Now is the Moment for Conversion
of Mind and Heart

by
Marie Chin RSM
Encuentro 2000

Los Angeles
7 July 2000

Once I had a revelation. I came face to face with a mad woman and I saw the back side of God.

There she was, shuffling along. Her hair jutted in wild gray wisps under the frayed brim of a shapeless hat that once was black, but now took its colour from several layers of dirt. Her clothing, an assortment of fashions, hung incongruously upon her, reinforced and held together in several places with safety pins and bits of string. On her left foot she wore a black sneaker and on her right a white one, both of them held together and anchored in place with heavy twine wrapped several times around the insteps. Her dirty stockings sagged loosely over the top of her shoe. In one hand she carried a bulging shopping bag; with the other, she clutched a bundle of yellowed newspapers close to her bosom. On she shuffled, her face turned skyward, singing, bawling in a strident voice that now and then had the trace of sweetness:

Abide with me, fast falls the evening tide…

I noticed, too, that most of the passersby were too engrossed in their own pursuits even to notice the mad woman. A few people were startled out of their self-absorption; they glanced at her furtively and quickly averted their eyes. Some snorted and tossed their head in disgust. There were a few teenagers leaning casually against a building. When they saw her, they burst into raucous laughter. And there were those whose faces were veiled with pity, who lowered their eyes and shook their heads in puzzled sadness – "There, but for the grace of God, go I." Like a detached observer I took in all of this. Meanwhile, the woman was almost lost in the crowd but I could catch the last fading notes: When other helpers fail and comforts flee; Help of the helpless, O, abide with me!¹

There was something in the mad woman, something deep in my own soul that laid a claim on me. I was one of those who watched in puzzled sadness – "there, but for the grace God, go I." I wonder if I will ever understand how much I need to listen to and learn from this experience about the self-revelation of God…the many faces of our prodigal God. My sharing with you this morning is an attempt.

It begins with an intuition that the story of this mad woman is as much your story as it is my story and the story of all humankind. We spiritual beings on a human journey constantly dance on the edge of madness. With a quote from Plato, Ronald Rolheiser gives this madness shapes and definition in his book, The Holy Longing:²

We are fired into life with a madness that comes from the gods and which would have us believe that we can have a great love, perpetuate our own seed, and contemplate the divine.

Rolheiser then develops the wonderful insight that there is a deep-down hunger, a longing, a desire in all humankind that comes from beyond and makes us fundamentally restless, always searching, reaching out for someone, something, someplace. This desire has many faces, many forms which all great literature, poetry, art, philosophy, psychology, and religion grapple with naming and analyzing. It is called greed, eros, longing for God, thirst for justice and peace, dignity and equality. "Whatever the expression," he says, everyone is ultimately talking about the same thing – an unquenchable fire, a restlessness, a longing, a disquiet, a hunger, a loneliness, a gnawing nostalgia, a wildness that cannot be tamed, a congenital all-embracing ache that lies at the center of human experience and is the ultimate force that drives everything else.

…Sometimes it hits us as pain—dissatisfaction, frustration, and aching. At other times its grip is not felt as painful at all, but as a deep energy, as something beautiful, as an inexorable pull, more important than anything else inside us toward love, beauty, creativity, and a future beyond our limited present. Desire can show itself as aching pain or delicious hope… What the soul does in this life is very much driven by that fire.³

Call it what you will, Rolheiser believes that this desire, "a madness that comes from the gods," is the warp and woof of spirituality. "Spirituality," he says, "is what we do with this desire."

It seems to me that more often than not we live closer to the edges of "aching pain" with its many levels of intensity and varied contours of anxiety, dissatisfaction, and frustration, along a spectrum of boredom, depression, quiet desperation, and despair. Some of us tip over into psychosis when, for one reason or another, we cannot respond to the deep-down inward urgencies of humanity.

But then constantly in our faith journey, God in Jesus comes along and links the possibilities of hope with our world of "aching pain." Significantly, in his healing encounters as they are told in the Gospels, Jesus acknowledges the "madness" in all of us. Think of Bartimaeus, for example. "What is it that you want? What is it you desire? Jesus asks. When Bartimaeus touches the desire within him and articulates it, "I want to see," grace, the explosive power of God, erupts and Bartimaeus is healed, liberated from his blindness. He is given energy to follow Jesus. Just so, Jesus is dying to break through and into our lives and the broken places of humanity, to release the energy, the power that resides within us personally and within our cultures.

