I'm very sorry that I missed this past week.  Starting a STEP course on the Eucharist this week, I don't think I will have the physical energy to keep both commitments.  But, I will resume my bible bursting at the end of May.  Thank you for reading!

The Scorner

Proverbs 22:10

Cast out the scorner, and contention shall go out; yea, strife and reproach shall cease.

It is easy to sit in judgment of others.  We know not the trials and tribulations of their hearts, nor the inner workings of their minds, we only see and hear what is external and use this as our knowledge about our fellow human beings.

If we did this with all of life, would we ever know the sweetness of a pineapple?  Would we ever venture to discover the tender meat of a lobster?  How often have we dismissed someone as inferior because of the way he or she dresses or the place where he or she lives?  So then we deprive ourselves of knowing perhaps the kindest person we’ll ever meet, or the funniest, or the most wise.  Even a bellowing bigot could be a lamb in wolf’s clothing.

Often, people who come off as the most loudly confident can actually be the least self-assured.  They feel themselves surrounded by superiority and bark like an anxious dog.  Some who wish to feel better about themselves will take great effort to knock other people down, their criticisms and contempt laying the other people low so that they, in comparison, may feel themselves lofty and high.  But, it is all just violence and fear.

If we had true peace within ourselves, if we could rest assured upon the knowledge of our own unique value and worth, then we wouldn’t be arrogant.  We would know that we are wonderfully made for good and beautiful purposes and we would not sneer in scorn at others.  We would be able to recognize our own faults and failings, understand our own weaknesses, and this wouldn’t make us afraid or hopeless or full of self-loathing.  Yes, we all need improvement.  And yet, each and every one of us is sacred in the eyes of God, is beloved by Him who made us, who became one of us and died for us – for each and every one of us so that we may fully be our true selves.

Perhaps, we know someone who we think is overly critical and unkind toward others.  Perhaps, we see this person as arrogant and scornful.  We may want to cast this person out of our lives so that we may not have rancor and meanness anymore.  But… are we sure that we are not the arrogant ones?  Are we sure that we are not quick to judge and dismiss others?  Would it not be better to cast arrogance and scorn out of our own hearts first?  To err is human, to forgive divine[i] and shouldn’t it be our goal to be more like God?  That doesn’t mean more like God in looking down in judgment and wrathful punishment – no!  This is a human projection upon God, this is what we see in the Hebrew Testament for an infant people just learning about who God is.  In maturity, the Chosen People come to understand that God is loving and good.  In our own lives, our parents may seem to be bigger and stronger and even, sometimes, a bit scary – but everything that they do for us, ideally, they do out of love.  Can we say that we act in love when we turn up our noses at someone that we judge to be inferior?  Can we say that we act in love when we turn up our noses at someone that we judge to be arrogant?

If we truly know love and there is true love within us, then there is recognition of sanctity in every human being; there is patience, forgiveness, and forbearance in our hearts.  This doesn’t mean that we simply put up with the bad behavior of the scornful, patronizingly tolerant of their negativity.  We should be able to face them as they are and help them to see who they are – not by becoming critical and scornful ourselves, but by being respectful and gentle, kindly seeking the source of their inner rancor.  There will be those who do not want to be helped, but this will not dissuade us from faith in their inner goodness.  Those who want to be left alone, shall be left alone with their own rancor if they don’t try to change.  But they will receive no scorn and no contention from us.  Humble and loving, our reproach will only be the call to recognize their own sanctity and to not be afraid.  Such is the call that we all must answer if we want to truly and fully live.

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[i] Alexander Pope

Bring Forth

Luke 6:43

For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

 

The bas-relief carving is of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus – an artist’s rendering of the classic image of Madonna and Child.  The stone has a lovely, ancient hue, with a slightly rough surface from age and, yet, the age and stone texture take nothing from the fineness of the carving, it’s lines, shape, proportion and detail.  The artist was obviously a master craftsman who could transform the dead, cold flesh of stone into warmly living, human personality.  Woman and child are not only realistically rendered in technique, but also seemingly real in life and breath.  Their faces tell their whole life story.  And, yet…

 

Is this the Holy Mother and the Divine Infant?  Her expression is that of a weary mother, succumbed to putting up with an insolent child – and he is that insolent child, uncaring of how exhausted his willful ways make anyone.  The way they hold their heads, the way their mouths are set, the look about their eyes says it all: this is not a happy family, not the ideal of what anyone should be.  Why would the artist render these expressions upon mother and son?  Why would he choose to evoke such depressing and petty emotions from the personalities of the Holy Virgin and the Christ Child?

 

Why, indeed, unless he didn’t know.  If the artist had never known true love and joy, nor even the deep yearning for true love and joy, how could he evoke this state of being?  If he only understood power as willfulness and patience as weakness, how could he understand the divinity of the infant Jesus or the tender care of his holy mother?  For an artist, as for every human being, there is what the hand executes – and then there is what is executed by the heart.  We may go about our lives doing things with great technique, but if we have not love, and no true understanding of the depth and impact of what we do on our lives and on life as a whole, then we do mere things.  We are empty.  We do not fully live.  We miss the point.  We miss the mark.  We are like trees infected by a hidden blight that can never bear forth rich and wholesome fruit.  We are barren of the true and eternal beauty of life.

 

(Inspired by the random piece of Scripture and by the carving I saw yesterday at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.)

Christina Chase