The Man Who Loves Me

 Easter Sunday. 2015

 Today in my readings was a lovely story of a man's Love for his wife. They had been driving through the mountains on a vacation when their car went off the road and their car went in the river. They both escaped the car , and a passing trucker tossed a rope to the couple. The man pushed his wife toward the rope and she was saved. He however was caught in the current and did not survive. He gave his life for his wife.

       This is a similar sacrificial love to what we reflect on over the Easter Season. This Holy Weekend I am coming face to face with a man who loves me. He has been trying to show me in his relationships with women recorded in scripture that he deeply loves women and that he has a unique and sacred friendship with them. I have like many women been wrestling with women's roles in the church and it is way to easy to get focused on the number of males visible and the number of women in positions invisible and find yourself wondering when the church will "get with it". In saying Church I mean in general universal rather heavily tilted towards patriarchal controls way of thinking. I applaud my sisters who are out there in the heat of the day marking trails for other women, but a long time of inner reflection has drawn me to the conclusion that I am not one of those women. History has shown us that there are women who are trail markers but they do it in a different way. This is not about one way being better than another or valued any more or less. Is there a new yet ancient trail being opened in the church in the areas of Lay ministries that have a contemplative bent by people who have active lives of service/and active lives of prayer and spiritual practice?A part of me says Yes.! Yet is is not a well marked Path.
     
         This seems to be the path that is drawing me. Thomas Merton has a well known prayer about spiritual paths.

 "My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”

 I may be a Martha in my work doing, but at the core of my being I am Mary sitting and being taught at the feet of Jesus. You notice I say sitting and being taught. That's where people sat when they wanted to be taught. Remember Paul saying he was taught at the feet of Gamaliel . Mary was there for two reasons...she was there because she loved Jesus and he loved her and she did not want to miss a moment of what he was saying. Mary was being taught.I am beginning to think that there are two current streams presently available for women in the church. There is the stream of the academic Martha who is equal in ability and call to males in the church and feels a strong need to enter that arena and I use the word in the Roman Gladiator sense  as she needs to be suited up or prepare for Martyrdom. There are also the Martha's who are the doers in the church without which the church would probably fall apart for lack of helping hands. Not that all women in the church don't pitch in from time to time but there are core Martha's. You know who they are . Thank God for Martha's.

        Then there are the Mary's. Now like the early story of Mary and Martha, Mary although respected by monastics for generations has come off in the current Protestant work ethic as being a bit of a slacker. Mary is presented to us as the woman who sat at the feet of Jesus adoring him. True.
Yes, Mary was adoring Jesus. Yes, but Mary was also learning. Mary as the Trappists would call it was in the School of Love. There is this place for work and fighting the good fight and there is this place for being in the School of Love. At this moment in time I am sensing a call to the School of |Love. For sometime now I have been walking in a Lay spirituality that is Benedictine/Cistercian in nature and learning about spiritual practice.

      Most of my life has been spent in working with persons with disabilities and recently along with this I have been able to follow a desire to facilitate with groups of women who have been in abusive relationships past or present. Some women have been abused in childhood and from their deep pain fallen into addictions and marginalized lifestyles. All are women for whom Love has meant something very different than the Love we find on the Cross, or the man who threw a rope to his wife and lost his own life. For these women whether they are the women sitting next to you in the pew silent in their suffering or the women pushing their carts towards the homeless tent city Love seems a long ways away. It is to these women , the women in the groups I am learning to facilitate with who have found love has let them down and for my friends in groups of women who are modern Mary's seeking a deeper relationship with Christ. I am on this Quest to find the Man Who Loves Me in Scriptures. Every time He reaches out to a woman in scripture He is reaching out to me, He is reaching out to women who have been in abusive relationships, and He is reaching out to women who want to follow Him in a his school of Love.   

           I want to learn from them about the the man who loved me enough to give his life for me. This is the place I start on my Easter Journey to find The Man Who Loves Me .