As I stand here it's a wondrous panorama that unfolds before my eyes -- people of every race and colour, of every cultural tradition and national heritage -- a reflection of the infinite richness and the immeasurable power of God's creativity. I have a prevailing sense of a reservoir of tremendous energy and power waiting to be released. Surely God is in this place for John Kavanagh SJ reminds us that culture is the friendly symbolic dwelling place of the human spirit; it is sacred, filled with the strength of collective memory, symbolic imagination, and affective commitment (myth, ritual, caring); it is gospel, a book of revelation mediating beliefs, revealing us to ourselves, and confirming us in our humanity.⁴ I believe that God is in this place acknowledging the "madness" within us, namely our desire and yearning for equality, justice and fairness for Gerald Arbuckle tells us that "multiculturalism is not only about developing an interest in the customs of different peoples; above all, it is about fostering life changes… that is, creating spaces in which people can grow humanly together in justice and charity."⁵ God in Jesus is here "gathering up" our desire so that the reign of God, the kin'dom of God will come in our midst, and "the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them." (Isaiah 11: 6)

This "peaceable realm" Eric Law holds up as a vision of an ideal multicultural community but, he says, it is only through conscious effort and great faith that the wolves and the lambs of the world can really dwell together in peace.⁶ The nature of our human relatedness is such that there is seldom any essentially neutral position. The task carries a high price and requires conversion and healing in us at every step of the way. The task carries with it an unlearning of "habits of the heart" that keep us from arriving at the "peaceable realm."

Unlearning ‘habits of the heart"

I would now like to explore with you two "habits of the heart" to which we need to pay careful attention. They are related to our assumptions about power and abundance out of which we live daily and uncritically. I ask your indulgence as I turn to my experience for lessons to be unlearnt and lessons to learn.

Power

The first experience that I want to share with you took place nine years ago at the Founding Event of the Sisters of Mercy. Twenty five separate units became one congregation. We came from different countries and different cultures.⁷ The night before this event I had a dream in which I saw a beautiful pasture, an expanse of friendly earth, and children of all colour and race moving towards a windmill. As dreams go, I knew this windmill was God – our "Wind God" blowing where it will -- and as the children drew closer to the windmill, they began to form a beautiful tapestry of multi-coloured strands. Lo and behold, before my eyes, the tapestry began to pulsate with life and purpose.

The next afternoon, the 3,000 of us who had come to be a part of the founding occasion were asked to gather behind a huge closed door. As the door opened, I saw a windmill in the horizon of the large auditorium. There before my eyes was the re-enactment of my dream – women of all sizes and shapes, colour and race moving towards the "Wind God" to form a beautiful multi-coloured tapestry vibrating with joy, hope, and new life. As the ritual celebration progressed, I could not see, I could not hear clearly what was going on, but there was this prevailing sense of coming home, of being connected far beyond my wildest imagination.

Our Founding Event was followed by our Chapter of Affairs at which we struggled to come to an understanding of ourselves in relationship. Coming as we did from a variety of histories (myths), traditions, (rituals), and commitments (caring) it was not always easy to hold that sense of connection. Again and again I would have this sense of ourselves engaged in a relational struggle, much like Jacob who wrestled with the "stranger" in his sleep. I remember one particular moment when differences were particularly overwhelming. Out of nowhere came the tiny voice of a memory. "Hold the center," it kept saying. It was the memory of something I had read:

In a world of chaos, change and conflict, there is a still point, a point of balance…only if we hold the center. "Holding the center" is not a matter of a bland spiritual homogeneity. It is commitment to speaking with those who are different with uncompromised respect and love. "Holding the center" means seeing the spark of grace that connects us all, beyond all differences and in the midst of all strife. Love and grace are at the center. When I hold to them, a truthfulness emerges that is greater than me or the other, yet binds us together.⁸

If you recall, in the scripture story, when Jacob awakens, he comes to the realization that "God is in this place." "Revelation," Kathleen Norris tells us, "is not explanation, and it is not acquired through reading John Climactus, or anyone else. It is the revealing of the presence of God. " In every moment of our lives, God's self revelation is there for our realization. Just so, in this situation with my sisters, I saw what Paul tells us in Ephesians 1:10: God has set forth in Christ as a plan to gather up all things in him. The love and grace of Christ was "holding the center," reconciling all things to himself. I saw that we were the "many faces of God." As human persons we were gifts for each other, reflections of the inexhaustible creativity of God.

