On Sunday I took my aching back to get a haircut. A cut was two weeks overdue, and I was starting to feel martyred by it so I took myself to the closest salon. Which, unfortunately, is the same salon I swore never ever ever to return to after I got my "chemo haircut" there...so-called because I came out with hair so short, I looked bald from afar.
Today I find the gold in that haircut...at least it was short all over.
I once had something worse than awful happen to me, and I was graced with a blinding flash of the obvious; i.e., this is so bad, God's hand has to be in it. (Based on my gut-bucket belief that nothing so awful can happen to us that God is not there for us.) My Sunday's haircut is so bad that that principle applies. It is so bad that I have been, and will be, wearing a headscarf and blessing the cool weather.
Then, just this morning, my Easwaran reader had a quote from "The Cloud of Unknowing"...By love may He be gotten and holden, by thought never. And there it is. I can recall my BFO and think on it till my face falls off, but until I love that to which I'm applying it, it's just words today, a nice memory.
It's the love your enemies principle. I don't need to know why...the fact is to make them loveable in my mind is to take them out of God's embrace. I need to love them just as they are. That takes them out of my reasoning mind for I cannot do that, love them just as they are...they're my enemies for Pete's sake!
We can, however, become willing to let God work his wonders through us, and our resistance to our enemies fades. We may not become enchanted with them but we no longer harbor ugly thoughts...resentments...in our mind about them.
So my job right this red-hot minute is to let God work his wonders on this haircut...on my thoughts about this haircut. And iron another scarf for today.
Thank you.
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