From the Rector

Dear Friends in Christ,

I’ve been amazed lately at a shift in our son. We’ve made a dedicated effort to see, recognize, and praise the good while trying to minimize the attention we pay to problematic behavior. He has responded in dramatic fashion — he’s eager to act in kinder and more respectful ways. We’ve also grown accustomed to spotting the good and it’s become a reflex we’re honing as finely as we once practiced critique.

There’s a passage I’m fond of from Fr David Fleming. It reads:

It’s often said, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” But Ignatius Loyola reverses the saying: “When I believe it, I’ll see it.” He observed that our vision largely controls our perception. If we think the world is a bleak place, full of evil, greedy, selfish people who have no love for God or each other, that’s what we will see when we look around. If we think that our world is full of goodness and opportunity, a place that God created and sustains and loves, that is what we’ll find. Ignatius thought that the right vision lies at the heart of our relationship with God.

A preacher who was once known for preaching on the power of positive thinking, Norman Vincent Peale, used to preach that, “When you expect the best you release a magnetic force in your mind which by a law of attraction tends to bring the best to you.”

The locus of the action is different in these two approaches. I think we are often tempted by the second — to think that if we just try hard and change the way we think then we will somehow unlock good stuff. The challenge, for Christians, is not that we don’t think positively enough though. It seems that the deeper challenge is that we don’t see clearly enough. It is not about an act of will by which we will just do better.

I think Fr Fleming is, perhaps, closer to the truth. The world is filled with reminders and markers of an irrepressible and loving God. All of creation is, in some way, an outward and visible sign of grace embedded deep in the heart of the cosmos. The question is what we choose to see — are we committed to seeing those signs of grace in the way we might learn to see an artist’s brushstrokes or recognize a composer’s characteristic melodies?

Christians are not called to just be critics of the world — eager connoisseurs of critique. We are called to a more holy discipline rooted in training in the art of gracious observation and holy appreciation. That grace opens a deeper awareness of our blessings — it is a generosity of spirit that unlocks generosity.

I expect that much of the world might respond similarly to our son to a conscious commitment to see good — not because we’ve magically unlocked the good through positive thinking. Instead it’s the conscious choice to recognize that which is already good and following that good. We’re looking for signs of grace rather than getting distracted by annoyances and letting snags and bumps keep us from seeing what is true. It is its own discipline.

The more evil, selfishness, greed, and more that we let ourselves focus on, the more of it we will see. The more of it we see, the more eager we are to build up walls, barriers, and blockades to stay safe — yet we also become sealed off from the risk that is seeing love, grace, and beauty. Some of this is a hard-heartedness growing thick — almost like a kind of spiritual plaque in our hearts slowly constricting them until we find ourselves in pain and paralyzed.

There is a magnetic force. It does draw the good. It is not, however, about a change in the energy we project but a commitment to see that which God has planted. We won’t necessarily change things by thinking positively but we just might be changed by learning to see all that God has done, all that God has made people to be, with the same loving generosity with which he sees us.

Yours in Christ,

Fr Robert