As I think about this experience, the mystery of Pentecost comes to mind, "while each person spoke in their native tongue, they understood each other." Differences did not separate or diminish. By the grace of God, we were able to see differences as a "variety of gifts" among us and God "working in all sorts of different ways in different people." I have this awareness of an undeniable connection between transformation and power that is relational. When we come together recognizing our inter-relatedness, inter-connectedness and interdependence, we make a home for each other. When we come together as human persons and as friends – for and with one another – we create space in which all life can find a home. We liberate one another and energize one another to move towards right and just relationships and to act with one mind and heart --- the mind and heart of Christ Jesus who had but one impelling desire, the crazy conviction that the "kin'dom" of God is at hand, waiting for us to make it a reality.

I cannot help thinking how much we have to unlearn the experiences we have had of power as domination, manipulation, and control. I cannot help thinking that our churches, our communities of faith should be helping us grow into this way of being together in mutually empowering relational struggle – never perfect, never without making mistakes—but bound together by trust and a commitment to learn together more fully how to be ourselves in right relationship and live in the "peaceable realm."

Abundance

Regarding abundance, I'll simply begin by saying that there really is a paradoxical relationship between the experience of abundance and that of scarcity.⁹ I remember well my experience in Jamaica in the 70's when the government, in an effort to stabilize the economy and narrow the gap of the "haves" and the "have nots," began a policy of democratic socialism and banned much of the imported goods that they termed "luxury items." There was a general uproar. Were the basic goods of life in short supply? It depended, I think, on our assumptions. It depended on what we assumed to be basic goods. If cereal in the morning was vital or if you absolutely had to have tuna fish for lunch or a mackintosh apple (what Jamaicans call "American apples), then scarcity became a problem. In a mindless kind of way, the Jamaica society could not see any possibility beyond its dependence on foreign markets. More than ever we began to assume a mentality of scarcity. A preoccupation with acquiring and hoarding entered our souls and became an unconscious way of being. We lived in the constant fear that money would run out, that we wouldn't have enough to eat, and we talked of nothing else but the hardships we were enduring. The remarkable thing was that as we acted out our fears, the assumptions we were making about scarcity did in fact become a reality. As we acquired more than we needed, as we hoarded our supplies, especially those that came from abroad, there didn't seem to be enough to go around. Prices soared and so did the imbalance between the "haves" and the "have nots." Who groaned and complained bitterly and constantly. Who quickly lost hope? It was not those persons whom we call poor, those for whom scarcity is never an assumption but truly a hard fact of life. "Structurally adjusted" for more than half of their lives, they tightened their already tight belts and kept hoping in a provident, prodigal God. As hoping people they chose to assume abundance and live in such a way as to create it and share it. When a family of six or more couldn't buy a whole chicken, they would buy what they could and chop it into smaller pieces so more could eat with less. And so I began to understand fleetingly what Parker Palmer means when he says that scarcity and abundance are not merely economical or political issues. They are deeply spiritual conditions connected with assumptions and choice. He believes that if we are to effectively balance the scales of justice and if we take seriously our responsibility as stewards of creation, then we must examine the assumptions that inform our choices. It is not enough for us to explain our global imbalance solely in terms of greed and power. There is a connection between our inner life and our ability to respond to the situation of our world.¹⁰ If I have the attitude that this is mine by right, if my inner experience is that of scarcity and grabbing for all I can get because there is not enough to go around, then surely I will not be able to freely share the goods of the earth; equitable distribution of resources and opportunities will be a problem. That we move from having and grabbing possessions to trampling others is perfectly consistent. If on the other hand my inner experience is that of living in a world that has been simply and graciously given to me, that truth and resources are ample and available, then I will be able to live in ways which allow others to live as well. I will be able to recognize the intrinsic preciousness of all life, irrespective of colour, creed, race, or belief. I will be able to reach out in partnership to my brethren and sisters with confidence that our prodigal God holds us all together in his great heart. But how uncritically we assume the closed, narrow mindedness of scarcity. How easily we take it for granted that our well-being lies not in what we share with others
We need a spirituality that will help us understand that assumptions are at the heart of all our relationships and how we need to examine and discern what is good and healthy for our souls and for our world. We need a spirituality that will help us see riches in a different light and discover a life of plenty that transcends the economics of scarcity and the politics of differences that divide and keep us apart from one another.

