Something happened to me in the past couple of weeks. Most of it isn't for public consumption, but some of it is.
I was very blest to be able to attend my 7th course with the Theology of the Body Institute, although this time it was an online course, which was very different from my previous experiences. The course was "Love and Responsibility" based on the book written by Karol Wojtyla, our now sainted John Paul II. He wrote the book in an earlier stage of the sexual revolution. An attempt to make it clear that the only appropriate response when engaging with a human person is Love and the recognition of their dignity as an eternal soul. The understanding that a person is always someone, and never something.
That seems to go without saying, but when you drill down into everyday interactions between people it seems that maybe it doesn't. Putting aside Murder, abuse, and crimes against humanity, there are millions of small, daily infractions that make it clear that we have a problem with the way that we see, or don't see, each other.
I went into the course knowing that it would stretch me, and that I would come out different than I went in. TOB always provides a deep interior experience. I was prepared to learn and grow. I wanted that. I wasn't really prepared for the parts of me that would be opened up and exposed, or the things that I would see in the light. I wasn't prepared to go so far back into the past, and to see so much of my life and how the people and events that formed me also formed the way that I myself treat people. I can see so many places where I learned to protect myself, and as a result shut people out. The things that formed the way that I saw myself as a child, girl, and young woman, and the way that those things affected the way that I see other people.
I won't go into those details, but something that hit me toward the end of the course is the way that I go about interacting with the people that I encounter in the course of attending to the daily details. It's one thing to be caring and careful with friends, family or the people that I am responsible to, like my directees, or people at the church, but I think its much more telling the way the I act toward those who are tasked with the "invisible" jobs. Customer service, people who provide services, people who have no choice as to whether they will interact with me. The Lord brought some things into clear focus and I am not at all proud of what I saw. It seems to me a truer test of my respect for the dignity of each person, to look at the people that are most likely to be treated as simply part of the machine of commerce and how I treat them. Yeah, I have been failing that test.
This was just one small piece of the huge interior renovation that Jesus is inviting me to. If I didn't love and trust Him so much I would be very discouraged, but I know that He only wants this for the sake of my ability to love. And I do want to make Him happy. I want Him to be pleased, and I want to make other people happy, I really do. I can see so many ways that I have been closed to the whole person when I am offered an invitation to intimacy. Thinking that I can't "handle" too much exposure, of my wounds, and of the harder parts of relationships.
The Lord wants me to look at people and to want to know them. No matter who they are. Within reason of course. He wants me to invite others to know me. I think that is the hardest part. I have often found that when people really know me, they are disappointed. I am found wanting. The truth about my lack of "cool" is exposed. Well, He wants me to see that I am wanted, and I am loved, and that my lack of cool isn't a problem for Him.
So I guess I'll try to hear Him better in the moment. I'll try to hear His voice when I encounter another person. "This is my beloved child. Listen."
