Mark Dohle
Well-Known Member
How are we to live?
What is really important in our lives? When I look inward, when praying, or just thinking, I see a lot of real issues, some of them quite painful, but in the long run, they are smoke and ashes. Sometimes I worry about how I am going to die. Or fret, that I sense that my aging process, is like a snowball rolling downhill, it gets bigger and it will only stop when it hits something. Or will just run out of momentum, and become still. I am not always worried about my death. However, I do believe that we have ‘weather’ within, and some days I can be very philosophical about life, death, suffering, and whatever serious human issues is presented to me. Then on other days, I can be a quite the ninny about it all. So I try not to take my good/bad (inner) weather too seriously, it will always move on.
Yet, how am I to live? When I die, and my body planted, a symbol of the sum total of my life, what is it that will go with me? I do believe that life will either hone us or wreck us. I also believe that we all have a place of freedom to stand from. It might be a small place in the beginning, and we may only have the desire to be freer, more loving, and more available to others, though still bound by habit. Yet every small choice made in freedom, and not some form of compulsion, or being pushed by society into a certain mold, only increases our captivity to make deeper choices that are rooted in freedom. It is then that we become childlike, or we mature into our true nature.
Sometimes we have to pretend to be loving, or kind, or just, while wanting to do the opposite. Yet in this ‘pretending’, we are really drawing from a deeper source (grace), a harder choice, and not the easier choice of just going along. The more we learn to make truly free choices, the less burdened we will be by others, and by our society. We can discover the wisdom of letting go of the compulsion to control those around us. To control another is probably the furthest thing from actually being loving that we can get.
Parenthood is different, since good parents are teaching their children simply how not to make fools of themselves at meals, not to pee in public, to act with respect, and hopefully, to act from a deep sense of what is good, and just, and yet loving. Hopefully by the time they reach adulthood. Besides, parental love is always moving towards separation from their children. Hopefully, a friendship which deepens between parents and children, which moves towards deeper communication between equals.
The greatest spiritual gift is ‘love’. And for good reason. When I am laid to rest, when my body returns to dust, what is left is what I have become, what I am truly am, what my (free) choices made me into. Will I be more deeply human as Jesus was, or will I become something less than human, a monster, actually, as CS Lewis talk about?
So how should I live? Well to do the next loving thing, which is harder than it looks. That is why I often fail. Yet God is also the most loving ‘thing’, so there is always hope, mercy, and the courage to take the next step until I can step no more.
Pray for me, as I pray for you, for we all journey together. –Br.MD
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