In closing, let me say that in our effort to truly become a multicultural Church we will be "tested by encounters with cultures and viewpoints not our own – hopefully to be refined in the fires of genuine engagements."¹¹ I'm only too aware that encountering cultural difference is simply too difficult to be sustained by our social impulses. It can be sustained only as we return time and time again to a felt knowledge that God's passion for our contemporary world is that we risk entering our humanity in such a way that we can connect and bond together, human to human in the shared journey of honest, reverent, patient dialogue. We have to truly believe that God desires to release the power that resides in each of us and within our various cultures; that God wants us to engage in relational struggle in order to liberate and transform our world. In this shared journey of honest, reverent, patient dialogue we must learn to listen to each other. (An aside: Eric Law tells us that the first Pentecost event brought us the gift of tongues; the Pentecost that we so need today is the gift of "ears.") We must live out our truths, testing our own truth against the truth received by the other and all the while believing and trusting that God will work a greater truth in all of us than can be worked in any one of us standing alone. I sense that there is no witness more urgent for our multicultural, pluralistic world than for us to refuse to follow the cultural individualism of our times that assumes that truth is totally subjective, that there is one truth for you, another for me, and we don't have to worry about the difference. I fear that this assumption can only lead to fragmentation and isolation.

Keeping in mind that culture is not, for the most part, lived on a rational level but on the level of mythic memory, collective imagination, and committed caring, we are dealing with a matter of the "soul." The soul, as you know, "does not thrive on grand schemes of salvation or on smooth, uncluttered principles, nor on theories and creeds. Rather it thrives on the inevitable messes that relationships bring."¹² For us to learn to live in a multicultural world and how to deal with pluralism authentically and responsibly, it seems to me that conversion must occur in the midst of our relationships and not solely on the level of isolated deeds. This implies that we begin to address our perception of power and the issues of abundance and scarcity that belie our essential interconnectedness. This is not conversion to a new truth but to a new way of relating to one another and walking the journey of faith with each other.

It is a great comfort to know that we have as our companion a God of relationships who wants only to create space in which all of us come to know that we belong, that we are no longer "strangers in our own dwelling place." Our God desires only to throw open the doors and windows of many mansions to welcome us into wide open spaces of healing and freedom, and turns our prosaic, ordinary, anxiety-ridden lives into a living poem. Christ is dying to break into our lives, to open "rivers on the bare heights and fountains in the midst of valleys to turn the wilderness into a pool of water and dry land of our "aching pains" into springs of ‘delicious hope.'"

My friends, what do you think would happen if, in this year of jubilee, we were to truly allow Christ to "Pentecost" in us once again? What if we were to allow the madness of God within us, within our Church, within our faith communities to fire into life today, right now? What do you think would happen?


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1. I'm indebted to Ruth Dorr for this graphic description
   
2. Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing.
   
3. Ibid, page 4
   
4. John Kavanaugh, Following Christ in a Consumer Society. Orbis, New York, 1991
   
5. Gerald Arbuckle, Earthing the Gospel. Orbis, New York, 1990
   
6. Eric H. Law, The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb. Chalice Press, St. Louis, 1993
   
7. I'm using culture here in a wider sense than just ethnic culture.
   
8. Unknown source
   
9. This is Parker Palmer's thinking which has greatly informed and influenced this reflection. See To Know As We Are Known. Harper and Row, San Francisco, 1983
   
10. Ibid
    
11. Unknown source
    
12. Attributed to Thomas Moore.
    

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Encuentro 2000
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
3211 4th Street, N.E., Washington, DC 20017-1194 (202) 541-3413