What is Old Becomes New Again

Many, many years ago, when I was actively involved in the Charismatic Movement, I had a vivid dream.  In the dream, a number of us (maybe 6 or 7) were crammed into one of those little clown cars and driving down the highway, laughing, joking, having a great time.  We were all dressed as clowns. 

Then, along a paved two-lane road, the car stopped, and I got out.  The car with all of my companions drove off, leaving me standing alongside the road dressed in my clown costume.  I thought I was in the middle of nowhere, and I could not understand what was happening, or why.  I turned to look around me and saw a small neat path leading back into the woods.  At the end of it was a charming, welcoming, cottage.  Suddenly, with no words, I understood.  I was to stand at the edge of the road, dressed as a clown, to welcome travelers and strangers into my Father's house.

I was consoled at having been dropped off from the "party" going on without me, but I never really understood the clown costume until about 30 years later when I read this passage from Henri Nouwen's Clowning in Rome:

Clowns are not the center of events.  They appear between the great acts, fumble and fall, make us smile again after the tensions created by the heroes.  They are people who, by their solitary lives of prayer and contemplation reveal to us our 'other side' and thus offer consolation, comfort, hope, and a smile.  The large, busy, entertaining, and distracting world keeps tempting us to join the lion tamers and trapeze artists who get most of the attention.  But whenever the clowns appear, we are reminded that what really counts is something other than the spectacular and the sensational.  It's what happens between the scenes.  The clowns show us that our preoccupations, worries, tensions, and anxieties need a smile, but more important that we, too, have white on our faces and that we, too, are called to clown a little.

It is so amazing to me how God can give us an image that somehow speaks to us -- and then explain it by directing our reading, even years later, to someone who has put the explanation into the right words.  In the article I referred to yesterday on "Divine Reading," David Stanley, S.J., answers the question, "Why was the Bible written?"  In order to make available to the man of faith that truth, which is not historical truth, nor scientific truth, nor philosophical truth, by the assimilation of which alone man can be saved.  One traditionally Christian method of assimilating this saving truth is lectio divina.  Stanley goes on to say that by reflecting on the process by which the Scriptures have come into existence, we might better understand how to pray through "divine reading."

(1)  All authentic Scripture takes its origins from a real experience of God by a 'seer' or a prophet.  It is the privilege of such a man to be granted an intuition of the divine activity through some concrete historical event.....for this experience, of course, faith is essential...it is through this faith that the seer grasps what he has experienced of God's activity through which he has deigned to reveal himself to men.

(2) Because he realizes that the precious self-revelation on the part of God has been committed to him for the instruction of the community, the prophet accepts as a sacred duty the commission to proclaim the message.  He is impelled to announce his experience 'in the Spirit' to those to whom he is sent.

(3) Ultimately, the message is set forth in writing, by the prophet himself or some other author guided by the Spirit of God.  It becomes 'scripture' (written down) under the divine impulse because the seer has come to see its value for future members of the community.

In reversing this three-fold process, we as believers begin with the sacred text, reading by faith and reflecting in prayer, to reach through a moment of divine inspiration and grace to an experience of what God is saying to us now.  Jesus had promised that when the Paraclete arrived, "He will teach you everything and cause you to remember all that I have said to you" (Jn. 14:26).

John said, "These things have been written in order that you may deepen your faith that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name."  An ancient Christian document speaks of Christ as "He who appears as new, is discovered to be from of old, is daily born anew in the hearts of the faithful."

My dream, although 30 + years old, has become for me "new again" through the words of Henri Nouwen, who reflecting on his own experience of the Risen Christ, wrote about clowns.  In the same way, Biblical events that occurred 2000 or 4000 years ago can become alive and meaningful for us today through the action of the Holy Spirit breathing life and meaning into the sacred text.  Suddenly, we "get" what God is saying to us about those events, and He uses them to reveal to us that He is still with us, creating, sending light into the darkness, and unfolding His plans for us today.