Broader perspectives


So, a teenager comes to us in great distress.  He or she is in love with a classmate, someone that they can only pine over, or pursue with little chance of being successful.  So we listen, and we perhaps smile, at least inwardly, for we do not want to come across as insensitive.  So our compassionate smile is kept secret, or if it is not it could be misrepresented to the young person, perhaps thinking that we don't understand.

The smile comes from the knowing that comes with age and hopefully wisdom.  This will be gotten through, the love while real, strong, urgent, will pass quite quickly, actually leaving the one who had it mystified over what the fuss was about.  Until it happens again and for some there will be many ‘agains'. Until it either stops or the knowledge that such experiences that spring up so fast have no deep root and will soon die.  Until the time when that love is found that does take deep root and endures.

So age gives perspective if one experience are listened to and learned from.  With perspective comes compassion, empathy and yes patience, over the ups and downs in the lives of those around us. For we have experienced them, and perhaps are in the midst of yes "again" going through another run of problems and troubles.  Being older we just have come hopefully to the understanding "that this to shall pass".

Life is made up of cycles.  Some are inherited from our families, others simply adopted, that can cause a great deal of frustration and pain in our lives.  Ways of dealing with life that only lead to another turn of the wheel, since what needs to be dealt with, is buried under strategies that only in the end make things worse, or simply remain unchanged.  Though I think ‘something unchanged', is in reality worse.

It is when cycles are broken that wisdom takes root.  For in order to break a recurring problems hold on us, or at least to lessen it's strangle hold, a conscious choice is needed; one wakes up.  Enlightened is a word that could be used, for once it comes to light that there is actually more to life, that the wheel can be stopped, or slowed down, lessening it's effects on how ones lives, then the world opens up a bit, hope takes root, and the journey begins. Though the journey can entail a lot of zig zagging.

I am not trying to make comparisons between people here, for I have come to understand that we are each on a path and God is our intimate fellow traveler, who seems to work faster for some, slower for others in bringing their life to fulfillment.  I don't have to understand how this happens, for some lives seem to be filled with chaos, pain and addictions, that cannot be over come and family cycles left unbroken.  So yes there is no simple answer to the suffering and tragedies that seem to overtake so many lives.

Perhaps for most, if not all, we never completely overcome our past.  For our path, our spirituality, our relationship with God, only deepens when we embrace who we are, what we have to deal with, our failures and successes, in the light of God's love that is slowly revealed to us and deepens has we age.  Some fly to God, others limp, some just spend a lot of time falling and getting up, yet each is on a journey; best not to compare. 

I think most people have gone through very dark times in their lives.  At times the walk with God can seem close, things in order, inner life peaceful, healing experienced as one makes their way towards a deeper relationship with God.  Then, chaos enters, the inner world seems to crumble, sin, compulsions, addictions can take over, a slide into pain and the temptation to despair, to give up and sink, can seem the only alternative.  Yet, in spite of it all, when the zig zagging stops and we again feel like we are on the path, we slowly learn that God has never left us, or rejected us, but truly accompanied us into our own personal hells and purgatories.  Slowly we begin to understand that God's grace is of an order so great and deep that the mysteries of it will probably never be understood.  Infinite love is often said to be like the ocean, yet that is not true, well it is in part, yet the ocean has a bottom, God's love does not.  So yes grace, God's pursuit of us all, is perhaps the greatest most wondrous mystery of all.

So when this mystery slowly presents itself to us, we begin to understand why we should not judge the inner state of others. For the simple living through of our past experiences, failures and  sufferings, have led us understand that God's freely given grace, even when not consciously asked for, is present in other lives, just as it has been, and is, in ours.  We learn to empathize with others no matter what their problem, for we know that we could just as easily do the same things, or perhaps did them in the past, and again, perhaps or still struggling with them.  

The grace and wisdom we all receive on life's journey is not for us, it is for others.  All of what we are, our gifts, healing and understandings, are God's grace shown in concrete form, for all of those who enter into our lives.  Grace freely given, overflowing, we are to become a river of God grace in the world.  It is calling we all have, no matter where one is on the road, for we are all fellow pilgrims.

It is easily forgotten that Christ after he was betrayed, tortured, mocked and crucified, after all that, forgave those who did that to him.  He said:  "Father forgive them for they know not what they do".  In Christ, in grace, that is what we are called to do.  Not only in action, but also in prayer, for Christ is truly found in the least.  What that ‘least' means is for each of us to discern.