I feel betrayed by yet another spiritual leader. I, who am full of faults, do not condemn him…but I do feel duped and betrayed.
To love someone is not first of all to do things for them, but to reveal to them their beauty and value, to say to them through our attitude: “You are beautiful. You are important. I trust you. You can trust yourself.” We all know well that we can do things for others and in the process crush them, making them feel that they are incapable of doing things by themselves. To love someone is to reveal to them their capacities for life, the light that is shining in them.
Vanier, Jean. From Brokenness to Community (p. 16). PAULIST PRESS New York and Mahwah, N.J.. Kindle Edition.
I’m speechless because I’m guilty, swallowing hard at the extent of my collusion with the deceiver within me, the extent of my obstruction of the justice due you to be the one who sees my desperate need, who rescues me from my delusion that you are the one who needs rescuing, not me.
dw
I’m deeply challenged by Vanier’s perspective, both in the quote above and in this video.
Hope deprives us of everything that is not God, in order that all things may serve their true purpose as means to bring us to God.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, Sentences on Hope
What is this hope that dashes all hopes,
yet is the only sure remedy for hopelessness?
An anchor that holds us, drowns us,
baptizes us clean, clean,
cleaner than we ever wanted to be
(but always wanted to be)
in water that is life itself
if we will only drown ourselves in it,
suck it in knowing it is the death of us,
us as beings with the right to choose,
for our own selves,
what we hope for,
even if what we hope for
would be the death of us.