Masked Marvels

I haven’t gotten used to it. I haven’t met anyone who has. It is somewhat of an obstruction like none other as we now find ourselves masked in public. I have struggled with why it seems so unusual, beyond the obvious reality of it being new for most of us. When I think of masked people, my mind, first and foremost, goes directly to superheroes, Marvel Comics, and even wrestling commercials which flash by while watching television. It is, more often than not, primarily men who are trying to hide something about their identity. The mask is a way of entering into character, releasing their invincibility against their human opponent, making them, in one sense, like “gods”.

There are many reasons why it feels uncomfortable to us but, quite pointedly, it has become a barrier to our own humanity. From the time we are kids we learn to react to the facial and body expression of other people, from parents, siblings, teachers, and the rest. We come to rely on others to express how we should feel or how to react in different situations based on the other person. We know when someone is happy, sad, excited, angry, and downright outraged and we react to their human expression. It becomes so habitual for most people we aren’t even aware it’s happening. When people are happy, we react by being happy for them. When people are angry, especially at us, we do what it takes to eliminate and diffuse the situation. As kids, it tends to be a great way because they haven’t quite fully grasped the wide array of feelings and emotions within us. Most have not been taught how to handle the feelings and emotions or at least their varying nuances.

However, as adults, things change. It wasn’t until I started going out wearing a mask to stores and such which something just didn’t seem right. A friend had pointed out to me, then, how the mask has taken away the facial expression to which we learn to react. Quite frankly, sometimes this is a good thing, especially when you find yourself around grumpy people in stores! However, I couldn’t help but notice the sense of shame and guilt I had been experiencing when I went to stores, as if I had done something wrong, and I had no one to affirm otherwise through smiles or nods. It felt almost criminal. It was like confronting a void, of sorts, something which had been stripped of us for which I, like many, come to rely upon. For some it feels like a stripping of their humanity and freedom, whatever that means. But there’s more to it.

For some this may be the first time in life reckoning with their own life. It may be the first time where we have no one else to tell us how to react, now finding ourselves as masked marvels. We become so reliant on “outside authority” to tell us how to think, feel, react, we become void of our own humanity, literally separating ourselves from our interior life. Not many can argue we lack depth as a culture and society. We can see it just in how our leaders act and react to one another. We’ve become so dependent upon others we’re left not knowing how to feel or think on our own. Is it any wonder why so many would protest placing something over their face? How will they know how to feel and what emotions emerge? How will I know how to react to varying situations? It’s revealing just how bound we are by our own darkness and why we want to fight for “freedom”.

Here’s the gift to the mask. The mask has simply turned the mirror inward. We know longer have the external “mirrors” allowing us to react and so we’re being given a lesson in self-discovery. It’s why I was so conscious of the feeling of guilt and shame when I entered the store. There was no one there wronging me in any way. It was my shame and guilt I was confronting. When I encountered others in the store not wearing masks, it was my anger staring at me. When I had run into a teacher from my childhood it was both my joy to see her but at the same time my own sadness not being able to stand in the store and catch up in any way. The mask, whether we know it or not, is giving us a great gift but like some gifts we don’t always know what to do with them, or for that matter, don’t even want the gift in the first place, feeling no need for it.

Like the masked marvels from comic books and the big screen, they both disclose and conceal something about ourselves. They may, in some ways, conceal our own humanity from others, but they are inviting our own feelings and emotions to disclose themselves to us. All it takes is a little awareness on our part as to what’s arising as we find ourselves wandering and meandering with this new reality of masks. It’s an opportunity to be happy and joyful for ourselves, not just because it’s a reaction to someone else telling us how to feel. Most importantly, it’s a time to confront so many of the negative feeling we tend to push onto other people through blame and victimhood and surrounding ourselves with others in the same way. If you’re angry, mean-spirited, feeling shamed or malice, welcome them home as the poet Rumi writes in the Guest House. They are yours and acceptance moves you to being more fully human.

