Love, not sacrifice

Whao, what an odd messy post! It started on a mildly reflexive topic and it got out of hand. There goes...

This past month has been a month of gentle overdrive: I've got 100's of pages of notes and ideas gathered here and there. The best moments were when I came across something and I realised that I already agreed with most of it. It's like harboring half-backed ideas on the back of your mind and then you read it in someone else's words and you realise that this has, in fact, already grown on you.

The New Saint Benedict by Ivan Kauffman has quite a lot of such ideas, though of course, I don't buy the whole project. I will adapt the ideas and it will end up looking very different. My problem is that I love mainstream people too much, and I don't want to be that different from them. Instead we'll be mainstream with a serious hint of edge.

This has worked for me in the past. I can totally tap into the potential of mainstream folks. I'm just a bit bolder, so I'll go out and invite the homeless kid to our student party, and my mainstream friends would be great: low key, understated, interested, not "driven", not an ounce of righteousness, just amazing.

Mainstream folks have got heart, I promise! Who the fuck are we to think that people sitting in the next pew are hypocrites? They're not, not more than us.

When I was working in the donor department of a large NGO, I had access to research material which established that even though mainstream folks are hit hard by "compassion fatigue" and are reluctant to give money to charity and suchlikes, if they are faced with an emergency like: "this kid needs 20 000 dollars right now or he'll die/loose his leg", virtually all of them would not think twice and give him all that they have and more, borrowing if necessary. It's just that they don't meet this type of situation very often, if at all.

And nobody can be blamed for hating austere self-denying morality*. We're allergic to it and, personally, I think that we should be. We don't know how to do self-denial in the way Jesus meant it. We'll only get swamped in the ugly form of self-denial. Again, the fucking devil can twist anything, so it seems, and he can certainly use our best intentions to turn us into miserable loveless dry snake skins.

One of my favourite line in the Gospel goes along these lines: "You go and find out what is meant by 'I want love, not sacrifice'". Jesus' way has got to become the most attractive option by far. We must desire his stuff so much that anything else is secondary, so much that we'll sell everything for the pearl of great value. Otherwise forget it, we'll only become the prey to self-righteous bullshit. Personally, I'd rather dwell in expectant cognitive dissonance than in righteous do-gooding. If a course of action is not attractive to me I don't take it.

On an everyday basis, I will know, in flashes, why the pearl of great value is so desirable, and why I may very well end up surrendering everything for it, "a fairer bride than any you have ever seen". Francis of Assisi was so hooked on the stuff that he had to ask his mates to do the praying in his stead when choosing between praying and preaching: he did not trust his own discernment, he wanted to pray so much that he was bound to be partial, even in his most honest attempt at discerning.

The most annoying thing is that I only know this in flashes. These flashes come and go, and they stay gone quite a lot of the time, those elusive bugger rats!!! You've got to keep begging for them until they become who you are. And I'm just that, a wretched beggar, impatient to be allowed to live in that reality. They say follow your dream? Well, these glimpses are my dream! Me too, please! Come on, me too! Me too! Please call me too!

While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and sinners came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." Matt 9:13. Isn't that passage just stunning?



*That's one reason why I like the film "Marie Antoinette" so much.