Thursday, August 30, 2007

Dearest God,

Ever since I read the article on Mother Teresa's 50 year crisis of faith, I have wondered about the meaning of faith without the sense of your presence. For Mother Teresa the call to compassion was based on her great love of Jesus and his love for her. She felt this love deeply and wanted to "love Jesus like he had never been loved before."

And so she loved him by loving his poorest children. Through the expressions of children and old people dying on the streets, loved at the "last minute," she witnessed the joy of compassion, yet she did not feel the embrace of Jesus' arms around her. If that is because she so perfectly cleaved to his suffering, then was there room for joy? Did she put herself through even greater pain by expecting and being disappointed that she felt no compassionate love for herself? Was it possible to move in and out of deep suffering to touch the Savior and feel his touch for her?

I have known your loving presence as she had known it before her call to compassion for the world's poorest people. And I have known deep darkness, abandonment, but not from you. From others yes, but not from you. What am I missing?

As I watch and anticipate the movement of God in the world, I live with the assumption of your presence in all of creation. Was the suffering your presence for Mother Teresa? Could not this suffering have been the expression of God's living reality?

Today, I received a call from a stranger asking for help for her friend and colleague whose son is in the hospital for a gang-related injury. When I was alerted to the call by a staff member, I thought I was too full up with people's sorrow and that I had no more room in my heart for another. Yet, I picked up the phone, listened to the plight and said yes to providing help where I could. Is my affirmative answer the yes of God's presence to this sorrowing woman?

I want to read the book of her letters, searching for the living presence of God. I want to get inside the crisis in order to understand. Will I find this the post of God, the place of God's greatest presence? Or will I be struck by her own despairing thoughts?

I believe with all my heart that she achieved her goal of loving you the most you could be loved. By loving your saddest children, she was the epitome of God's love to those most helpless. Is it possible that your presence was so deeply embedded in the fabric of her being that she simply was not able to see it because it was so much like her own? Is it possible?

As I encounter hurting people and I offer my assistance, I have always believed it was my task to open the door to your presence for others. I am not the presence of God, but I lead people to the entrance. What happens inside is between you, Most Gracious God, and those seeking something more. I cannot transform even one human life, but I can walk "beside" those who cry out to me for help. I can take their hand, lead them to the doorway. Is this not what you have called me to do? Isn't this the heart of your intended ministry for me?

I am not leading people to an illusion, a graphic portrayal of a fictitious god. I myself am lead by this presence to the opening. I do not pretend to know what lies inside for each one. I am not capable of knowing the deepest mysteries. Yet, I am captured by them.

In my mind I wonder where this conversation will lead me.

Ancient peoples
built a shrine
to an "Unknown" God.
And this was
the God
to whom many would turn.
The Unknown God
became the
loving God Known.
To you,
I bring
my questions and fears,
and my love.
Teach me,
always teach me
I pray.

Love, Andrea