Mtr Mary Trainor
Turning, turning in the widening gyre the falcon cannot hear the falconer...*
Dear friend,
I am perpetually frustrated by those in Scripture who seem bent on not understanding Jesus. And more. They are not content to just ignore him, they have to criticize and condemn him.
John’s Gospel is especially challenging in this regard. Its use of “the Jews” seems a sweeping indictment, as if a whole people didn’t understand, thwarted, condemned, and conspired against Jesus. We find more of this disagreeability in today’s Gospel selection (John 8:47-59.)
Some are obsessed with the notion that Jesus must have a demon to be so knowledgeable, so clever. Some assume he is a Samaritan, which automatically makes him an outsider, an enemy.
They are so preoccupied with the letter of the law that they have lost sight of what is primary: God’s intent in providing the law--that they would remain in life, close to God’s very heart.
Thankfully, Jesus will not allow the Godhead's work to be obscured by those who are so certain that fixed rules or notions are their salvation.
Rules and notions are not bad, in and of themselves. But in our desire for clarity, we can mistake them for the total truth and miss out on where salvation really lies: With God and God alone.
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold…
Getting lost, or even just feeling lost, is easy. One moment of distraction is all it takes.
When I moved to Tucson last year, the city was new to me, but a desert clime was familiar. I had lived and worked in Palm Springs for ten years. But my love of the desert began long before that. It started in childhood with my family’s frequent trips to Apple Valley in the Southern California high desert.
On a particular day trip, I got lost. Or rather, I thought I was lost. When the car stopped, and the engine was turned off, my brother and I sprang from the car eager to play. He went in one direction, I another.
I was bent over, intent on following a bug. I momentarily lost track of where I was. I straightened, looked around, did a 360, and saw nothing familiar. No car, no brother, no father, no mother.
Turning, turning in the widening gyre the falcon cannot hear the falconer...
I could not hear the falconer. But here’s the good news: The falconer never lost track of me.
In my lost-ness I uttered a guttural, barely human bellow of abandonment. Mid-bellow, I was scooped up and carried back to the car, all the while being assured by my mother that everything was okay.
Surely some revelation is at hand...
Once again I was embraced in life, held close to my mother’s very heart.
Mtr. Mary
*From The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats, written in 1919, first published in 1920.