Brokenness to Wholeness
There
is a big difference between "what is happening," and "what
is going on." I may see a man and a woman riding in an auto;
that is "what is happening." But there are limitless possibilities
as to "what is going on." They may be a brother and sister,
or a husband and wife, going to Church or going home for lunch or
going shopping. They may be business associates going to visit a client.
They may be courting or flirting.
There are also many ways of interpreting "what is going on."
A young business man may be working hard and making a lot of money.
A competitor may see him as a rival. A doctor may see him as a high
risk for a heart attack. A poor relative may be very envious of his
prosperity. A more spiritual person may pity his enslavement to the
things of this world.
When
Christ meets the Samaritan woman at the well side little seems to
happen but there is a lot going on. One of the most broken women in
the whole Bible meets the most whole man in all of history and healing
takes place.
It
was noontime, and nobody goes to draw water when the day is hottest,
unless she wants to avoid meeting people. She wants to avoid people
because deep down, as deep down as a well, she feels unloved. The
great pain of the human heart is loneliness, often linked to guilt
(I am so bad how could anybody love me?). This pain of feeling unloved
leads to compulsive/addictive efforts to take love hostage. She had
tried to find love in relationships with at least six men but because
she was trying to grab love in loneliness she stifled and killed it
in that very act. And then, like all of us in our pain, she denied
it and denied who she was; "I have no husband" she said.
It was a lie that was true.
This woman for the first time in her life meets a man who is truly
loving. Beneath all of her facade he sees a beautiful human being
and he reaches out in love to recreate her, not looking for any pay-off
for himself. He begins by asking her for water. To ask a service can
be putting oneself in a relationship of need to the other and thus
giving that person a feeling of worth. She is taken aback and asks,
"How is it that you, a Jew, asks me, a Samaritan and a woman,
for a drink?" These are two people who break the Law. She in
her craving for love had flaunted the laws of sexual propriety and
then flaunted truth to deny her true self. Jesus, who is love itself,
flaunts the human laws that set barriers between people. The Jews
had no dealings with Samaritans and a man and a woman could not converse
in public. She breaks the right kind of law for the wrong reason,
while he breaks the wrong kind of law for the right reason.
Then
Jesus said, "If you only knew the gift of God! If you only knew
who it is that asks you for a drink…. the water that I shall
give you will become a spring welling up to eternal life."
And
so it was for the woman. When Jesus had restored her dignity and self
worth she went ahead into the town. "In that town many Samaritans
believed in him when they heard the woman who declared, 'He told me
everything I did.'" For him it was okay for her not to be okay.
When he accepted her not being okay she began to accept herself. When
she accepted her not being okay herself she became more okay.
This
woman is a real woman and a symbolic woman. She is a symbol of what
is in all of us: loneliness, broken sexuality, fear, anger, guilt,
incapacity to forgive and so incapacity to love. "If we only
knew the Gift of God" that is within us we would be gradually
healed from this pain and brokenness.
This
was the great gift of the Benedictine monk John Main. For him meditation
was ultimately a way to finding our true selves and wholeness. Each
of us were made in the image and likeness of God. This relationship
was formalized when we were initiated into a Christian community in
Baptism. Very often it was also formalized out of existence in our
Church lives. We were hounded into acts of devotion and had a morality
imposed on us without much reference to the Spirit within, the Spirit
of love, that dwells in the depths of our hearts. The well, the gift
of God's spirit within, is there but we have to clear away the words
and images and activities that have covered it over. Then we become
the well; the source of living water is bubbling up within us and
gradually bringing us from brokenness into wholeness. We access this
source by the simple practice of saying a mantra, a prayer word, for
from twenty to thirty minutes every morning and every evening.
Taken
from Sundays
into Silence - A Pathway to Life. Copyright © 1998 by Claretian
Publications
