|
 We are pleased to offer a new eight part series 'Learning to love' by Mike Mason. They are edited excerpts from his book 'Practicing the Presence of People (Waterbrook Press, 1999) Mike, a regular contributor to canadianchristianity.com, is perhaps most well known for his book 'The Mystery of Marriage.' that won the ECPA Gold Medallion award.
[other pieces by Mike Mason]
Often what keeps us from love is a sense of being swamped by our own problems. But listen: love is the answer to all problems.
We tend to treat problems as if they were mental condundrums, puzzles to be worked through by independent reasoning. But the fact is that behind every question lies a human face. Every problem has a relational root. The only real problem in the world is alienation, and the only cure is love. Questions are answered and problems solved only as we come into right relationship with God and with people.
I had an agnostic uncle who used to say, "There are no answers, there are only questions." To this my reply is, "There are no questions, there are only people." The poet William Carlos Williams valued concrete realism so highly that he sought to free his writing from all abstractions. This goal he expressed in his famous poetic dictum, "No ideas but in things." I suggest taking this one step further to say, "No answers but in people."
Picture your life as a dark forest in which you are lost. How are you to get out? You may wish the forest was not there, but it is. You may wish for some magical intervention, but this is not likely to happen. No, you yourself must find the way. Beginning where you are, you must discern some light in the gloom, decide on a path, and follow it. Peering closely at the trees around you, gradually you realize that these are not trees at all, but people! Each one of these trees has a face, and each face has a light in it.
Continue article >>
|
Isn't this true? Aren't we lost in a forest of people? Perhaps the very people who could help us most are the ones we despise or ignore because we do not see the light in them. If we were drowning, and these same people were all around us in the water, wouldn't we reach out to them? We wouldn't worry then about how little we have in common!
The forest in which we are lost is a forest of relationships----or more precisely, non-relationships. We may think our problems have to do with finances, work, health, or something else. But our real problem is people. Most of us are busy trying to solve our problems without recourse to relationships. We search and search for a diet that will work, a job that will satisfy, a method for overcoming insomnia, a secure and happy place to live. Of course we admit we have people problems too, but we never quite do what it takes to resolve these. By trying to locate the answers in ourselves rather than in healed relationships, we always stop short of achieving real peace.
Here is a parable the Lord told to my friend Chris Walton: Imagine you are traveling from Point A to Point B. After many struggles, eventually you make it to Point B, but as you look back you realize you have left a trail of damaged relationships: people you have ignored, belittled, hurt, or even stepped on in order to attain your goal.
Now imagine, again, that you are traveling from Point A to Point B. But this time you you seek peace in all your relationships; you take notice of those people you formerly overlooked; you go out of your way to help and to honor others. In the process of doing all this, however, you never make it to Point B.
After presenting these two scenarios, the Lord asked Chris, "Which way would you rather travel?"
"The second way," admitted Chris.
"You see?" said the Lord. "I measure success differently."
March 27/2008
|
