ON HAVING GREAT DETACHMENT

 Love consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved. -- Saint John of the Cross (from Eknath Easwaran's "Words to Live By," October 4) 

To see through our new eyes is to walk in the Steps of the Beloved...with a mind not set on getting but on giving...for others. That doesn't sound easy, but it is a lot harder than it sounds. If we're doing it right, we will experience how unready and unwilling we are to have great detachment. To suffer!...in a word.  

Just as we think we're closing in on it, we experience another truth...how few people we meet in our life who think this is a good idea. And those are our friends. 

That usually comes as a surprise but really it shouldn't...after all, we've read more than once or twice that St Francis called it “perfect joy” when he was reviled or treated with contempt. Face it, when first we feel "reviled and treated with contempt," we resist...strongly. It takes shock and horror to turn us toward the underneath meaning, and we get that feeling of "perfect joy." 

Think about it, we've been studying the Sermon on the Mount for a long time. It is in the Sermon at Matthew 5:11-12 that we first get the quiet word: Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account (my emphasis).  Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.  

I am still striving (sometimes succeeding) to do that...with ample opportunities I need add. I consider those, good and not so much, God's "atta girl." 

But until we're not only seeing with new eyes, but willingly walking the new path, it's all still self-determined objectives. We're thinking with our reasoning mind...still learning that we must go beyond reason to love. 

Ah, but trying to go beyond reason to love is doing it right...by doing it wrong. How else do we learn to recognize our turnaround point? 

As Rohr often says, We don't get to God by doing it right, we get to God by doing it wrong. 

Thank you.