Your body is the place where the divine enters the world.
Every day my daughter sneaks into my room to steal from my change jar. I don’t really mind. Her elementary school is collecting money for cancer research. Each morning she dutifully brings in money and depending on the day she gets a fun prize at school like a pajama day or Kona Ice. She is surprisingly passionate and not shy about shaking down the whole house to donate for the cure.
Part of it is the prizes but I think there is something deeper here.
My mom had a cancer battle a few years ago. Thankfully it went well and she is in remission but it is a scary thing for a kid to be told their grandma is sick. We also had a good friend die of cancer. This was a person we loved having in our life and Claire enjoyed being around. Years later we still feel Tiffany’s loss deeply. Not that it is comparable, but our dog Kaine also has cancer. Already, at age 6, she has good reason to hate what this disease represents.
As her fundraiser was ending we were talking about all this when Claire exclaimed, “Why doesn’t God just get rid of all the cancer?”
Sigh…now we get to have that conversation.
I said, “That’s a good question love but I don’t really know the answer. I do know that God has made people very creative and there are lots of us working really hard to cure cancer.“
She seemed content with that answer and we talked a bit more about how people research cancer and fight it when, as if discovering a secret truth, she suddenly exclaimed, “Dad, I think maybe God is a billion bunches of people.”
Claire my girl, you just might be on to something.
I don’t know why we get cancer. I don’t know why we still have tragic accidents, wars, and systemic oppression either. I couldn’t begin to explain how one of the worst of us became our president or why basic healthcare is so expensive. It seems like a bad joke.
Here is what I do know though; if anything is going to be done about these things it is going to be because we, the humans, come together and change it. It is our job to do the work.
If the prisoner is going to get set free it will be because we fought the systemic problems that put them there. If the immigrant is going to find safety it is because we take a stand against racism and xenophobia. If the war ends in peace it will be because we took the risks to lay down our arms first. If tyrants, despots and fools are going to be overthrown it will be because we went out and told a better story.
My experience has been that if God answers prayer it rarely takes the form of an otherworldly manifestation. Answered prayers almost always come in the form of a person. You, my friend, the place where the divine enters into the world.
It’s easy to forget this.
Why do we so often, in the face of tragedy, say “thoughts and prayers” when real work is what is needed? Why is it when things get hard or the answer isn’t convenient we throw our hands up and say, “it’s Gods will” and then continue on in our privilege as if there is no work to do.
Is this what the divine life is about?
I think this mindset breeds a kind of spiritualized passivity; a learned helplessness that passes for being a religious person. I have written about this before in the political arena but I think it expands out into other areas of our lives as well. We don’t do the work because we tell ourselves it is God’s to do. We forget that passivity has never brought about the will of God.
The main point of being Christian, or really a spiritual person at all, is to manifest the divine in this world. Getting out of this world isn’t the point. Sitting around in our thoughts and prayers isn’t either. If the Incarnation of Jesus teaches us anything it is that the action is here and that being in a body is good.
So many of us are looking for the divine “out there” that we miss everything that is going on right here. You are brilliant in your capacity for good. You have the power to shape the days and the lives of every person you meet with something as simple as a smile. With your time, energy, vote, and yes your loose change, you can make this world one that truly is a paradise. Don’t dismiss your power with spiritualized passivity. Grow into in and seek to manifest the divine daily.
If we are going to encounter God in this life it is going to take a billion bunches of us working together.
How can you get started today?
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Originally published at www.justingentry.online.
