Laughter of the Purest and Most Liberating Kind

A beautiful meditation from my favorite online prayer spot, Sacred Space.

"A physicist once gave me the ‘Ladybird’ version of electrons. He emphasised that reality as we know it is marvellously interconnected. Electrons at either end of the universe vibrate in synchronicity with one another. ‘So true is this’ he said ‘that we can’t understand anything by itself, but only in its connectedness. read more... Everything is somehow in touch with everything else. And everyone is linked with everyone else, past, present and future. This means that only when the last of us has been gathered in will we know the full story of the human race. Think of history as being a bit like a cosmic joke: while you’re telling a joke, people are puzzled. They wonder how the story is going to work out. Only with the punch line do they get the point and laugh.’ So with the human story: we must be patient. God indeed exists, but so also does dreadful evil. God works within what is bad to bring good out of it. We see this in the Passion with the eyes of faith. What was the worst of Fridays becomes Good Friday only because of the love involved. This love cuts across the downward spiral of evil, sin and death and it opens up to us God’s world, a new world of freedom and love. At the end we will see how love has transformed all the sorrow and pain and tragedy of our story. Only then will the laughter begin, laughter of the purest and most liberating kind. This laughter will be led by the three divine Persons who always intended that things would end well and who laboured mightily to bring this about. ‘Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh’ (Luke 6:21)."

And one more thing - I bet this caused laughter of the purest and most liberating kind - a true vocation in the making.

Happy Easter

At Easter, on the morning of the first day of the week, God said once again: “Let there be light”. The night on the Mount of Olives, the solar eclipse of Jesus’ passion and death, the night of the grave had all passed. Now it is the first day once again – creation is beginning anew. “Let there be light”, says God, “and there was light”: Jesus rises from the grave. Life is stronger than death. Good is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Truth is stronger than lies. The darkness of the previous days is driven away the moment Jesus rises from the grave and himself becomes God’s pure light. Pope Benedict's Easter Vigil Homily

Holy Thursday

I sat in the quiet church as the clock inched closer to midnight. It was Holy Thursday and the tradition of “spending one hour” with the Lord was coming to a close. The Cathedral had been open since seven, with people from every walk of life coming to kneel before the tabernacle and try, like the apostles, to stay awake as a comfort to Jesus. Did He know, more than 2000 years ago in that garden that we would be here tonight? Did He glean some small comfort from knowing it? Surely that is not outside the possibility for the Son of God.

As I sit in my pew I imagine myself in the garden – the exact garden that I visited just this past year with my husband and daughter as we toured the Holy Land. Somehow that reach across space many months before, enabled a stunning reach across time tonight and suddenly I was there. Sitting in the garden, watching, waiting. The wind howling outside my Tulsa church became the sound effects for the dark garden, illuminated only with a large full moon that any other night might look pleasant, but this night looked somehow ominous. The Asian man who was sitting in the pew in front of me, saying his prayers out loud, transformed from being an irritant to a part of the bustling and whispering of the other apostles. Here I am, Lord. More than any time in my life, aware that I would have fallen asleep as the apostles did that night, just as I know now that I, too, would have denied you three times. But tonight, in my Tulsa-Jerusalem, knowing how much you need my presence, I can remain awake and gaze, riveted, upon the image of your agony. Just sit. Be here. Knowing that you know.