Dreaming of Silver Roses

I have been reading a work by Ken Gire. I am just going to shoot straight and quote Mr. Ken Gire directly. This passage moved me and I am sharing in hopes that it sparks the curiosity, if not compassion and desire to see the sacred in our neighbor.

Gire writes in The Reflective Life: Becoming More Spiritually Sensitive to the Everyday Moments of Life, page 134:

To better love God and other people is the goal of the reflective life. But before we can love them, we must see them. And we must see them not as we would like to see them or as they would like to be seen. We must see them as they are. Otherwise we don’t love the person. We love the image we perceive the person to be. (That statement is very convicting to me. -April) If we are to love people as they are, we must see them as they are. Which means seeing all that lies hidden within them.

I’m sorry but I have to pause here. I would like to say that the cost of doing so is high for most people I know. It costs compassion which motivates, empathy to feel with rather than judge, and TIME to spend on them. I’m sorry, but I know lots of people, ‘church people’ as well as non-church folks who don’t mind giving money, setting up group programs, letting you play with their kids and entire family, but who are utterly uncomfortable sitting down to coffee with you and cracking open a window into who they truly are. I am not talking about strangers. I am talking about people who have watched me and lived near me for a while. This isn’t about grabbing the first Joe off the street. It’s about partially established relationships. Whether it’s fear motivated by their imagination or assumption that they have nothing to offer you from who they are, or that you would betray them, or that you won’t ‘get them’ or whatever the reason, I just find it challenging to find people willing to drop the busy-ness and business and motion that masks them – they can talk about and do tasks with me, but to sit and relate about who they are inside is an enormous effort.

“Well, I just prefer finding something for my hands to do. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop, you know.” “Well, I’m just the quiet type.” “Well, I’m not that interesting.” “Well, I like what I do, and I am a person of action.” “Well, I just can’t find the time to squeeze you in, but I would love it if you came and helped me do ‘X’ task.” “I was waiting for you to ask me.”

Whatever the reason, the real issue is you can’t see someone who isn’t near you and seeing takes TIME. ‘Seeing’ as Mr. Gire calls it, or ‘Being’ as Madeleine L’Engle called it, or ‘Slowing down with someone’ as Fred Rogers called it and illustrated by the blinking yellow light in his TV living room every episode, takes TIME. We are all given 24 hours 7 days a week. You can’t be forced to see, be, or slow down. It’s a choice. It takes risk and vulnerability. It takes moments of disagreement. It takes saying the difficult things. It takes wounds. It takes smiles. It takes joy. It takes love and it may be an uncomfortable amount of love, or an uncomfortable delivery system for you for a while to unearth the sacredness of your neighbor. Let me relate a story from Mr. Gire. (same reference as above)

There is a story of a rabbi sitting in his study, when his reading is interrupted by a knock on the door.

“Come in.”

It was one of his students who was so grateful for his teacher he simply had to come and tell him.

“I just wanted you to know, Rabbi, how much I love you.”

The rabbi put down his book and looked over his glasses.

“What hurts me?”

The student looked at him quizzically. “What?”

“What hurts me?” the rabbi asked again.

The boy stood there speechless, finally shrugging his shoulders. “I don’t know.”

“How can you love me,” the rabbi asked, “if you don’t know what hurts me?”

Mr.Gire continues: What hurts you, and do the people who love you know it? If not, how can they truly love you? Or me? How can we love one another if we don’t know what hurts us?…

When will we be free?

When somebody steps behind our face and finds us. And loves us, despite what they see there. Most of the time, though, most of us don’t even bother to look. And if we do, chances are it won’t take long before we look away. And stay away. Because sometimes what we see inside another person repulses us rather than attracts us. That’s why we wear masks.

Sometimes, though, when the mask comes down, so do our prejudices and the distance we have kept because of them. (Gire, The Reflective Life: Becoming More Spiritually Sensitive to the Everyday Moments of Life, pg. 137)

Here are questions I had to ask myself as I read Mr. Gire’s work. There are tons more I asked but these are the starter questions for me. What are you willing to risk to be known and to know others? What fears keep you from revealing who you are? Of those fears which ones are self made and which ones can Christ help you through right now? Do you truly believe that there is something of the Artist that you can find in the artwork of a fellow masterpiece? What would make the risk worth taking for you?

Filed under: Christianity, life, relating well, relationships, wonder on April 10th, 2008