) gave, wrote, a very considered meditation on Mother Teresa and what struck me, hard, was that Mother Teresa’s faith was such that she could not turn away. During her Dark Night of the Soul she did not turn away. When she saw human misery all around her, she did not turn away. Neither the bleakness in her own heart nor the bleakest image and reality the world served up could make her turn away.
And isn’t that the heart of darkness--turning away.
Musing here and there over the last few days before that steadfast and inspiring life in faith, I turned my thought toward Pontius Pilot and his one profound moment. He turned away. He washed his hands. He that was before him was too real, too filled with grace, indeed was the very embodiment of grace. And so he hardened his heart.
With a very different response, Job gives us quite a different understanding. His story is quite inexplicable from our imperfect, finite, materialist gaze. Job suffers. He suffers in such ways that many, most? Would lose all patience. Our hearts would harden. Yet his does not. He does not turn away. Why?
To some degree his faith, his determination to gaze forth beyond his material circumstance must remain a mystery. But surely the mystery to some degree is revealed by what he dismisses when confronted with a choice. God, the giver of the grace of his own soul, or the material circumstance that is a blink of an eye, a moment in time, so temporary as to barely exist at all. Did he grouse? Yes, he did. Did he waver? Perhaps, but we begin to move into the mystery of Job when we consider that question.
Questions proffered my way by those friends of mine who are agnostic, atheist, and for that matter proffered at times among us who believe is why does God allow such terrible moments to exist in the world. Why so much unmerited tragedy, death, and suffering?
And though this is no great answer it is a spring board for my own musing on the topic. God is so much more concerned with yours and mine eternal soul that the almost nonexistent material moment is almost of no consequence, at least in comparison with the infinite. Saying so does not obviate the very real suffering people experience, nor can it dismiss our responsibility to alleviate suffering as we are able; we should freely demonstrate our humanity. But we must recall that it is we who gaze out from our flesh and our moment in time and believe our experience here is the ultimate existent meaning. We judge from our perspective, finite perspective, something that by definition cannot be measured by our five senses, by our emotional experience, nor even by our mental cognition. Is it any wonder that we are confounded.
What cannot be found in this earth is grace derived from our material being. We will not find deliverance from the hardened heart by looking to material structures, whether those be socialism, communism, fascism, or any other construct of government. We cannot force an individual to gaze on the ineffable by fiat. We cannot construct an everlasting peace from this or that social, cultural, political innovation. We cannot call forth the promise of Man or the glory of God by constructing a perfect form. The ceremony does not beautify God; nor does the church or temple beautify God; rather, it is God that beautifies the ceremony and beautifies the church and beautifies the temple. The temple, church, ceremony assist man by helping him focus upon God. To suggest otherwise is to assert materialism.
We, each of us, have a choice. We can turn away like Pontius Pilot, or we can hold our gaze steady like Job.