This section of Alison's writing has too many images that grab and hold me - so I'm staying put here for the day. Our knowledge of each other is projective and in its mode already distorted. Only in the degree to which we allow our own distortion to be corrected will we be able to know the other with limpidity. In case it is not clear already that this reciprocal involvement in turning each other into stumbling blocks, which is at the heart of Jesus' moral teaching, has, at its roots, an understanding of desire, a few verses later Jesus' further teaching on prayer makes exactly this point. In Matthew 7:1-7 prayer is shown to be a learning to desire without stumbling blocks in imitation of the Father who is without stumbling blocks. We must not let our desire remain at the stage whereby we think that we will not get what we want but must learn to believer in one who gives gratuitously what we really want. Prayer is a constant reeducation of desire out of a mode of stumbling blocks and into a mode of desiring and receiving gratuitously. And this is then directly referred back to our human relationality (7:12): we must treat others in the same way, learning how to substitute a gratuitous reciprocity for a reciprocity formed by the skandalon. In the Lord's prayer we say 'your will be done.' That - is reeducation up front. That is our request of God to turn things over - turn them into the way of God's forgiveness and grace and away from the constant desires that put us at war with one another through blame and the need to judge and be right - even when we are not. "Prayer is a constant reeducation of desire out of a mode of stumbling blocks and into a mode of desiring and receiving gratuitously." Within the realm of our prayers comes life shaped by those prayers. Our prayers are not desirous - they are offered with open hands ready to receive what God hands us. God will hand us all we need - that's called promise. All we need is enough for you and enough for me. Enough love - hope - patience - forgiveness - grace - patience - kindness - daily bread - and enough of God's presence so that we will be at peace. It is a whole adventure of reeducation and it is constantly becoming available to us in new ways that turn us over and help us stand again within the moving power of God's Spirit of life. Connection: Prayer really does throw us back into relationality. In fact that is prayer. It is the foundation of all the ways we become one body even as we look and see and think and live so differently. It is not magic. It is not within our control. It is like walking into a vision and finding out I'm not who I just was and I am not yet who God making me. Prayer will always move us from here to there. We need not be afraid of 'there.' O God of life, take us there - take us into your arms - take us home and make us alive. Amen. |
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