life.
God’s mercy is always on the prowl, always seeking us. A mystic of the Middle Ages, Julian of Norwich, put it beautifully when she said, “First comes the fall and then the recovery from the fall. Both are the mercy of God.”
Light in the Darkness
All reality is immersed in the mortality factor. The end is coming. Even some of life’s most beautiful relationships have to face the “until death do us part” dynamic.Life is never complete. It is always messy. It is the nature of things that all relationships are drenched in the limits of life’s ultimate transience. There is a built-in change factor. We cannot stop the clock. The kids grow up quickly, and even more rapidly, middle age passes on to old age.
Carmelite spirituality has good counsel for these inevitable crises of life. It sees God’s love is hidden in the turmoil. However, there needs to be a process to be able to recognize this love. One must grow in patience, trust and perseverance in the darkness that holds the potential of being light. Things are happening during the unrest. The idols are being exposed and released from the clinging heart. The gods are dying in the night and the soul needs to let go. The wrong path would be to artificially solve or heal the condition, or deny it altogether. We need to face the chaos. Our most real option is to be on the alert for the approach of love. We must offer a “loving attentiveness” in the dark, a time to watch in the night. Contemplation is this experience of God’s transforming love, especially when it comes in such a disguised manner. Only when we pass through the purification that is so necessary for us, are we gradually able to see the beauty that is God hidden in the darkness.
Self-Knowledge
Self-knowledge is fundamental to Carmelite spirituality. It is integral to our purification and transformation. It deals with the depths of deceit and deception in our heart. It brings a new awareness that only happens with an openness to life that is guided by prayer and a reflective attitude.This pursuit of self-knowledge is not an agreeable process. We come face to face with our personal darkness in a slow, gradual progression. Our addictions, attachments, illusions and prejudices bubble up to reveal a false self that has been steering us away from walking with Jesus. The temptation is great to forsake the serious and difficult issues. There is an intense attraction to immerse ourselves in the superficial. When we reject the call to face ourselves truthfully, we become the source of our own evils and our own suffering because the heart is disoriented and in denial. The gift of the true commitment to the gospel allows us to see and embrace life’s many burdens as a passageway to God.
We are creatures, and as such, we are limited. However, our ultimate destiny is the infinite. We are summoned beyond our little dreams to a God of unlimited and unconditional love. We have incredible energy and creativity to deny that we are sinners. The deeper and much more beautiful reality evolves when we accept ourselves as sinful. Then we can also celebrate the fact that God loves and forgives and saves us in our sinful condition.
Once again, we need to look to Jesus to grasp this path to freedom only made possible by our ongoing purification and transformation.