I’d imagine we’ll spend years if not decades ahead questioning and learning all of which this time is trying to teach us about our humanity, revealing our selfishness, our values, or even lack thereof, but maybe most importantly growing into the person we often seem to know the least, ourselves. It’s too easy to react to the seething anger, the belief of rights being trampled, and the backlash towards leaders, but all of it is revealing something about ourselves and who ever would have thought it would be mirrored through a mask? Rather than digging into being the “gods” we think we are, a simple piece of cloth is inviting us to lean into what has lied dormant and hidden, our own humanity, teaching us to love the other and empathize with all who are truly hurting in this time, including ourselves.

Great Love in the Midst of Deep Suffering

1 Jn 3: 18-24; John 15: 1-8

Remain in me as I remain in you…and become my disciples.

I wasn’t about to let fear to hold me back from going further down into the city this week. How easy it would have been to remain hunkered down in my house, feeling helpless, and never stepping out the front door and down the street because of fear. Yet, I didn’t want to believe that what I saw on television was true. I didn’t want to believe places burning, national guard in place, people destroying property. I didn’t want to believe it was true, even though I knew it was at least partially true. But I wasn’t going to allow fear to stop me. Heck, as crazy as it is, I was probably more worried that something would happen to my car than to myself. All the times I’ve driven through West Baltimore and other areas, I never really felt unsafe. Uncomfortable, yeah, probably, but never unsafe.

And so I went. And I went a few times after that to different locations, mainly to listen more than anything. On Tuesday evening I found myself driving through the national guard, as surreal as that was. Quite honestly, the only other time I’ve experienced something like that was with the United Nations in the different Third World countries that I’ve done mission trips to over the years, and yet, here it was in my own city and in my backyard. That alone left me anxious, wondering what I was doing and where I was at that time.

At the gathering I had attended, I found myself overwhelmed by it all. I was overwhelmed that this was real and it was happening in this city, even though I am aware of the history of the city and the many issues it’s had over the past decades and beyond. There was a young African American woman that spoke and all I truly remember were the tears and her words, “Where there is deep pain, great love will follow.” I was truly overwhelmed by it all and nearly lost it myself as I looked out over the crowd that had gathered, wondering, disillusioned, hopeful, questioning,still in shock with tension that could be cut with a knife, and this young woman put her finger right on it, where there is deep pain, great love will follow…and she really believes it.

Remain in me as I remain in you…we hear parts of that in today’s Gospel from John and have reflected deeply upon these readings this week. The message is carried over in the second reading as well. More than anything, when there is such deep pain, and I witnessed it and heard it the times I’ve ventured out into the streets, listening and remaining is what we can most offer. In these situations we want to do something and that’s great and often necessary, but to be the peacemakers, the disciples, that we are called to be, we must also learn to sit with the tension and the rawness of reality in order to grow from and through it. Once again it will be quite easy to sweep things under the rug or try to fix them through politics, but what we experience here this week is something much deeper than problems that can be fixed. We must go below the surface of the skin and ask ourselves serious questions and sit with the uncomfortableness of it all to grow as individuals and community. Where there is deep pain, great love will follow; remain in me as I remain in you…and be my disciples.

Along with the deep pain and certainly not disconnected from it all was a sense of hopelessness. When you have nothing to lose, who cares! There’s more than the untimely death of a young man in all of this; although he becomes the catapult for it all. There is racism. There is extreme poverty in this city. There is a lack of jobs, especially for lower income neighborhoods. There is resentment. There is anger. There is the lack of quality education. There is a lack of fathers and men who can mentor and be the non-judgmental figure for young men that have given up hope. There is a drug problem, but that too lies in the surface of deeper hurt, anger, grief, and so much that we hold onto as individuals and community. Yet, where there is deep pain, great love will follow, when we no longer avoid the pain but rather go through it, the narrow path we call the Cross, that leads to that great love.

I question how effective religion has been. When there is so much hopelessness, where is faith? Even in the midst of despair, when we have that grounding in faith and Christ Crucified now raised from the dead and remain in him as he remains in us, we manage to see hope through it all. When we lose that, where then do we turn? We become boxed in to our own little world, overcome by our own pain and grief and never to experience the great love. All too often we are left with politics and activists in it all, which are fine as far as they go, but that’s not what we’re called to, we’re called as the gospel tells us today, to be his disciples. Disciples bring healing. Disciples bring unity, not division and discord. Disciples bring reconciliation. Disciples bring a listening ear and that great love with them where they go, most especially to that place of deep pain and suffering. If we’re afraid to go there we will find ourselves to go down the same path again, not to be transformed, but rather clinging to clanging cymbals, hope that isn’t really hope in the first place, expecting change to happen around us where as disciples, we’re called to seek change to happen to us, all of us.

