A Larger, Freer, More Truthful Way
A Larger, Freer, More Truthful Way
Saturday after Ash Wednesday – February 29, 2020
When Beatrice Bruteau describes a contemplative as someone who lets go of the old ways that seem “natural” to us in favor of that which is larger, freer, and more truthful, something in me says, “Yes!” and something else in me says, “I can’t!”
She’s right. It’s not “natural” to us that we should love others without qualification. But this is part of the transformative process, the slow and messy shift in the interior life to which the contemplative is invited. Our vocation is to live in union with God, and this is the way God loves.
This is how Bruteau says it:
We have now identified the basic life principle of the communion of the saints. That is what is meant by abiding in Jesus’ love. Live in the kind of love-world he has created, the love-context in which he lives. Do it the way he does it. “Love one another as I have loved you,” leaving out any regard for “deserving” or “lovability,” either way. Don’t classify people as friends or enemies, don’t rank them according to their degree of lovability.
Is that so hard to do? Well, we’re not used to it. We were brought up differently. It seems “natural” to us that we should love those who deserve it because they deserve it, because they attract us, please us. Anything we have got used to seems natural to us and we resist any alternative principle of feeling and behaving, calling it unnatural or impossible or undesirable.
But the contemplative life is precisely that life which examines those things that seem so natural, the life that presses against the boundaries of the possible, that questions and rearranges what is considered desirable. And when it finds a larger, freer, more truthful way, it releases its former mode without a backward glance. We don’t have to be bound by what we were brought up to believe. Contemplative life is a search for truth, for greater meanings, for deeper goodness. The contemplative must be a person who has enough confidence in truth and goodness to let go what we were brought up to believe in favor of what spiritual insight reveals as deeper reality.
When we see other people doing these larger things, such as loving someone who “doesn’t deserve it,” we marvel at their ability to do something that so goes against nature (that is, against what we were brought up to believe). Nevertheless, most of us admire them for doing so and call them “saints,” which shows that something in us recognizes that this is truth. This is important to notice. The “saint,” in loving someone who “doesn’t deserve it,” is not operating in the realm of either falsehood or fantasy. We recognize the saint’s act as “holiness,” wholeness, being right – that is, correct, true. The truth is, our deeper self tells us, that love is independent of deserving, and all loving should be that way.
[Beatrice Bruteau, Radical Optimism: Rooting Ourselves in Reality (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1993).]
For Reflection:
o We tend to use labels for people as a way of classifying them. Job titles, social functions and economic descriptors all help us place people in certain categories. When we label and classify people, we tend to relate to them by category rather than as unique persons.
o I commit myself today to seeing others as human beings. I want to be conscious of the ways I classify people or use labels to put them in a particular place. Today, I want to be aware of my tendency to categorize others. I pray to be free of that tendency for this one day, with God’s help.
Saturday after Ash Wednesday – February 29, 2020
When Beatrice Bruteau describes a contemplative as someone who lets go of the old ways that seem “natural” to us in favor of that which is larger, freer, and more truthful, something in me says, “Yes!” and something else in me says, “I can’t!”
She’s right. It’s not “natural” to us that we should love others without qualification. But this is part of the transformative process, the slow and messy shift in the interior life to which the contemplative is invited. Our vocation is to live in union with God, and this is the way God loves.
This is how Bruteau says it:
We have now identified the basic life principle of the communion of the saints. That is what is meant by abiding in Jesus’ love. Live in the kind of love-world he has created, the love-context in which he lives. Do it the way he does it. “Love one another as I have loved you,” leaving out any regard for “deserving” or “lovability,” either way. Don’t classify people as friends or enemies, don’t rank them according to their degree of lovability.
Is that so hard to do? Well, we’re not used to it. We were brought up differently. It seems “natural” to us that we should love those who deserve it because they deserve it, because they attract us, please us. Anything we have got used to seems natural to us and we resist any alternative principle of feeling and behaving, calling it unnatural or impossible or undesirable.
But the contemplative life is precisely that life which examines those things that seem so natural, the life that presses against the boundaries of the possible, that questions and rearranges what is considered desirable. And when it finds a larger, freer, more truthful way, it releases its former mode without a backward glance. We don’t have to be bound by what we were brought up to believe. Contemplative life is a search for truth, for greater meanings, for deeper goodness. The contemplative must be a person who has enough confidence in truth and goodness to let go what we were brought up to believe in favor of what spiritual insight reveals as deeper reality.
When we see other people doing these larger things, such as loving someone who “doesn’t deserve it,” we marvel at their ability to do something that so goes against nature (that is, against what we were brought up to believe). Nevertheless, most of us admire them for doing so and call them “saints,” which shows that something in us recognizes that this is truth. This is important to notice. The “saint,” in loving someone who “doesn’t deserve it,” is not operating in the realm of either falsehood or fantasy. We recognize the saint’s act as “holiness,” wholeness, being right – that is, correct, true. The truth is, our deeper self tells us, that love is independent of deserving, and all loving should be that way.
[Beatrice Bruteau, Radical Optimism: Rooting Ourselves in Reality (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1993).]
For Reflection:
o We tend to use labels for people as a way of classifying them. Job titles, social functions and economic descriptors all help us place people in certain categories. When we label and classify people, we tend to relate to them by category rather than as unique persons.
o I commit myself today to seeing others as human beings. I want to be conscious of the ways I classify people or use labels to put them in a particular place. Today, I want to be aware of my tendency to categorize others. I pray to be free of that tendency for this one day, with God’s help.
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