Only love never dies

Empty Tea Cups

Softly clad in new white socks, Eric felt boundless as he slid over the shiny hardwood floors of the ancient house on his way down the long hall to the library. He felt more like an Indiana Jones explorer than a city architect. Stealthily, he reached to open the large heavy oak doors but was surprised as they swung open.  He had a sense someone was on the other side pushing open the old doors that hung on hundred-year-old framing and hinges. He was concerned about waking the others in the house in the middle of the night, and was relieved the doors opened quietly and easily.

The full moon beamed beautifully through the large crescent window at the end of the hall casting a mysterious surrealism to Eric's midnight excursion.  The library was just what you'd expect in this dusty timeless stone mansion.  No one was sure even when it was built.  It just seemed to have always been there and was such a fixture on the rural landscape just outside the city's limits that no one ever noticed it anymore.  It was just there - a magnificent gem among cul-de-sacs of newly built homes and booming shopping malls. 

The dark aged oak floors were covered in deeply hued burgundy, blue and gold oriental rugs.  A large table was under a large stained glass window while ornate bronze carvings of poets and princes posed on shelves amid a wide variety of books reflecting world history and literature and thought from the dawning of recorded history.  There were scrolls and wall hangings, painted portraits of lovely ladies and children playing among flower gardens.  It was an immense library, stretching down several wide avenues radiating from the hub where that large table was centered under the beautiful stained glass window which refracted the brilliant white moonlight into a kaleidoscopic radiance.

The mansion had been owned by a successful philanthropist who made his money from the invention of a simple piece of technology valued by the then evolving cell phone industry.  No one knew exactly what that obscure device was because Thomas and Amelia Andrews were better known for establishing hospitals and refuges for those who were left wounded and homeless in several wars in the Middle East during the second decade of the 21st century. 

Eric remembered reading about this exceptional couple in the newspapers and had made a mental note to make time to couple a visit to their mansion/museum with a little family vacation on his way to a budding new project in another.  The media, which was often more interested in reporting the bad news of the day, couldn't avoid reporting on the Andrews' work in Africa especially.  On a more artistic architectural side, Eric was also intrigued by the late Gothic style of the mansion and other unique architectural details  evident even down to the fence and gardens. 

"It is as magical as a child's imagination but with a scholarly sophistication," he thought, tenderly picking up a well polished teak wood music box, expertly carved with a couple heron standing in shallow water, one dipped down to catch a small fish, another looking away.

In their pursuit to help so many around the world, the couple had found their way into ancient monasteries, stumbled among ruins of bygone cultures and civilizations, and lost their weariness over the terror of their day in the beauty and hope of the writings of the world's long forgotten poets, idealistic dreamers, peacemakers and other leaders imparting socio-political wisdom in their work, lives and writing. 

There was also a collection of rare musical instruments including three Strativarius violins, a Chickering grand piano, lutes, mandolins, a harpsicord.  They were arranged randomly as if those who had played the instruments had simply vanished leaving the instruments on their seats with sheets of music strewn nearby. It seemed as if time had stood still in this remarkable library which was also a museum of sorts.  

Lately, Eric had been working in a similar vein to theirs. He'd been  inspired by their work revealed in that newspaper article several years ago. Then his own early childhood poverty and determination to make a better life for himself and his younger brother, Adam, had awakened his social conscience, motivated him to go to college and serve as a role model to Adan, who might otherwise have fallen prey to the drug gang down the street in their humble neighborhood. Adam followed his brother's footsteps and went to college and then medical school and was now in the second year of his medical residency for the sole purposes of providing low cost medical care to the poor and homeless. 

The brothers had restored an old convent, adjacent to a gorgeous old downtown cathedral, into housing for the homeless.  It was dignified by offering privacy in an apartment setting for families and couples and a kind of boarding school style housing for the single men.  In fact, the wing for the single men also offered treatment programs for addiction recovery as well as counseling and employment resources and vocational training. Special care was provided for the children. All the services, from medical care to daycare and after school programming, was offered on a volunteer basis by area clergy, small business owners, social workers, nurses, teachers and religious sisters. 

Eric's dream had been deeply inspired by this philanthropic couple who were ahead of their time more than 20 years ago when they launched their first school for girls in the Congo, which was then, quite possibly the darkest, hottest and most desperate place in the world. Yet, it didn't stop there and that was the piece Eric was most curious about when he decided to spend a weekend with his wife and two daughters in the old museum's guest quarters.

"There's a fine line between satisfying the ego's need for recognition and acclaim bt offering grandiose social recovery projects and that deep earnest spiritual thirst to fuel the spirit through an authentic divine encounter," he'd written in his own best seller Streetwise Spirituality.  Their city street project, with its cutting edge consensus application of all human services, is on the city council's watch list.  But so far, the peace and collaboration even among those it serves is uplifting to the community. Even the critical media was loving his and Adam's work. 

