On Friday I visited a Portland-area
book club to talk about my book, “42 States of Grace.” These are older women
who have been meeting together for a number of years and have become a
community for each other. Many of them are widows themselves. The book elicited remembrances of
journeys these women had taken with their husbands and families in years past.
It is rewarding for me to see how my book touches people in different walks of
life and to hear some of their stories. We all have stories and, at least those
of us over 50, have all accumulated some wisdom.
One of the women is a Franciscan
nun and a spiritual director who has ministered in Guatemala and Africa to the
poorest of the poor. I have taken several classes from and with her and she has
contributed greatly to my own spiritual journey. Sr. Mary is a darling Irish
woman with a lovely, lilting accent. I love her spirit and her spirituality.
I am so touched and gratified when
people like Mary and some of my other deeply spiritual friends who have taught
me so much by their own lives speak glowingly about the book and the spiritual
messages it contains. Several long-time spiritual directors who have read the
book have recommended it to others. I was pleasantly surprised at the
conference I attended last month to hear Richard Rohr, Edwina Gateley and
Ronald Rolhesier make statements mirroring things I wrote in the book or have
written in my blog posts.
During our discussion Friday, an
intriguing question surfaced. Sr. Mary works with a transitional housing
facility for chronically homeless women. Many of these women have lived in
abusive families and/or abusive relationships. She is leading a book discussion group there made up of
these women who are also currently reading and discussing my book. In the course of their most recent
conversation, mostly – at this point – regarding the quotes I had selected to
begin each chapter, one woman asked: Is everyone lovable? This apparently led to quite a
discussion from women who had experienced monstrous people, cruel and
cold. How could there possibly be
anything to love in these people.
I will be meeting with these women next month so am hoping to find some
kind of reassuring, comforting, compassionate answer that goes beyond
platitudes.
I thought about this question as
some of the women on Friday made their attempts to answer it. One woman
mentioned that no matter how monstrous, if God loves them, we should be able
to. Another suggested that once they were innocent children too, and lovable. I pointed out that many people become
monsters because they were treated in unimaginable ways as children. Another
woman suggested many of these people may have undiagnosed mental illnesses.
Last night this was in the back of
my mind as I was reading Awakenings by Thomas Keating before going to
sleep. Keating’s reflections
on Christmas spoke to this question, at least for me. Through the Incarnation,
he writes, “God has become one of us and is breathing our air. In Jesus, God’s heart
is beating; his eyes are seeing; his hands are touching; his ears are hearing.
. . . By becoming a human being, he is in the heart of all creation and in
every part of it. . . .Every human person, by virtue of the Incarnation, is
Christ.”
Based on this understanding of
God-made-man and God-in-us, yes, every human being, at their very core, is
lovable and valued. Often the
things we humans do are distinctly NOT lovable. This is because our free will
allows us to tune out that part of us that should be connecting to God. And I
think sometimes this is because of our own deep woundedness and need that we
have no idea how to fill.
Accepting that we are all lovable
is one of our greatest tasks, and I think once we even can grasp that truth, we
begin transformation.
Two more wonderful quotes to
consider:
"Your task is not to seek for
love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you
have built against it." – Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi
"It is intriguing to speculate that
Jesus’ fundamental saving act may have been not dying on the cross but rather
accepting God’s love as much as it is humanly possible to do. Then the
following of Christ might mean not so much doing heroic deeds, or even wanting
to love as Jesus loves, but much more fundamentally desiring to let oneself be
loved as much as Jesus was and is loved. Perhaps the world will be saved when
there is a critical mass of people who deeply believe and experience how much
God loves them." -- William Barry, SJ
Reflect on these and accept that
you and all humans, along with all of creation, are inherently lovable because
that is how God made us.
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