German theologian Karl Rahner has an arresting quote: “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all.” Considered to be one of the most influential Catholic theologians of the Twentieth Century, this German Jesuit priest has words that invite us, indeed challenge us to explore, as we focus on this year’s theme; ‘The Way of Love’.
Wrestling with the notion of what and who is a mystic may be a place to start when thinking about ‘loving God,’ a loving that is a response beyond what we can fully grasp or comprehend. Did Jesus have that awareness? I think he did, yet at the same time he knew himself to be ‘one with’ God.
Jesus came to us ‘full of grace and truth’. Our life in God is living as recipients of that same grace; love unearned and unearnable. Our response, in love, is knowing that we are held, even when – especially when – we can no longer hold anything.
So, is to love God, an awareness – that we have our being in mystery, in a paradox – something that transcends us yet is very real, very present and very concrete?
Albert Einstein is remembered as a giant in the scientific world yet remembered also for having made this remarkable statement: “Imagination is more important than information.” Loving God compels us to be imaginative, to acknowledge the mysterious, the exposed and the hidden, that which compels us to inhale awe and wonder, to contemplate the minutiae, the majesty and the mystery of our lives and of our universe, as Cosmologist, Brian Cox is encouraging us to do – and Old Testament Job before him!
Einstein, it is said, regretted not having spent more time reflecting on mystery. “To know what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms – this knowledge, this feeling is at the centre of true religiousness.”
Being a mystic is giving ourselves over to the Unknown as a scientist surely does, but it’s also bending our knee to the truth of our limits and all that transcends us – to the ‘impenetrable’. A mystic knows that he is creature, knows his response of humble gratitude is an expression of love.
And love leads to neighbours. As the lyric says, “Everybody needs good neighbours!” Who are they? Faces in the street, bent backs, pushing lawn mowers, pulling wheelie bins, voices recounting stories about the trivial and the tragic of our lives. We are called to love them all, even those who only grunt acknowledgement, even those who poison trees.
Joseph Fletcher, author of ‘Situation Ethics’, wrote that love and justice are the same, for justice is love distributed. Sometimes it’s hard to love when neighbours’ values fly in the face of our own.That’s when it might be prudent to create space for reflection!
A year ago, around 5am, a fire started in a home two houses from our own. Neighbours rushed outside clad in pyjamas. Occupants now safe, stood huddled in shock and disbelief. Arms held them tight. Water, socks, thongs, jumpers and rugs appeared. We were numb and there for each other. We still are. Dramatic events draw us together but so do small acts of kindness. They both hold power to penetrate to what makes us human. We need each other. Neighbours do, for as John Donne reminded us “No man is an island, entire of itself….”
But there are other neighbours too; a disorientated kangaroo, a hungry King Parrot, unwelcome rats, chorusing Butcher birds, a stealthy Huntsman, even a slimy snail chewing mail in our letter-box!
The natural world is our neighbour; the forests, oceans, grasslands, glaciers and all the life lived there-in; all of it sacred. What we do to it we do to ourselves. We are wounded through our separation with the Earth and our neighbours. Recovering a sense of our ‘Inter-being’, our one-ness with humans and non-humans alike is a spiritual reality urgently in need of embracing. It’s been said, technology alone won’t save us. Knowing who we are in God and ourselves as neighbour, might still give us a chance. It’s a knowing from ‘the deep,’ the dwelling place of God.
Inside the deep and lonesome habitat across our wide planet live neighbours of ineffable, unrepeatable beauty, “creatures great and small,” threatened as we all know with extinction, caused by human greed, ego and defiance. They beg us to listen, to pay attention, to know ourselves as one of them – vulnerable and unique, neighbours in the sacred Mystery of life, in the sacred gift of Love.
Gail