Stumbling Into Salvation with You

Notes on' the awkwardness of healing

Last week I wrote about a woman who briefly woke me up at a Bob Dylan concert by kicking me. The kick was intentional and brought forth a brief intense relationship that modeled ACIM forgiveness long before that model of thinking was fleshed out in my consciousness.

Those relationships happen and we can't do much to force them. That's their charm; that's the secret to their effectiveness. They're like shocks to the spiritual system, jump-starting our dull hearts and sleepy minds into wide-awake presence.

They are a form of holy relationship, right? In particular - as I experience and understand them - they are forms which make clear that Jesus did not die in Jerusalem but lives, albeit in a form that we do not instantly or automatically recognize as Jesus.

My holy brother, I would enter into all your relationships, and step between you and your fantasies. Let my relationship to you be real to you, and let me bring reality to your perception of your brothers (T-17.III.10:1-2).

Look carefully at that language. What is "real" is not Jesus's body - we're not going to share a coffee, we’re not going to lose ourselves in a hug - but rather the relationship we have with him.

This is the Road to Emmaus, right?

Two disciples leave Jerusalem on Good Friday for Emmaus. Jesus has been executed; they are despondent. Along the way, they are joined by Jesus but do not recognize him. Whatever his body looks like, it does not recall the Jesus they knew and loved. Only at nightfall, when they invite this stranger to stay with them, and he breaks bread for them, do they recognize Jesus. They do not recognize a man; they recognize a practice.

They are in relationship. Relationship is practice.

A Course in Miracles facilitates the Emmaus experience by asking us to shift our focus from the specificity of the body - from identity yoked to a body - and instead to meet Jesus in a relationship which naturally extends to all our brothers and sisters, who . . .

. . . were not created to enable you to hurt yourself through them. They were created to create with you. This is the truth that I would interpose between you and your goal of madness (T-17.III.10:3-5).

The Emmaus story is clear about two things: Jesus only reveals himself by invitation and the invitation takes the form of shared hospitality. In other words, don't seek Jesus - seek the stranger and make them welcome in tangible ways. The Catholic Worker emphasizes seven "corporal works of mercy."

Feed the hungry
Give drink to the thirsty
Clothe the naked
Welcome the stranger
Care for the sick
Visit the imprisoned
Bury the dead

But it's important to let the Holy Spirit guide the work. And in my experience the Holy Spirit takes a broad and inclusive view of what constitutes "mercy."

For example, the woman who kicked me was practicing mercy. She was celebrating and wanted everyone included in the party. The means were immature and silly but they worked. That kick - unjustified in so many ways, as kicks typically are - became in God's hands in that context a blazingly intimate moment of shared healing.

This reflects a point I often struggle to make explicit: healing is not really about me. It’s about being in relationship with you. We are beneficiaries of our relationship with Jesus to the exact extent we surrender control of it and allow God to use it for His purposes and not ours. It is God's mercy, not our mercy, that is fundamental. It’s about the other, not us. Those disciples on the Road to Emmaus resurrected Jesus by sustaining the practice that had characterized their living relationship with Jesus.

I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me (Matthew 5:43-44).

They were faithful not to a body but to a practice shared by bodies when those bodies are animated by willingness to love as God loves, which is to say, in a way the world condemns and actively resists. They weren't kind to the stranger because the stranger was Jesus. They were kind to the stranger because Jesus taught them to be kind to everyone. When we do that, everyone becomes Jesus or, better, becomes our brother and sister in whom we recognize the self we share with God.

Recognizing the Majesty of God as your brother is to accept your own inheritance. God gives only equally. If you recognize His gift in anyone, you have acknowledged what He has given you . . . This is the recognition that is immediate, clear and natural (T-7.XI.5:4-6, 8).

Our work as students of A Course in Miracles is to realize that what obstructs our vision of reality is a malfunctional way of perceiving and interpreting that can only be corrected in relationship with our brothers and sisters in the world. Any other approach to relationship simply reaffirms the ego's argument that whatever happens is about me and I am the one who is in charge of what it means.

Be not separate from me, and let not the holy purpose of Atonement be lost to you in dreams of vengeance. Relationships in which such dreams are cherished have excluded me (T-17.III.10:6-7).

I think when that woman shouted "dance!" at me, something hurt appeared on my face because however much I wanted to dance - and at some level I truly did - it just wasn't possible. I was not able at that time to join with my brothers and sisters.

And the woman who kicked me saw my pain and loneliness and instantly regretted what she had done. I saw her regret and didn't want her to feel bad because I understood the love that lay behind it.

And then I fled the scene. But I did not forget the lesson.

Salvation is awkward and clumsy sometimes. That is what I am trying to say. Being an ACIM student is about stumbling from correction to correction and knowing it's enough. We become happy in quiet, sustainable and non-dramatic ways. In that space, helping one another - knowing how to respond in the moment to one another - simplifies and clarifies. We become friends, and our friendship is a light unto the world.

In a sense, what I am calling "stumbling" is a kind of dance, one in which we are all on the floor, all figuring out how to coordinate our moves and support one another in the wild and various ways we express ourselves. To awaken is to want to awaken. It is to want to dance and to recognize, however dimly, that it is impossible to dance alone.

~ Sean