New York has the most wonderful sidewalks! Flat, unbroken, they stretch temptingly before you, inviting you to walk, bicycle, scooter, or rollerblade down them.
How different the NYC sidewalks were from the ones in my neighborhood!
When we consider our life journeys with God, some sections of travel are as wide, smooth, and exciting as a walking trip through New York City. Our lives are crowded with interesting "Times Square" experiences, filled with a variety of lovable people. We feel optimistic, stimulated, and our journey seems easy.
Because of the smooth, even nature of this part of our journey, joy flows effortlessly into our hearts, if we pay close attention. God's Light and Love are as attractive and visible as a theater marquee. How can we NOT love God? Life is so full; everything is going our way, and our way seems to be going up, beckoning us like the new, gorgeous, gleaming One World Trade Center tower.
Awe and wonder irradiate many of our experiences, if we allow them entrance to our hearts and don't get bogged down in what seems to be every-day sameness.
Can we look at our co-workers and friends and really SEE that each one holds a "piece" of God? One reflects God's steady faithfulness; another teaches us God's patience; another bounds with God's vitality and creativity; another smiles with God's humble love. Put everyone we know together in our hearts, and we begin to catch wondrous, tantalizing glimpses of Who God is, present in us.
Can we allow ourselves to experience the wonder of rush hour traffic, even when we're caught in it? Can we gaze in wonder at all these cars moving fast and slow, so often coming close to hitting each other, and only controlled by the miracle that is the human brain? When we really THINK about what is happening here, how awesome is it that hundreds of people around us, even if they may be using their Blue Tooths, are still managing to execute the right travel pattern and not hit the cars ahead of them or to the side of them? What kind of amazing journey is that! What kind of amazing God created the wonder of the human brain?!
Fr. Richard Rohr explains that we need to consciously choose to experience wonder and awe before any moment becomes a "God Moment." He says, "When you allow yourself to be led into awe and wonder, when you find yourself in an aha! moment and you savor it consciously (remember that joy and happiness take a minimum of fifteen conscious seconds to imprint on your neurons), then you can have a genuinely new experience." Otherwise, we just file what happens to us into "same-old, same-old," and it won't really be an experience at all, just a passing diversion from our common "cruise control" of thoughts and feelings. God can't break in with overpowering awe, wonder, and joy if we keep our heads bent down, looking at our feet instead of gazing up into a new experience of God's overwhelming love for us.
Yet God is as surely present in our paths of suffering as God is present in those times of awe, wonder, and joy. If we trust God, we realize that God uses every experience of our lives to teach us and guide us. Fr. Richard Rohr says,
"Suffering is the only thing strong enough to break down your control systems, explanatory mechanisms,... desire to be in charge, and carefully maintained sense of control. Both God and the guided soul know to trust suffering, it seems.
"God normally has to lead you to the limits of your private resources. Some event, person, or moral situation must force you to admit, 'I cannot do this in my present state.' This is our suffering.
"Or your understanding of 'what it all means' has to fail you in a very personal way: 'I can't make sense of this. I can't get through today....' You always feel both afraid and trapped. 'How?' you cry out with ten levels of anguish and impossibility.
If you have any sort of 'head knowledge' of God, this is not going to help you when you suffer. Creeds, dogmas, orthodoxy that mean very little to you aren't going to guide you down the twisted, broken-up path of suffering. We kneel before a great Mystery here. Who is this God Whom we thought we kinda-sorta knew? What is this God up to in my life? "How,"Fr. Richard says, "can any of my words point to anything real or understandable to the human mind?"
We know that God doesn't actively punish us with suffering (even though it may feel that way) because Jesus has told us that our God is a God of Mercy and Love. God gives every human a free will, and nature evolves and runs its imperfect course, so there will always be paths and periods of darkness and brokenness on our life journey. Yet in the darkness and brokenness, we can meet God, maybe for the first time.
Only if we reach out into the dark towards a God whom we believe is invisible love made visible in all the loves in our lives, and say "Help me, I trust you to help me," will we be able to really, truly see God at work in our suffering.
Because God's Spirit is always at work! We who suffer because we are not in control learn the humility now of depending on others. We who are used to the spacious road of Everything Right learn now that there is a path through the darkness of the Everything Wrong. We discover that the more we humbly accept the darkness of the Mystery Who is God and take one blind step at a time, humbly looking to others to help us and guide us, the more we can let go of our rigid need to control and compete. The more we trust God to lead the way, the more aware we become of new intuitive understanding, insights, and ideas in our minds, and the more we are open to the guiding of other people.
God is using our suffering to teach us our own strength, to break down all barriers of rigidity and pride which have hurt our relationships with others, and to help us learn that God does indeed love us - if we allow God entrance to our hearts. And the more we trust that God is comforting our souls, the more comfort we find in ourselves to give to others. The more we understand everyone else's suffering, and feel others' pain too, the more courage and strength we have to help others to carry their own suffering. We become a blessing for others as others have been a blessing to us.
Fr. Richard Rohr reminds us that God too suffers - in Jesus on the cross. He says,
"We can't take it all in (all the suffering in the world), but apparently God can. That's the visual of the cross - God taking in all the pain of history. You don't have to take it all in, but don't block it entirely. Let pain bring its gift of vulnerability. Let some of it change you. Let some of it call you outside your comfort zone to this bigger place where we all are one. In a way, there is only one suffering and one cosmic sadness, and it is the very suffering of God. And we all share in it."
God is with us every step of the way of our life journey, both during those times we walk the spacious, even paths of wonder, awe, and joy, broad and alive as the even, concrete sidewalks of New York City, - and during those broken, stumbling, confused times, like the broken, uneven sidewalks upended by tree roots in my hometown.
Can we let go of our pre-conceived ideas of God, our inability to find God's love in the love of others, and be open to God in the ordinary loving and eventful experiences of everyday life? In our suffering, can we let go of our need to control, our pride in doing everything for ourselves, and allow God to be present in those around us who help us, lead us, and guide us? Can we accept that God is Love, but very Mysterious Love? That dogmas and doctrines only tell us so much, and that we need to actively experience God in our lives before we understand that God is Real?