"It almost seems that as Amelia and Thomas poured their efforts into helping the world's most marginalized, the positivity of their outwardly directed energy compounded back on them, increasing their own spiritual energy,"  he wondered to himself. 

At first their world projects launched a domino effect.  Others mimicked their good works until it became almost fashionable for celebrities to start schools and shelters, but this couple was different.  At first they were in the news often, but later they almost became reclusive with a small group of colleagues.  

Eric and his wife, Ann, were finding this together as well as they worked with the marginalized respectively. The love and energy they gave, rebounded back to them increasing their energy, enthusiasm and interestingly their bank account. That had been a mystery to them, but late one night after a particularly tiring day, Ann mentioned that to Eric. They didn't know how or why that happened but the next day, happily, they picked up where they'd left off the day before and continued on.

Ann was a registered nurse and volunteered as a case worker at a rural migrant farm and was often called to help with some of the medical needs at other sites throughout the country. During the wars, the United States had taken in millions of refugees from around the world, literally making the previous Mexican border problem almost non-existant.  The Mexicans had changed the cultural texture of the country in a colorful and positive way. Their friendly humility and willingness to work the lowest jobs helped support the economy as it slowly staggered back onto its feet.  They were among the first to volunteer at these bulging migrant camps.

Together, Amelia and Thomas had found a profound spiritual awareness, a beautiful cohesion with all there is, even a heightened awareness that all of life, from the saddest starving child to the most beautifully designed cathedral, was part of this awesome world in which they lived. The more they looked, the more they saw the cohesion, the alignment of what some would have thought were random occurrences which were rather an increasingly visible design. There is, as there always has been, a design, an intelligent pattern to it all.  

Art was the gathering of that intelligence into an expression that allowed both the artist and the viewer to enter into the very presence of that intelligence, that pattern which drew one in like a great spiritual vacuum into another dimension.  It created awe as it evoked awe, a wonderment, an inner acknowledgement that we are all somehow part of this incredibly coherent, cognizant design.    

They realized that if they submitted to that creative process, to that awesome coherencing, they would be "danced" and in their conscious collaboration with that dancing spiritually, they would bring themselves and their work into alignment with the great creator - that intelligent presence who created order out of what only seemed to be chaos.  So, they did.  They began to adore all the world's great religions, all cultures, all art, all music, all people.  

Out of their passion for the brilliance of human endeavor and creation, they slipped into an altered state of joy.  It was joy beyond anything they'd ever known, or found among the ordinary lives, but they found it in the ancient Islamic Sufis, in the Christian Franciscans and among some of the ancient writings still untranslated from the Sanskrit.  Most of all they loved the Sufis and it was in that moonlight of that ancient spirituality, which existed before Islam, they met God.  In that meeting, they accepted even more their very existence. 

"In their acceptance at first, they opened internally to a kind of flow which tapped into an even deeper resource of energy and knowledge,"  Eric thought out loud as he strolled through the halls of the library, looking at the spiritually inspired art, and sculpture and catching titles in English and other languages, even odd markings of heiroglyphics, Sanskrit, Hindi, Arabic and Hebrew.

"It might be as simple as staying centered in the moment, accepting whatever is in your life at this very moment by not pushing or pulling at life, not wishing for more or regretting the past or even worrying at all, that one is able to slip into a kind of net of peace," he thought, noting the resonance with Jesus' counsel to the disciples not to worry.

This gave a new and clearer - even practical meaning to that scripture," he thought, recalling the verses from Matthew he learned as a child, "do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?"

He saw the practicality of that scripture powerfully meaningful.  He thought it was a lack of real understanding of what it meant that had evaded the Church.  He glanced back mentally at the Church's sad decline over the last half century and was grateful the words were still there, if only to add understanding to his - and the Andrews' spiritual discovery.  

"If that descent into acceptance led to tapping into the 'river of life,' the peace and power of God's divine universality, what would be the next level and what attitude might hasten it?" he wondered, "could it be hastened, could it be fueled by something more.

He bookmarked that thought for the time being as he explored the library a bit more before returning to their quarters upstairs for breakfast with the girls. He mentally noted the idea warranted further exploration over a glass of wine with Ann later.

He was struck by the simplicity of it all. It was that simple.  It was all so amazingly simple.  What happened to this awesome couple, no one knows.  They were known to spend many hours in this library, but one day, when the maid came to bring them tea, their book were there, the soft breeze from their fragrant gardens that filled their library seemed to whisper to her.  They were there, but they weren't anymore.  She didn't know what to make of it.  But, it was there at that table where she poured the tea into the delicately painted floral tea cups and where she returned an hour later to remove the empty tea cups. 

