I was thinking about "moments of greatness" stories that sometimes build up positive attitudes that build up positive real life. You know, the opposite of nightmare stories. So, with that in mind, I noticed a really great thing this week. I'll tell you the story.
A tall, very dark priest from Nigeria processed off the altar, preceded by a small, very pale man of Italian descent. The contrast of the two was so striking. The little man was only chest high to the priest. There were perhaps 3-, perhaps 4-, decades difference in their ages. They had led most their lives on different continents. So what great story, I wondered, led both of them to be in an unknown urban church on an ordinary day in the summer of the second millennium?
One might wonder: Why was the African man wearing ancient-style Hebrew garments Why was he offering sacrifice like Melchisedech, priest of Abraham of Ur of the Chaldees? And why was the African man presiding over rites so like a synagogue service? And why was the little Italian man helping him? And why was there a life-sized representation of capital punishment? Yes, there was a near naked criminal, a slender man portrayed in execution, nailed still to his cross? What great story could anyone make of this?
From Africa, Southern Europe, Northern Europe, Asia, the Pacific Islands, North America, South America, Central America, the Caribbean Islands, a handful of people in attendance that morning. Can you imagine? Just a handful, but from nearly every corner of the planet! Yes there they were, standing, sitting, kneeling together in the urban church that summer day of the second millennium.
The greatness of this story is the greatness of the story that drew them all together. And the greatness of the story I told you today is also in the great question that remains: who called them?
My guess is, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you...."
You have a story, too?
Luv,
vm
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I started to leave some comments to your prior blog entry (so sorry your positive imagery was hijacked like that) but couldn't think of any moments of "greatness"...lots of good imagery, lots of good stories, lots of good songs to chase away those scary pictures, but nothing that seemed really responsive to the question you poised.
I think that all the great moments, really, have been moments of great love, which is at the heart of the story you told here. Often...usually, such moments go unrecognized.
My greatest moments have looked like absolutely nothing from the outside--the time I didn't scream at my kids, the time I didn't join in with the others at the lunch table complaining about their spouses, the time I got up early and made the coffee. Moments of nothing! Moments of everything.
I was recently reminded of something I learned when Daniel was born, but seemed to have forgotten in the hustle and bustle of putting one foot in front of the other every day. When Daniel was born, and again when Michael came home, I received a tremendous gift--not just in the form of a wonderful child to love, but in the realization that I had totally and entirely underestimated my capacity to love.
Always before (at least in my adult life), I had held something of my self back. Even with my wonderful husband, something of me stayed mine alone. That ended in the face of the heart opening, mind blowing, overwhelming, irresistible, fathomless love I experienced. The knowledge that I was now vulnerable in a way I had never imagined, instead of leading to despair (as my carefully calculating mind would have imagined it must) freed me in a way I had thought impossible.
As I loved, I was also loved.
As I loved, I am also loved (and not just by my mother). Whatever else may happen to me in this life, I know that I am called (we are all called), by Love and for love.
I forget sometimes, perhaps most of the time. I am busy. Work must be done, the laundry, kids ferried to various activities, lunches made. The overwhelming knowledge of love (the knowledge of overwhelming love), fades from consciousness in the face of every day.
But it still exists, and sometimes--perhaps, in a moment of greatness--it stays my sharp tongue or moves me in some other way to abandon, however briefly, the focus on self.
Post a Comment