Listening to the radio last week, I heard a psychologist advising a mother whose three-year-old was having meltdowns on a regular basis. He told her that when we give someone a hug, particularly a child whose verbal capacity does not allow her to verbalize to express her pain, that we "download" our peace, our joy, our energy, into the person we hug. He also suggested that the mother say something to the effect of, "It's tough when things don't go the way we want them to, isn't it," letting the child know that someone understands the frustration she cannot express any other way.
The doctor went on to extend the analogy to others beyond childhood. When we give someone in distress a really good hug, we can usually feel them exhale and relax, letting go of some of the pain he/she is carrying. Again, he mentioned that we are in some way downloading our own peace into the other person.
In a time of Covid, I know that hugs are probably few and far between among friends. Still, thinking about his use of the word "downloading," it came to me that it is such an apt description of what Jesus meant when He said, "You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world."
In the words of John Henry Cardinal Newman:
The sight of the world is nothing else than the prophet's scroll, full of "lamentations, and mourning and woe....if there be a God, since there is a God, the human race is implicated in some terrible aboriginal calamity. It is out of joint with the purposes of its Creator.
To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of man...their mutual alienation, their conflicts...the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish...that condition of the whole race, so fearfully yet exactly described in the Apostle's words, "having no hope and without God in the world," -- all this is a vision to dizzy and appall; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solution. (from Apologia Pro Vita Sua)
God called Abraham out of the pagan Ur of the Chaldees, and brought him gradually into a position of trust that God was with him. Finally, God revealed to Abraham the reason he was called out of darkness: I will bless you, and you will be a blessing. All nations will bless themselves through you!
Anyone who has experienced the Light of Christ in the chaos of their lives has been blessed with the peace the world cannot give. It seems to me that the task we have been given as Christians is not to judge the world but to bless the world -- to hug and to download to others the blessings we ourselves have received from God. If we cannot physically hug those with whom we come into contact, we can hug them with our eyes, with our ears, with our understanding, and with our hearts: it's tough when things don't work out the way we want them to. That sounds condescending when said to someone in grief, so I don't recommend those exact words to anyone beyond three years old. However, the idea is the same -- what I can give, I give you; what I have received from God, I freely offer you. My peace I give you, not as the world gives, but as God gives!
No comments:
Post a Comment