Awakening, by-little-and-by-little...

                                                    How does the human heart awaken?

And isn't it also important to ask, "What are the signs of an awakening heart?" In the very midst of a global pandemic, and the deepening of our already fractured divisions, are not these two very important questions? I would, in fact, say that these are the two most important questions any citizen or person of faith needs to ask...

​Opinions are clearly a dime a dozen, as the old saying goes. Everyone has one about nearly everything. If one were to take only Facebook as an example, opinions galore dot everyone's home page: right / left, progressive / conservative, believer / unbeliever, and so on. And, of course, I participate. I have opinions. But, into this mix, for me, I generously add my influences. I think this is important! Who influences your opinions and beliefs? How do you recognize fact from fiction? And to what are you rooted?

​The root-of-my-root are my experiences in relationship with the homeless and marginalized. Thirty years in a soup kitchen will surely fry anyone's brain and break every heart, over and over again: that is exactly what it did to me: for me! For sure, this difference has made all the difference... Should I be more specific? Skipping the examples, I will plunge ahead: roots grow down and outward. In terms of what I am writing about, down means the dark, rich, soil of humility, and outward means, simply, that it isn't about you... it's about everyone, every other... Perhaps more than any other "insight" that comes to us by way of the mystics, especially from the Franciscan charism, in defining roots as growing down and outward would be this: the most authentic form of Christian life consists precisely in being Christ...

The Christian mystic empties herself completely (day-by-day) so that Christ may be completely her... Saints Francis and Clare referenced their daily lives by the example of Jesus in the Gospel: was he poor, was he kind, was he generous, was he loving-in-action? Awakening is, then, the daily action of becoming, by-little-and-by-little, living mirrors of the Christ-Event, continuing throughout time... And what are the signs of this becoming? Here's how St. Francis put it in his Letter to all the Faithful: "We are his mothers when we enthrone him in our hearts and souls by love with a pure and sincere conscience, and give him birth by doing good."

​Being and doing are, as it were, the left and right hands of the new Divine Life expressing itself in and through you. Simone Weil put it like this, We were created by Love, for Love, to become Love. So, we attune our minds to the living example of Jesus (Yeshua bar Alaha), and to the examples of saints who likewise became mirrors of the Divine Life: Hildegard, Rumi, Francis, Clare, and Theresa (obviously including many others) and also the examples of more contemporary people like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr. Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Wangari Maathai, Fr. Bede Griffiths, and the Berrigan Brothers... Resistance and Contemplation become the motif of awakening... and awakening necessarily implies becoming a living sign of contradiction...

​In a world mad with a lust for privilege, profit, and power: the Christian, the mystic, as a sign of contradiction, stands beside the humble crib of the Infant Christ: the nonviolent revelation of the Divine Consciousness, and commits herself to the struggle for justice, peace, and the liberation of all peoples, as another Christ... Service and Solidarity are an outgrowth of the awakening of surrender to the Divine Beloved... In a time in which even bees are an endangered specie: putting @risk all life on the planet: awakening is our single most important task! And of course, then the living of that awakening by action, in and through compassion and nonviolence...

​I was hungry, and you gave me nothing to eat. I was separated from my family and locked in a cage, and you assumed I was happy. I was thirsty, and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a black man shot while jogging, and you assumed my wife happy in becoming a widow. I was a stranger, and you didn't welcome me. Oh and so much more! Everyone you could have helped and didn't, you did the very same to me... I didn't die just once years and years ago: I die everyday that you put privilege, profit, and power before the needs and dreams of real people... my people...