This
is a thing that happens to me sometimes. I’m working on not being too
self-conscious about it when that happens, or at least not fighting it.
I used to say that I wished I wouldn’t cry when I feel spiritually
full–or at least, that I could cry more attractively. (I’m the sort who
gets a blotchy face and a runny nose when I cry.) These days, I’m
trying to be tougher, and more faithful:
If Spirit wants me to
cry, dammit, I’ll cry. If Spirit wants me to get a runny nose, I’ll
bring a hanky. (I specialize in big ones.)
I’m telling you this
because I don’t want you to think I’m a gushing sentimentalist… but
maybe I need to toughen up about that, too.
If Spirit wants you to see me as a sappy, ridiculous woman, I’ll be seen as a sappy ridiculous woman. So be it.
Today was a day my waterworks were turned on.
At
our meeting, ten minutes into worship is when the little kids leave. I
watched one of our newest members, August toddle out on those round
feet kids seem to have when they first learn to walk, and it made me
smile. Seeing the careful way his mother held his hand made me feel
hugely tender. And then, looking up, seeing smiles that must have
matched my own on the faces of many of the adults who remained, I was
struck by a thought:
If I could see the members of my meeting as they look in the eyes of Spirit, they would all look as beautiful as that child.
And
the next thing I knew, I was flooded with light, because looking around
the room, I could see just a glimpse of how utterly, dazzlingly
beautiful every single person there is, in the heart of their spirit, in
the deepest truth of their soul.
Now, I don’t want you to think
that the members of my monthly meeting are a bunch of saints. Many of
them are pretty wonderful, and almost all of them are trying hard to do
right in a world that often seems willing only to reward doing wrong.
But, at the same time, we have members who are self-important,
officious, or judgmental. We have members who are models of
compassionate action in the world… but also members who throw themselves
into peace and justice work as a way of distracting themselves from
their own brokenness, whose tongues are sharp, or whose kindness never
comes without a self-approving note.
Often, I am one of those
members myself. In other words, though my experience of Quakers is that
we are The People who Try, we are, at the end of the day, just people:
flawed. Sometimes selfish. Often wrong.
I think the point of
belonging to a spiritual community is to practice compassion and love
surrounded by those you come to know too well to believe are
bodhisattvas. After all, how many bodhisattvas are we going to have call
to interact with in the world? What would we learn from a spiritual
practice that only taught us how to cope in a community of saints?
So.
There are no saints in my community. But there are people undergoing a
host of challenges and demands–illness, grief, recovery from trauma,
parenting, adolescence, divorce. While I don’t know every burden
members of my meeting are carrying, I know many of them. And I see them
struggling to serve even as they are struggling to cope with whatever
their life is dealing them. These same people who can seem pigheaded or
stubborn or foolish to me as we conduct the business of our meeting
together are the people I see doing the honest best they can, one day at
a time.Of course they’re beautiful. Of course they make me cry.
But
what about outside my meeting? If those I worship with seem to me to
be filled with light, does that mean those outside my meeting are, too?
Well… yes. Yes it does. Each and every one of us. Ilya Haykinson, 2010Even
the ones who are hurting one another? Those who poison water supplies
to save a few pennies, or who rouse crowds to a frenzy of racism and
self-righteousness, out of their narcissism or cynicism? Surely they
are not beautiful in the eyes of Spirit. Surely they have nothing in
common with the beautiful toddler, taking his first steps out into the
world?
They do, though.
If you think that toddlers are
nothing but a big ball of cuteness, you’ve never had the care of one for
very long. To be a parent is not just to love your child when they’re
peacefully holding your hand; to love a toddler is to love them even as
they have a meltdown in the middle of the grocery store or take a toy
truck and smash another toddler over the head with it.
I’m sure
there are those Spirit sees as a toddler with a weaponized toy in his
hand. (Can’t you just see Donald Trump bashing the other kiddies with a
toy truck, if we let him?)
But all of us are loved. All of us
have the potential to become whole–more like our best selves and less
like our worst. And to see that part of each of us, reflected in one
another’s eyes…
Maybe it’s natural for my eyes to water, when I look at a Light so bright.
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