Sacred Neighbor. Sacred Self. Part 2

I’ve been to Oxford twice in my life. Once as a student of C.S. Lewis. My doctoral program at Fuller Theological Seminary offered a weeklong course in the town, school, pub, and home where Lewis lived, taught, drank, and wrote.

The second time was to aid the professor for the very same class.

I miss it more than I can say.

For some reason I ache for it today.

The very first time I punted under the stone arches of Magdalen Bridge, ran my fingers down the ancient book bindings of the Bodleian Library, sipped a cellar-cooled ale at The Bear Inn, and puffed my pipe quietly outside Turf Tavern, I thought, Ah, yes. I remember this place.

I took a stroll across the fallen leaves of Addison’s Walk twice. Once with my class. Once by myself. The deer didn’t seem to care that I was borrowing their grasses for a moment of quiet reflection and wordless prayer. In fact, they seemed graciously welcoming—delightfully skittish hosts.

I found a poem, a brass placard bolted to a stone wall.

It was green and rusted, aged by time and elements.

I’d be glad to share it with you, if you’ll allow:

I heard in Addison’s Walk a bird sing clear:

This year the summer will come true. This year. This year.

Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees

This year, nor want of rain destroy the peas.

This year time’s nature will no more defeat you,

Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.

This time they will not lead you round and back

To autumn, one year older, by the well-worn track.

This year, this year, as all these flowers foretell,

We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.

Often deceived, yet open once again your heart,

Quick, quick, quick, quick!—the gates are drawn apart.

—Clive Staples Lewis.

His friends called him Jack.

I spent some time at the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin. Again, once with the class and once by myself. Though it was open to the public, a tourist destination during the day, the visitors remained quietly reverent.

Arched passageways allowed my footsteps to echo throughout as I glided across the black-and-white diamond tiles. The organ pipes, stretching toward the heavens, sat lonely and cold. I relaxed onto a wooden pew and wished I could have heard them worship the Creator the best they knew how.

John Wesley spoke there once… and so did Lewis.

A teenage couple was necking a few rows behind me, delighting in the seemingly forbidden yet sacred rite of passage many of us have experienced—falling in love in church, spending the better part of the sermon listening to the white noise of the preacher, all the while trying to figure out how we might gently lay a hand on her leg.

The older I get, the less guilt I associate with such precious moments.

If Christ equated accusations with the devil, perhaps we should learn to let go of the heavy-handedness accusations we so easily levee on our past selfs, on others.

Maturity is finally realizing what John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, meant when he simply penned: God is Love.

If true—if God is Love, if God doesn’t simply have love for us, if God isn’t merely capable of loving, if God isn’t just a source of love but is, in fact, truly the very essence of Love Itself—then every time we interact with Love, we interact with God.

We should remember that.

It makes life instantly more beautiful.

If God is Love, then every time we give a bit of Love to others, we’re giving them a bit of God.

Every time we show ourselves a bit of Love, we show ourselves a bit of God.

I like that.

It rings truer with age and contentment.

The ego wants to earn love.

The soul simply wants to bathe in it—unearned but fully received.

Then, of course, it wants to pass it on to others.

My favorite C.S. Lewis book is actually a transcribed speech he gave, The Weight of Glory, and I sat in the very pews where he proclaimed it many years ago.

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses,” he spoke from the elevated lectern, “to remember that the dullest, most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship…”

Lewis’s words linger in my mind. Oh, how easily we forget the god in one another—the god in ourselves.

I love how romantic and poetic the first chapters of Genesis are. Not only does the language imply that humankind was crafted by an eternally loving Artist out of dust—welcome the dirt—but the same Artist breathed its life into our nostrils—welcome the soul.

Oh, Dear Spirit, may you remind us as often as needed that we’re both dirt and soul, flawed and sacred. We’re so hard on ourselves, on others, when we forget.

I love how the Hebrew mystics were earnest in not wanting to attribute a name to God. The systemization came much later as the need for control arose.

In the beginning, though, God had no name.

Once we finally got around to putting pen to parchment, we transcribed the name of God simply as Yahweh—our best attempt at describing the sound of our breath.

Who is God?

What is God?

Simple.

Our every breath.

Dirt and soul. That’s who we are. Every last one of us, inhaling and exhaling the Sacred every moment of our existence, without thought… as are our neighbors.

Of course, remembering these simple truths may be humanity’s greatest obstacle—and its deepest fear… but “Where your fear is, there is your task,” as Jung once penned.

How easy it is to forget, in the name of the illusion of safety, in the name of the illusion of wealth, that we so easily belittle, forget, incarcerate, and send to the margins the kings and queens of the Eternal—those who carry around the very breath of God in their lungs.

How easy it is to trade the sacredness of our neighbor to remain well within the camp of our political belonging.

“There are no ordinary people,” C.S. Lewis reminded me from the resolute podium in the middle of the University Church of St. Mary the Virgin. “You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit…”

It’s easy to forget.

It’s easy to forget that those we incarcerate instead of heal, consume to satiate a simple lust, exploit for cheaper groceries, and alienate for higher property values are all immortals… every last one of them carrying the very breath of God in their lungs.

Yahweh… Yahweh…

Our every breath.

Easier said than done, of course. The dirt came before the breath.

For those whose kingdom is of this world, why wouldn’t you draw imaginary lines and carry out divisions?

“You look like this, so your group is over there.”

“You have this many numbers on your screen, so you can have food, shelter and health.”

“You were born on that side of the imaginary line, so to that imaginary line you must return.”

“You love differently than I, so I cannot service your soul.”

“Your mistakes look different from mine, so you go behind this fence.”

These rules only make sense for those whose Kingdom is Dirt.

But for those whose Kingdom is Soul, as C.S. Lewis continued, “Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.”

I try to remember this, though often fail.

I try to see the breath in my neighbor, to welcome both the dirt and the soul. But how easily we forget.

Perhaps immersing ourselves in their world, rather than demanding they change to fit ours, is the proper medicine to help us remember…