Only for the sick

 After this Jesus went out and saw a tax-collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up, left everything, and followed him. (Luke 5:27-28)

Who doesn’t want a second chance? Or a third or fourth … or, Lord knows, how many is enough before we get it right? Life, that is.

But then we never do get it quite right … or even close.

And if I needed a reminder, the ash-smudged foreheads that greeted me along grocery store aisles came as an irksome spur, once again, to take a close look at my life—my patterns of living and speaking and acting through seven decades—and recognize, once again, that I have received a lot more in this life than I have given.

I have not become the soul of life and love and grace I might have, could have, should have (and wanted to) become. But strangely, I am still haunted by an unmistakable beauty that hungers to live … in and through … the one life I have been given. It won’t let me go.

Amid this comes the darkness of the wee hours when sleep slips away and you stare into the abyss of knowing it is later than you think: There are not nearly enough years left for you to live the fullness of the beauty that lies hidden in your heart.

If only, one thinks …. If only I could do it all over again, I would have been smarter, better, braver, bolder, kinder and more faithful. I would not have indulged my vanity or wounded anger or lust or greed or fear … or whatever bedevils your heart, striving as we all do to fill the emptiness and soothe wounds we may have carried for decades.

It is then, in the middle of the mess, amid the quagmire of could’ves, would’ves and should’ves, that Mercy comes to call. ‘Follow me. I want you.’

Such was Jesus’ invitation to Levi, a member of the most reviled occupation of the time, tax collectors. In Caravaggio’s painting of this scene, an astonished Levi, leaning over the day’s ill-gotten proceeds, points at himself as if to say, ‘Who, me?’

Yes, you … Levi, and we, too. For, Mercy comes to those who live amid the quagmire of unresolved feelings and regrets, sins of which we are ashamed and memories that make us wince. I do not come for those who have no need of a physician, Jesus says, but those who are sick.

So yes, I want you.

Rising from his chair, Levi followed, and in my mind, this day, I, too, rise and fall at Mercy’s feet, Jesus lifting me to his side, for a moment his arm around me before I disappear into him—and realize the truth.

I am, this life, with all the messes I have made, the hurts I have caused and, yes, the good and graces I have tried to share, all of it is enveloped in him, taken into the Love he is, Mercy enfolding all that I am so that all that I am (however haltingly) might become mercy and grace, love and beauty, no longer lost or alone but human and whole, at home in the Love who heals.

David L. Miller

As you see so shall you be

A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’ (Mark 1:40-41)

I have reached the point in recent years where (on good days) I realize that getting the point is not the point.

Hard as it is to let go of wringing an idea or some takeaway from my morning meditation, it is refreshing, if a bit unsettling, to settle into a moment of awareness, realizing that what I seek is already in me … and I am in it.

The unsettling part is letting go of the need to make something of the time, to walk away with an idea I can share or write about, which, ironically, is exactly what I am doing.

But to write about what happened today, last night and several days running seems impossible because it is so nebulous—tangible, yes, and assuredly real, but elusive as the air of love I was breathing, or better, that was breathing through me.

The story is simple, a leper, an outcast in the grip of gross disfiguration physically, emotionally and socially. And then, an outstretched hand and Jesus’ voice: I choose. I choose you. I choose this moment to touch and heal and love and give you back your life.

The words are barely necessary. The hand is enough. If all I ever knew of Jesus was this moment, this outstretched hand, it would be enough for me to love him and want to be with him, just to feel him near.

But there’s more. For the superlative gift is not seeing him and knowing he is compassion, divine and real, human and present right there before my eyes. The greater gift is finding that same love alive and breathing from some secret source hidden in the depth of your being.

And greater still is silently knowing that the Love breathing in him and in you surrounds and envelopes us and everything we can imagine in an invisible ocean of Presence, Love’s boundless sea.

The non-point of all this is that we pray and meditate not (or surely less) to get something, find answers or reach an insight. We come and look at Jesus to savor Love’s truth until it awakens within us the Love we truly are, and in whom we live, though we knew it not.

We come to see and savor Love’s own soul, for as we see so shall we be.

David L. Miller