2024-11-28 A Meditation on Receptive
“13 Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. 14 Let all that you do be done in love. 15 Now I urge you, brothers—you know that the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia, and that they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints— 16 be subject to such as these, and to every fellow worker and laborer. 17 I rejoice at the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus, because they have made up for your absence, 18 for they refreshed my spirit as well as yours. Give recognition to such people.” (1 Cor 16:13-18 ESV)
The difference between approachability and heightened levels of alert: we are no more masters of our reaction than we are masters of our lives generally. That is, our holiest of holies is some sense, glimpsed momentarily, of complete inability to be the works-righteous folks we want to be. Some sense that we are floundering, flailing, forgetful and not “on mission”. For, after all, the assembled bag of puzzles is simply overwhelming and, those momentarily solo recollections, as to what is on our own plate, as to what is on the plate of our interlocutor, is so easily forgotten.
That is, our malleability, our sensitivity, our Friendship, is safeguarded as some glimpsed aspect of that holiest, while also we know the yawn over yet another social engagement, and the “Hell is Other People” complete reversal. That is, we can cage up; we can start to view the Alternate Religion as a cause for Alert. Yet we know ourselves, and put on the front burner that Approach and Love trying our bestest to stay receptive, reactive in truth, no longer flabbergasted about our stammer and impotence, but glimpsing that God calls each of us to take a moment, a step back, a water break, a recharge, because we today recall this is a Holy continuity.
That is, we learn to Celebrate our clamming up around boring space-filling chatter, and to Pray: to Pray that something be imparted that we may have forgotten the words for. That we Pray: that something early maybe apologized for, would not devolve into empty conversation. That we Pray, and pray, as the most normal thing in the world, promising to be there for each other and learning to go full War on that Heightened Alert, insofar as to whatever degree possible we see everyone as Target and Hope and Cause to self-deny and wildly gladly warm up to… in the sensitive mode, in the adaptive mode, in the communing mode.
Because Jesus did for us: the social impact crater of a loving and fair dialog, is a crater cherished and sought out. We seek the near impossible Vision, formerly so simply taken as a norm, of two or more souls not threatened by each other’s religion, or seeing Anything as being too much to love on. We do not go dry. We do not run on fumes. We are prayed up and as the curtain closes, it was after all a simple Encounter, a loving Encounter, a patient Encounter.
Still, then, life bumps up against weariness and the heightened state of alert therein. I simply loved as much as I could in this timeline of life, but as weariness set in I could not maintain the quality. I could not but help myself not to be too weary to Love. And as a wearied soul, perhaps that spoke a truer word than so much that we plan and works-righteously use to measure ourselves.
Our measurement is nil. It is that holiest that speaks a better word, because it reminds us of no end to blessings in our day job, sometimes, but a need for Divine Intervention in what most matters in this life. And in that, we awaken to the True outcome, that our imagined good works were not sincere or honest enough around how dire the circumstances and urgent the need. For things less planned out and more simply listening. For things less suggestive of accomplishments and measure, and more suggestive of Hearing, not speaking over each other, and of room for the Holy Spirit to create something holy.