سلام الله عليكم ... Sharing Peace

Rainbow colored light filtered through the ancient stained glass windows of the old Gothic cathedral, majestically present in the busy downtown business section of the city. Centuries of worship were evident in that old place. Bronze placards remembering long dead parishioners glistened in the dim light under the windows,  small candles flickered on a table adjacent to the railing between the altar area and the pews.  Traces of smokey incense lingered, lending an other worldliness to the place.

Unaware of ambulances streaking through downtown to the nearby hospital or of the three young men arguing loudly across the street or even of the news crew up the street covering a recent bank break in, they prayed. Reverently, passionately, they prayed, each one immersed in his or her own inner world yet joined by their common desire to know God and love God, even to learn more how to know God better.

After they listened to the readings from the Gospel and letters, they heard a reading from the Hebrew scriptures, which were still honored at each Mass as they had been from the beginning more than 2000 years ago. Then, after all that, they paused. It was a kind of communal intermission between acts. In that brief interlude, there was a great joining together, as one people before entering into the deeper devotion that would follow. The second part was at least as ancient as the Hebrew scriptures. It was a kind of inner "holy of the holies," reflecting symbolically that which had been the inner sanctum of the temple where the Hebrew priest would meet with God. Then, it was an actual place in the temple rather than the common spiritual encounter with the holy found in Christianity's Eucharist.

It is in that great pause between the two parts of the service that is found much hope for humanity. In that profoundly simple and powerfully spiritual moment, the priest turns to the congregation and says, "The peace of the lord be with you," as the congregation chants back, "and also with you."

Then, softly a hundred hushed voices stir the fragrant space as each one turns to another and repeats, "The peace of the lord be with you." As is the custom, that one greets the other's outstretched hand, and in a beautiful breath of peace, of hope, of longing, of friendship, even of faith, repeats back, "and also with you."  

Finally, after that long pause for peace, as if they were now ready to enter into that deeper place, the priest says to them ... "The Lord be with you," to which they recant together, "And with your spirit."  

It is almost as if by inviting the peace of God into their midst, which is then shared among them, they have already invited God to be with them and the priest is merely declaring what is already evident.  God is present in God's peace, which has been invited and then declared present.  

On that same morning, in another setting, an old woman in hijab walks slowly at least six paces behind an old man, presumably her husband.  It's a hot morning, already close to 80 degrees and yet her head is covered in a heavy scarf and her outer garments look heavy and extend to her feet, covered in slippers.  Like every other morning, this elderly couple walk, single file, down the busy street, wait for the cross walk light to change and then down to a nearby Halal grocery store.  Silently, heads down, they walk.  

On my way to work, a route which I share with them on foot each morning, I can't help but wonder what their lives have witnessed, where they are from, what atrocities might they have experienced. The newspaper headlines are full of what is going on in their part of the world.  My heart breaks for what their homelands might be enduring.  The obvious cultural distinction is in every aspect of this couple's daily routine. I gasp that the woman would be clothed as heavily on a hot day. I wonder what it feels like to dress like that every day. Then I wonder what she must be thinking of my attire and obvious delight in the sunny morning and my own personal sense of freedom.

As I passed the couple, I glanced at the woman, smiling at her as she looks at me in a kind of vacant gaze. Even her face doesn't reveal her  thoughts or views.  It seems each morning is the same, only my wardrobe allows me more variety than hers.  Hers is the same scarf, the same slippers, the same gait, the seemingly same routine everyday.

Then, one morning, when I smiled at her, she smiled back.  I was absolutely delighted.  As I passed her, I whispered to her, "Asalam alikum (The peace of Allah be upon you)."  She nodded and barely below a soft whisper she uttered back, "Alikum salam."

"and also with you."  Actually it translates into " Upon you be the peace of Allah."

Oh my God, I cried inside my head and heart ...... God, what a miracle that moment was!!  We exchanged the peace, interculturally, interreligiously, internationally!  We did it.  We honestly did just that.  It wasn't just an ordinary thing.  This was what our faiths are all about.  They are about peace, about God's peace because actually there isn't any other kind of real peace.  It is in the heart first, then the will and then finally, and most importantly, in the breath, extended, given, and received.  

In that moment, we did something I wish the entire world would do.  We prayed together in a simple sharing of the peace.  God is present wherever God's peace is invited and shared.  God was with us and also, wherever God is - whenever two or more are gathered in God's name - peace is.

I share this with you because it is a true story, a real miracle moment, and I know today when I walk up to my job, I will see her again, a woman who is a mysteriously different human being, with a different past and clearly a different present and future, both who has now become a friend - even if all that friendship encompasses is a smile, shared, and under our breath, softly whispered, "سلام الله عليكم,".... and upon the whole world. Amen