Good morning…
“We all try to do what seems like the task that life first hands us,” writes Richard Rohr, “establishing an identity, a home, relationships, community, security, and building a proper platform for our only life.” This is a good place for all of us to begin.
Rohr continues: “But it takes us much longer to discover ‘the task within the task,’ as I like to call it: what are we really doing when we are doing what we are doing. People can have the same job description, and one is holding a subtle or not-so-subtle life energy (eros) in doing his or her job, while another is holding a subtle or not-so-subtle negative energy (thanatos) while doing the exact same job… We actually respond to one another’s energy more than to people’s exact words or actions.”
I am reminded of the soulful sentiment: “It is not what I do or say, what matters most is how I make you feel.”
Rohr explains: “What we all desire and need from one another, of course, is that life energy called eros! It always draws, creates, and connects things. This is surely what Jesus meant when he said that you could only tell a good tree from a bad one ‘by its fruits’ (Matthew 7:20). Inside of life energy, a group or family will be productive and energetic; inside of death energy there will be gossip, cynicism, and mistrust hiding behind every interaction. Yet you usually cannot precisely put your finger on what is happening.” (Falling Upward, xiii-xiv)
A welcome relief from the thanatos energy of our world (toxic comparison, depleting criticism, life-sucking complaint), Jesus opens for us a way to God’s endless supply of eros. I am the Door; anyone who enters through Me will be saved [and will live forever], and will go in and out [freely], and find pasture (spiritual security). The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance [to the full, till it overflows] (John 10:9-11, AMP).
Steal, kill, destroy: this is thanatos energy. Enjoy abundant life till it overflows and lives on: this is eros energy. We are all invited to enter through God’s open Door. Once at home in God as God is at home in us, we enjoy, overflow, and live abundantly forever.
“Live in me. Make your home in me just as I do in you. In the same way that a branch can’t bear grapes by itself but only by being joined to the vine, you can’t bear fruit unless you are joined with me. I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you’re joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant. Separated, you can’t produce a thing” (John 15:4-6, MSG).
…Sue…
