Welcoming Whatever Comes

The postures of openness and receptivity cultivate within us a spirit of hospitality and generosity. I slowly learn not to judge what comes to my door as good or bad, as helpful or hurtful. I welcome whatever shows up, whatever life brings to my door. The human experience is vast and complex, and I can never fully know what some "guest" at my door may have to teach me. When I try to apply a filter at the door, though, I pretend to know what is best for me, what can lead me to growth, what experiences or life-situations can best shape me into the person God created me to be.

Perhaps the most basic truth about spirituality is simply that the journey is going to take me to a destination I cannot imagine. For whatever I think I know about myself or about life, I have not yet glimpsed what the end of the journey is like. It takes a profound humility to say, "I don't know". In truth, God directs the journey, and I am not in charge nearly as much as I like to think.

And then the corollary: The journey is going to take me to that destination by a road I would not have chosen. Again, I am invited to the kind of humility that recognizes my limitations, my humanness, my inability to know what is truly most helpful on the spiritual journey. I can create a chart that details actions and outcomes, I can create spreadsheets that say, "If you are HERE, then you need to do THIS", but those acts basically keep me in the driver's seat. They feed my ego, my sense of being in charge. In reality, you and I are not in charge nearly as much as we like to think -- and certainly not as much as we act like we are.

I recognize, for example, that the life-situations which have most shaped me and prompted my own becoming are betrayals in relationships, cancers hidden in my body, the liminal space of transitions, the emptiness of joblessness, and the pain of grieving many losses. I would not have chosen these roads for my own becoming . . . but I was not given a choice. These are a few things that have shown up at my door. Some I have resisted, until I could resist no longer. Some I have grudgingly received. All, though, once received, have become my teachers.

Essentially, then, if I am filtering the life-experiences which show up at my door, the whatever-is, I may be closing myself off from the very things that would make me "the kind of person God has been hoping I would become" (Fr Joseph Tetlow's paraphrase of Ignatius of Loyola).

What I'm describing is a kind of unconditional living, open and receiving what is without judgment or condemnation. Further, this stance of unconditional living opens one more deeply to unconditional loving, that is, love that does not measure merit or worthiness, goodness or badness. It simply loves.

Love loves what is, as it is.

Love doesn't judge what is. Love doesn't need to change what is in order to make it more lovable. Authentic love does not love because something or someone is lovable, nor does it love because something or someone is unlovable. Love loves. Period.

The spirit of openness and receptivity, of welcome and hospitality, of unconditional loving and mercy-ing is at the heart of "The Guest House", a poem by the Persian mystic Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks.

The Guest House
Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture, still,
treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.


~~ Rumi: The Book of Love, trans. by Coleman Barks, 179 – 180.

The Soul's Sadness and Love-Dogs

Within my soul I've felt a deep sadness in recent days. Something tender and unhealed within me has been touched by the world around me. My sadness has mingled with anger, and I've swung between the two in regular rhythms.

I'm also feeling desperate on behalf of others who are hurting in ways that are much more tangible (and real) than my own superficial difficulty, by those who regularly find themselves marginalized because of skin color, national origin, orientation, gender. A few of these persons I know by name, and vast millions have names and identities I do not know . . . but with them I nonetheless share a common life in this world. We are more the same than different, and of that I am confident.

This poem goads me on, presses me on down the path, pushes me to not give up or give in, says to me that even the sadness and anger of loss are full of union. Rumi's wisdom tills the field for connection.


Love Dogs
by Rumi

One night a man was crying,
Allah! Allah!
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
“So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?”

The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.

He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage.
“Why did you stop praising?”
“Because I’ve never heard anything back.”
“This longing
you express is the return message.”

The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.

Your pure sadness
that wants help
is the secret cup.

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.

There are love-dogs
no one knows the names of.

Give your life
to be one of them.


[trans. by Coleman Barks, in Robert Bly, The Soul Is Here for Its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures, p. 155 – 156.]