Are we coming or going?

We are sent on mission because of our deep experience of God. We are not sent on mission because of our resumes, our credentials, our experience or our careers. Mission is not about professionalism. Mission is about reconciliation, crying out for justice, standing with the powerless in word and witness. ...

When we are on mission, when we go home to otherness, we find the experience to be shattering rather than soothing. All that we thought was the meaning of home, its secure, stable, convenient, comfortable environment, is challenged, as are our unquestioned certainties. ...

Mystics ... are often described as strange, different and otherworldly. It would be rare, wouldn't it, to hear "mystic" given as a response to the overly familiar question, "What do you do?" ... Assuredly that conversation would not last long. Mystics, those who know the unknown, are too holy to be invited over for pizza and beer.

And yet they are welcome companions in our chapels and our libraries. How often we Invite them to be part of silent contemplative prayer. Mystics teach us so much. Mystics teach us how to come home. ...

The world began with a word. That is how poets and mystics begin to remember. As we remember, we draw closer to the tender wisdom we call understanding. We are silent. We stop using so many words. We sit, oh so still, and let God look at us. And we are almost home. The longing to be home becomes the poem we have yet to write, the homily we have never heard. ...

Where do you live? What do you mean by home? ... We all have multiple homes. Does the word "division" play any part in your experience of your multiple homes? If we are into truthtelling, most of us will acknowledge our homes are divided and our hearts are broken. Let me offer a few examples of divided homes and broken hearts:

The United States seems to be best understood as a nation divided into red and blue states.

North Americans who consider themselves Christians are apt to identify themselves as either liberal or conservative. ...

In church, we join with the choir and we sing the hymn "All Are Welcome" as if we meant it. But then we find our church to be very selective about who and when and why only some can fully participate. ...

If we continue to nurture our habits of separation and division, we will begin to cherish our hostilities, turn them into religious practices and find more and more excuses to justify the divisions in our lives. ...

We must become God's justice in our fractured, divided world. We must find a way out of the impasse. When we see that something is wrong, we must say so. But we must do it in a way that does not widen the gap, create deeper division and rip apart what is already torn. We must always set out to right the wrongs, but we must not make more enemies in our pursuit of justice and peace. There is only one way. We must build bridges.

COPYRIGHT 2007 National Catholic Reporter
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning