"If I say I am working for peace but am myself angry and self-righteous, then the energy I am putting into the atmosphere is anger and self-righteousness. If I come preaching the gospel of Christian love but am myself rigid and judgmental, I am putting into the atmosphere rigidity and judgment. " from Mystical Hope, p 91.
I have just finished reading a very small book (less than 100 pages) and I must crow about it. The title is Mystical Hope, Trusting in the Mercy of God, by Cynthia Bourgeault. I first read this little book about 5 years ago, and it was good. But apparently something's changed in my own "software" since then. This is a wonderful book, a book full of GOOD NEWS. This is a grace-filled book.
Her discussion of "righteousness" being "the quality of aliveness" in our lives, I think, may have been my favorite discussion. Mostly because we are in Romans in TAEHS, and Paul's discussion of righteousness makes me yawn (sorry all you Paul lovers!). Cynthia cuts to the chase with her stories and vivid pictures, such as this one:
She shares a story of a young African woman who saw an unusual snake glistening in the sun, brightly colored and absolutely beautiful. She talked about it so much that a friend killed the snake and made a belt from the skin for the woman. "To her great dismay that once glistening skin was now just dull and gray. For all along the beauty had lain not in the physical skin, but in the quality of its aliveness."
I thought about all the stories I've heard around here from Jim and his fishing buddies of the beautiful dolphin fish. I've heard how gorgeous it is, bright and beautifully colored, glistening in the sun and the water. But the ones I see in the boat are gray and lifeless, dead, absolutely NO color. That's what they've lost--that quality of aliveness.
Cynthia defines "righteousness" as that quality of aliveness that is present in our "works" for God. She writes: By "righteousness" [the ancient Hebrews] did not mean a moral template they could use...They meant an energy-charged sphere--a forcefield...in which all their plans, efforts, and schemes had to move in order to come to fruition. The innermost and the outermost had to be totally "in sync."...Otherwise, no efforts undertaken out of one's own righteousness (one's own forcefield), no matter how cleverly simulated the outward action, could possibly be worthy because the crucial element was missing: the aliveness of God moving in it.
Now THAT I can understand easier than Paul's many words.
A few of my favorite quotes:
Energy is what happens when divine being expresses itself outward.
Where is God? God is all over the place. God is up there, down here, inside my skin and out. God is the web, the energy, the space, the light--not captured in them, as if any of those concepts were more real than what unites them, but revealed in that singular, vast net of relationship that animates everything that is...I want to proclaim that God IS the unity--the very energy, the very intelligence, the very elegance and passion that make it all go. (quoting Barbara Taylor Brown)
...hope is the current that flows through, carrying us toward the future. As we let ourselves yield and go with it, it will open to us toward the authentic unfolding of our being. The opposite is also just as true: any form of resistance, be it nostalgia, clinging, bitterness, self-pity, or self-justification, will make it impossible to find that current of hope, impossible for hope to carry us to our true becoming. We become stones in the riverbed...Hope's home is at the innermost point in us, and in all things. It is a quality of aliveness. It does not come at the end, as the feeling that results from a happy outcome. Rather, it lies at the beginning, as a pulse of truth that sends us forth.
This is a beautiful book, and I highly recommend it--read it, chew on it, and watch hope come alive as you find yourself swimming in that great body of mercy called God.
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