From Resistance to Compassion
From Resistance to Compassion
Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent – April 1, 2020
We naturally respond to difficult days by resisting them . . . we push against them, run from them, or distract ourselves in the midst of them. But the desert does not budge against our resistance.
It is one thing to resist a highly contagious virus, a needed thing. But to resist the days within the desert means that we don’t take time or energy to live fully the days.
I try to regularly check in with myself when I’m in the desert – and these days, we’re all in the desert.
• What does it feel like to be me today?
• What or who has God brought into my life? And how shall I love them?
• What opportunities are arising in the desert that would not ordinarily present themselves?
• How can I support or care for others from my physical distance from them?
• How is God inviting me to offer my life for the healing and good of the world?
I find that when I check in with myself regularly when I’m in the desert, I develop a sense of compassion, mercy, and even love in the desert. The move from resistance to compassion is huge.
Read what Cummings writes below:
All these are forms of resistance to the desert experience. Some are obvious and deliberate, others are more subtle, more preconscious. In the desert resistance ultimately proves futile, but I can play the game of resisting for a long time and in many different variations before I come to realize the futility of it. The desert cannot be tamed by resisting it but only by loving it. God cannot be controlled but only obeyed or disobeyed. I, by resisting, cannot make my desert experience come to an end but can only prolong it that way. Eventually I will have to step out of the driver’s seat and begin to acknowledge and to accept what I have refused to face.
Resistance is a normal and frequent response to the desert experience. But God is patient with me. Many of the most important lessons of life, both social life and spiritual life, have to be learned by experience, by trial and error; no one can learn these lessons for me. Resistance may be my initial response to the desert experience; perhaps only later, if at all, will I discover that the response of loving, trusting acceptance is far more productive. The movement from resistance to acceptance begins when I as a Christian can look with compassionate, rather than with critical, eyes upon my own divinely sustained, guided, and cared-for self in the desert experience.
[Charles Cummings, Spirituality and the Desert Experience (Denville, NJ: Dimension Books, 1978).]
For reflection:
o Something in the human person wants to maintain the status quo, to remain unchanged.
o There is also a soul-impulse within humans that seeks growth and expansiveness.
o When I can see the things I resist or push away from, I may notice my growing edges. For instance, if I resist times of quiet, then silence may be a real growing edge for me. If I resist being with people, relationships may be my growing edge.
o How might I check-in with myself today? I allow the questions above to guide me.
Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent – April 1, 2020
We naturally respond to difficult days by resisting them . . . we push against them, run from them, or distract ourselves in the midst of them. But the desert does not budge against our resistance.
It is one thing to resist a highly contagious virus, a needed thing. But to resist the days within the desert means that we don’t take time or energy to live fully the days.
I try to regularly check in with myself when I’m in the desert – and these days, we’re all in the desert.
• What does it feel like to be me today?
• What or who has God brought into my life? And how shall I love them?
• What opportunities are arising in the desert that would not ordinarily present themselves?
• How can I support or care for others from my physical distance from them?
• How is God inviting me to offer my life for the healing and good of the world?
I find that when I check in with myself regularly when I’m in the desert, I develop a sense of compassion, mercy, and even love in the desert. The move from resistance to compassion is huge.
Read what Cummings writes below:
All these are forms of resistance to the desert experience. Some are obvious and deliberate, others are more subtle, more preconscious. In the desert resistance ultimately proves futile, but I can play the game of resisting for a long time and in many different variations before I come to realize the futility of it. The desert cannot be tamed by resisting it but only by loving it. God cannot be controlled but only obeyed or disobeyed. I, by resisting, cannot make my desert experience come to an end but can only prolong it that way. Eventually I will have to step out of the driver’s seat and begin to acknowledge and to accept what I have refused to face.
Resistance is a normal and frequent response to the desert experience. But God is patient with me. Many of the most important lessons of life, both social life and spiritual life, have to be learned by experience, by trial and error; no one can learn these lessons for me. Resistance may be my initial response to the desert experience; perhaps only later, if at all, will I discover that the response of loving, trusting acceptance is far more productive. The movement from resistance to acceptance begins when I as a Christian can look with compassionate, rather than with critical, eyes upon my own divinely sustained, guided, and cared-for self in the desert experience.
[Charles Cummings, Spirituality and the Desert Experience (Denville, NJ: Dimension Books, 1978).]
For reflection:
o Something in the human person wants to maintain the status quo, to remain unchanged.
o There is also a soul-impulse within humans that seeks growth and expansiveness.
o When I can see the things I resist or push away from, I may notice my growing edges. For instance, if I resist times of quiet, then silence may be a real growing edge for me. If I resist being with people, relationships may be my growing edge.
o How might I check-in with myself today? I allow the questions above to guide me.
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