To Gentle the World

 Friends, 

 

Did you happen to read Yesterday’s Daily Meditation from Richard Rohr? (That’s how I start my mornings. It prepares me for reading the news.) Thursday’s meditation began with this story: 

 

Once a brother committed a sin in Scetis, and the elders assembled and sent for Abba Moses. He, however, did not want to go. Then the priest sent a message to him, saying: “Come, everybody is waiting for you.” So he finally got up to go. And he took a worn-out basket with holes, filled it with sand, and carried it along. The people who came to meet him said: “What is this?” Then the old man said: “My sins are running out behind me, yet I do not see them. And today I have come to judge the sins of someone else.” When they heard this, they said nothing to the brother and pardoned him.

 

Then the meditation moved to this profound comment about contemplation by Sister Joan Chittister: “Contemplation breaks us open to ourselves. The fruit of contemplation is self-knowledge, not self-justification. ‘The nearer we draw to God,’ Abba Mateos said, ‘the more we see ourselves as sinners.’ We see ourselves as we really are, and knowing ourselves we cannot condemn the other. We remember with a blush the public sin that made us mortal. We recognize with dismay the private sin that curls within us in fear of exposure. Then the whole world changes when we know ourselves. We gentle it. The fruit of self-knowledge is kindness. Broken ourselves, we bind tenderly the wounds of the other.” 

 

I find that phrase, "We gentle [the whole world]" to be very arresting and worthy of bouncing around the echo chambers of my heart and mind all day long. While I’m not always a fan of verbing nouns and adjectives (see what I did there?), this one is well done. We gentle the whole world. What can I do, day after day, to make the word “gentle” a verb? And, to gentle “the whole world”? That sounds like a tall order. 

 

There are folks in this world whom I think deserve a swift kick in the seat. But that’s the justice of someone who is self-righteous, not someone who is self-knowing, whose self-righteousness has melted in the presence of a truly holy God. For those who have stood, naked and open before God, we can only choose paths that are not filled with judgment, spite, or hate. To “gentle” the world seems a very worthy alternative. 

 

I like this description of contemplation. It is tempting to look at meditation, prayer, mindfulness, and other practices of centering in stillness as simply taking a breather from the madness of the world. What Sister Chittister is describing is different. The breath that we take in contemplation is purposeful, without a prescribed goal other than to be transformed into whatever we are called to be. One thing that makes me grateful for Dr. Gail Sterns, who has led mindfulness meetings here, is that she pushes us to think of mindfulness as more than just something that we are doing in our own heads. It matters that God is present, transforming our space to sacred space. That encounter with a holy and loving God is what allows us to see ourselves in truth – our failures as well as our gifts and beauty. To see ourselves truly, while being loved through it all, is what transforms us from vengeful self-righteousness to people who gentle a world that is often harsh and broken.

 

Oh, I’ve rambled enough. Sister Chittister’s phrase, “We gentle the world,” has captured me and I am a grateful prisoner to it. 

 

Mark of St. Mark