The library at The Hermitage Community, a spiritual retreat center in Three Rivers, Michigan, where Pastor Dan spent a few days during his recent sabbatical.
Do you ever read a quote that resonates with you so deeply that it pitches a tent in your brain and doesn’t tell you when it’s going to leave? Here’s one I came across in a book by the Jesuit priest and spiritual director Pierre Wolff: “No one absorbs us more than the person we hate.”
Who do I hate? My ideal is to hate no one, but if I’m honest with myself I have a tough time not hating certain celebrity personalities, pundits, and politicians I don’t even know. And as I try to break free from the temptation to hate them, I also realize that I don’t even know them, that they don’t know me, and that we’ll probably never meet on this side of eternity. Yet, according to Pierre Wolff, they absorb me more than anyone. Yikes.
That seems ridiculous. Why is it that we give so much of our time and energy, and, in the process, cede so much of our emotional and spiritual power to people we’re never going to bump into at the grocery store? Wouldn’t our prayers for God to lead us not into the temptation of hatred do well to be backed up by faithful efforts on our part at avoiding it? How do we do that?
The name of Wolff’s book is May I Hate God? I’ll offer no spoilers about his nuanced answer to that question…except to say that sympathy can provide compassionate perspectives. Wolff writes, “To sympathize does not mean to agree with. But compassion always demands communion.” I won’t be in physical communion with certain people I disagree with any time soon, but prayer and meditation that enable me to be open and honest with God and with myself yield a degree of helpful connection.
I do not agree with people who criminalize the poor, who say that the least of these must take care of themselves and stop leaching off society, but I can try to sympathize with the fear they have of their neighbor taking bread from them when false messages surround them every day, saying that things are scarce, and there’s not enough to go around. What a fearful way to live. Lord, have mercy.
I do not agree with people who wave confederate flags, but I can try to sympathize with the toxicity of racism and white supremacy that they—and all of us—internalize, which lead them to believe that they are nothing without having power over someone else. That is a bitter, lonely existence. Lord, have mercy.
I do not agree with Israel’s army choosing to retaliate against Hamas’ genocidal violence inflicted on them by killing thousands more innocent Palestinians—children, women, men—in a nearly year-long genocide in Gaza, but I can try to sympathize with being taught from childhood to adulthood that Israel’s people are not wanted anywhere, that everyone is out to get them, and that they must defend themselves with eye-for-an-eye violence in the present if they are ever going to have a future. Terrible. Traumatizing. Lord, have mercy.
And when I can’t expend any more of myself on prayerful connection that strives for sympathy, when my cup of compassion is empty and hatred is ready to refill it to the brim, I can turn to communion that is literally present to me: to the people and places, connections and community that remind me of spiritual truths leading me away from hatred’s temptations.
Wolff writes, “What a relief it is to find a person who can accept us…When it is possible to speak a word, it liberates. We do not always remember that it is precisely a word, a Word articulated in our flesh, which has liberated us.” It is in the communion of church that I find such acceptance; that I love and am loved despite occasional disagreements. In that sacred communion of imperfect people, I have heard words spoken to me that have set me free.
“You are loved.”
“There is always enough.”
“You don’t have to do everything, but you have to do something.”
“There is nothing you can do to make God love you any more, and there is nothing you can do to make God love you any less.”
When I give my time and energy to that bountiful communion, my cup consistently overflows with love that breaks cycles of violence, and that overcomes any temptation to hate.
I adopted a mantra years ago that, time and again, has led me away from that temptation: “Water what’s living.” Instead of pouring my attention into words not meant for me, spoken by people I don’t know, that drive me down paths of loneliness, bitterness, trauma, and fear, I can water the people and places in my life that offer love and light, and watch them grow around me into a garden that reflects the kingdom of God. It’s when I water the things that take life away from me and my neighbor, when I give myself to the things that stoke anxiety and fear, that I’m absorbed by everything that God already set me free from. What a waste of time.
I can’t be absorbed by what I don’t hate, but I can be set free by what I love.
Comments