I leave you with two questions to reflect upon this week in light of all that we have seen and listened to this week. One, where is God in the midst of it all? Even in the deepest pain, God is present. Where did we see God? And second, in what way is God calling me to change, to be healed, to grow in light of these events? That’s sometimes the tougher question to answer for all of us because we don’t always want to admit that we have to change. We can easily disconnect from these events and say they don’t concern me. Well guess what, we all participate in the dysfunction of these systems and as long as we are still breathing, God calls us to grow and change. That’s reality. So, ask yourself, how did I react this week? Where did I overreact or judge? That, my friends, is exactly where God wants to meet us and change us into his disciples. Where there is deep pain, great love will follow. As Christ’s disciples, in a city that hurts and in a world that hurts, we bring that love and we don’t allow fear to stop us and hold us back from being the people and community Christ is calling us to be at this time and the city needs us to be at this time. We are called to bring healing. We are called to be the peacemakers, which is hard work, messy, but in the end, the only way. We are called to bring reconciliation. We are called to bring a listening ear, while remaining in him as he remains in us…now, be my disciples.

Built into a Spiritual Powerhouse

Acts 6: 1-7; 1Peter 2: 4-9; John 14: 1-12

We have an ongoing joke, as well as call each other out on it, to the infamous phrase, “We’ve always done it that way.”  Now we may never utter those words, but we speak it with our actions a lot of the time.  Yet, if we are to allow ourselves to become the “spiritual powerhouse” that Peter speaks of in today’s Second Reading, we must learn to let things go.  That can even be said of the way we pray.  If we continue to only pray the way we did as kids, we’re probably doing something wrong or frustrated with our prayer life and God, but “we’ve always done it that way” has a way to take hold of our hearts like none other.  In order to become that spiritual powerhouse as individuals and as a community, we must accept change as a part of who we are.  Just think about your own relationships.  Those who are married or long term relationships know that change is necessary; it’s what make the relationship grow. The same it true with our relationship with God and our desire to become a “spiritual powerhouse.”

It’s what’s going on in the first reading as they new leaders are chosen.  There’s a disagreement that sets up between the Hellenists and the Hebrews.  There are people who’s needs are not being met, but the Hebrews were quite content in maintenance and status quo, keep doing what we’re doing; whereas the Hellenists were seen as progressive in their own way and demanding change because life was changing and the community was changing and new needs were arising.  They could no longer keep doing the same thing over and over.  It’s unfortunate that we only hear Acts during the Easter Season because they can teach us a great deal of how a community changes and grows and needs to let go, especially of the past, in order to move forward and to become as Peter says, that “spiritual powerhouse.”  We must first recognize the “stumbling stone” within our own lives.  What do we continue to hold onto that keeps us in that mindset of “we’ve always done it that way”?  Until the desire to become the spiritual powerhouse that God wants for us to become outweighs the desire to hold onto something, to the known, we will fight God and letting go and trusting and in reality, faith.

Jesus tells the disciples that when you grow in trust and faith and let things go, you can do great things.  As a matter of fact, he says, out of the mouth of Jesus, you can even do greater things because it’s no longer you but the Father, God, working through you that accomplishes greatness.  Whether we like it or not, those words are a part of us, “we’ve always done it that way” and it’s hard to break because we are much more satisfied with the comfortable and what is known rather than stepping out into something new and to the unknown.  Yet, to truly become that spiritual powerhouse, as individuals and a community, we must do just that…recognize the humiliation that it is a part of us, that stumbling stone, and begin to open ourselves up to the Kingdom that God wants to create, not the one we settle for so often in life.  We pray for the courage to become that spiritual powerhouse and ultimately, to change the world by God working through and in us!