Thursday 5 June 2008

Today is a continuation of the piece from yesterday - again - Merton.

We can evade this responsibility (to share with the god the work of creating the truth of our identity) by playing with masks, and this pleases us because it can appear at times to be a free and creative way of living. It is quite easy, it seems to please everyone. But in the long run the cost and the sorrow come very high. To work out our identity in God, which the bible calls "working out our salvation," is a labor that requires sacrifice and anguish, risk and many tears. It demands close attention to reality at every moment, and great fidelity to God as God reveals God's self, obscurely, in the mystery of each new situation.

It is painful to think of the great cost to each of us when we put on masks in order to please others. It is painful for me because it means that I am not being me. I am not being the one God created and then set free to be just that...me. I just thought of watching a young boy acting out in all his glory and then the father steps in to bring him under his grasp. The freedom of creative joy...the freedom of trying out a new hat or walking in a new way or speaking from a new position, is put away and a mask is put up so that the father will have life as he wants it. For me, this is a brutality that goes against creation. At the same time, I must remember that this kind of brutality crosses over generations. This is not to condone such action. Rather, it is with the hope that each of us will be able to find a way experience our creative freedom and let it sit with us even in the face of all the powers that attempt to take hold and remake us. Creation is God's activity still going on for us. According to that creative power, I'm sure we need not wear masks and pretend to be anything more than the blessed and beloved we are. We are "working out our salvation." It is there and we are invited to have its creative word with us even when we must wrestle with demons in all shapes and forms and no matter what their proximity is to us.

Connection: Bless are you, beloved of God. Let that be a beginning point to your creativity today.

Lord of Creation, be the power of life that ignites a stream of hopefulness that calls forth all that you have given us as the gift of life that is each of us. Amen.