Walking One Another Home

My screensaver is a quote from Ram Dass:  We're all just walking one another home.  And the image is a road through the woods in autumn.  I really love both the image and the thought.

Those who needed healing and who came to Jesus were exterior reminders of all that we are on the inside -- the lame, the deaf, the blind, those with an issue of blood, the leprous.....We don't realize how blind and crippled we are spiritually, how much damage we've done to ourselves and others spiritually, until our eyes are opened by the grace of God.  The miracle of healing comes only after our eyes have been opened to the realization that we are not perfect, that in fact, we are essentially wounded at the core of our being.

I never really understood those who wanted me to confess that I am a "sinner," maybe because I too bought into the universal lie that we are essentially "good" people who sometimes do bad things.  Now I know that Isaiah's description of "a people loaded with guilt, a brood of evildoers, children given to corruption" is accurate:

Your whole head is injured,

your whole heart afflicted.

From the sole of your foot to the top of your head

there is no soundness--

only wounds and welts

and open sores,

not cleansed or bandaged

or soothed with oil (1:4-6).

 

All of the great saints knew themselves as the greatest of sinners:  St. Peter, St. Teresa of Avila, Brother Lawrence, etc.  All knew themselves to be totally reliant on the grace of God for each breath they took.  It may sound extreme, but they--more than we -- saw the truth.

 

I once met someone who thought at first that I was a wonderful person.  In getting to know her, for some reason I mentioned that I had never been a very disciplined person --- as is obvious to anyone who knows me even a little bit.  "Stop fishing!" she scolded me; "you know better."   When it finally dawned on me that she thought I was fishing for compliments, I was shocked--truly shocked-- for I knew that I was speaking only the absolute truth.  It had not even entered my mind to "fish for a compliment," for anyone who compliments me in this area is seriously deluded.  But the conversation also taught me a lesson about not saying anything at all about myself.  Those who know me know the truth, and they are helping me "walk home" anyway.  Those who do not know me will not believe the truth anyway, so there's no sense trying to convince them.

 

There's in fact a great benefit in not deceiving ourselves about our essential woundedness.  To know ourselves as capable of any sin, to see ourselves in the ways we have hurt and damaged others in our selfishness and blindness is to be able to forgive others for their weakness also.  Limping and blind and deaf and uncertain, we are all just "walking one another home."  And the One Who took on our humanity, our illness and welts and open sores and Who buried the man of sin, is leading all of us to our destination-- the New Man, the Resurrected Man created according to the Spirit of God.