Resilience Requires Flexibility
In conversation with CAC Publications Manager Mark Longhurst, author Cole Arthur Riley considered this year’s Daily Meditations theme of radical resilience:
[Radical resilience] stirs some amount of tension and some amount of encouragement…. When you think about the origins of the word resilience, it’s closer to talking about plastic, something that returns back to its original shape after you bend it. I think humans don’t really work like that. We don’t go back to the way we were before we were broken or bent….
I’m a recovering cynic, and I used to have so much resistance to language of resilience. It’s only really in the past few years that I’ve had to confront a kind of resilience that isn’t really about returning back to the way you were before, but is much more about reclaiming whatever new shape your form has taken. A resilience that doesn’t really ask us to forget, but that carries the memory of whatever harm or whatever fire we’ve been through. A resilience that carries that memory and still is committed to one’s survival and one’s going on in the world, however that shape looks….
It’s a radical idea. This is another James Baldwin quotation. He’s actually reviewing The Exorcist film and it’s this beautiful review. I recommend everyone read it because he’s talking about much more than The Exorcist; he’s talking about the terrors of the world. He says, “It was very important for me not to pretend as if the terrors of that time left no mark on me. They marked me forever.” [1] I think he’s getting at a kind of resilience that still carries memory, that still says we’re marked, we’ve been through something, but that we’re committed to ultimately surviving this thing. [2]
CAC teacher and psychotherapist James Finley shares that it’s through the wounded places in us that God’s love reaches us:
It is in experiencing and accepting how difficult it can be to free ourselves from our hurtful attitudes and ways of treating ourselves and others that we begin to understand that the healing path is not a linear process in which we can force our way beyond our wounded and wounding ways. Rather, it is a path along which we learn to circle back again and again to cultivate within ourselves a more merciful understanding of ourselves as we learn to see, love, and respect the still-confused and wounded aspects of ourselves. Insofar as these wounded and wounding aspects of ourselves recognize that they are seen, loved, and respected in such a merciful way, they can feel safe enough to release the pain they carry into the more healed and whole aspects of ourselves.
We are now attempting to bear witness to the sweet secret of experiential salvation in which the torn and ragged edges of our wounded and wayward hearts are experienced as… the opening through which the gentle light of God’s merciful love shines into our lives.
| An Offer of Infinite, Not Immediate, Satisfaction |
 Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant who found a pearl of exceedingly high value, so he sold everything he had and purchased the pearl. If nothing else, this very short parable ought to convince us that Jesus and his kingdom are not opposed to self-interest. The merchant was clearly motivated by his desires when he sold everything to acquire the pearl. It was not an act of self-denial.Likewise, the writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus endured the humiliation of the cross because of the joy that was set before him (Hebrews 12:2). He knew that on the other side of his suffering was a satisfaction of infinite magnitude—he would be raised, given the name above all names, and his enemies put under his feet. Despite the claims of some contemporary worship songs, Scripture reveals that Jesus did not think about “me above all.” Shockingly, he also had his own glory in mind. Yes, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16), but the Son also knew that his self-sacrifice would result in every tongue confessing that he is Lord (Philippians 2:11). We don’t talk about it very much, but self-interest was a factor in Jesus’ death on the cross. Somehow we’ve accepted the message that faith in Christ must be a miserable calling, and that any hint of self-interest is a betrayal of the faith and a sure sign of ungodliness. This view, however, is not found in the teachings of either Jesus or his Apostles. The problem is not having self-interested desires, but how the world tells us to fulfill them. Our consumer culture tells us satisfaction should come immediately and at no cost. Rather than patiently searching for a valuable pearl and sacrificing all he had to buy it, in our culture’s version of the parable the merchant should have purchased the pearl with a click, with $0 down, 0% financing, and free two-day shipping. Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a name for a faith that costs nothing: cheap grace.What Jesus offers us with his kingdom is not immediate satisfaction but infinite satisfaction, and when we recognize the magnitude of the joy that is being promised to us, like the merchant in the parable, we will gladly sacrifice everything to get it. DAILY SCRIPTURE MATTHEW 13:44-46 HEBREWS 12:1-2 PHILIPPIANS 2:5-11 WEEKLY PRAYER From Blaise Pascal (1623 – 1662) O Lord, let me not henceforth desire health or life, except to spend them for you, with you, and in you. You alone know what is good for me; do, therefore, what seems best to you. Give to me, or take from me; conform my will to yours; and grant that, with humble and perfect submission, and in holy confidence, I may receive the orders of your eternal Providence; and may equally adore all that comes to me from you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. |
