No hands but ours. An invitation to share kindness.
Transformation is a normal part of life. Ask any butterfly. But that doesn’t mean we won’t need to be dragged there kicking and complaining.
How many times have you heard someone declare, “That’s it! I’m done with earth: this is the last time I’m incarnating here.” Or “Beam me up, Scotty!” Have you thought it yourself?
As any caterpillar can attest, life doesn’t seem to work like that. And (apologies to the Star Trek fans) I’ve never heard of a God called Scotty. The hard reality of life is that if we want to live in a better place, we have to make the world a better place. With our bare hands if necessary.
Teresa of Ávila pointed this out 500 years ago. She was a brilliant theologian, a mystic and nun, who was reported to have the power of levitation, although it was apparently not under her control, because if she was going somewhere that floating off the ground would be embarrassing, she pleaded with her sisters to hold her down.
She was also a reformer of the church, a speaker of truth to power, deeply committed to making the world a kinder, juster place. A woman of action who saw the suffering and injustice in the world, and rolled up her sleeves.
“Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” -Teresa of Ávila
If we lean into this invitation to partnership with the ineffable, loving, divine mystery that goes by many names, then we are all being asked to roll up our sleeves, pour out our hearts and consciously birth compassionate, loving action into the world.
If we want to be in heaven, we’ve got to help build it. Right here where we are, right now.
My dear Eileen O’Connor clearly had the same idea.
“Let your footprints mean help.”
Short, simple, and especially poignant as the desperately ill Eileen spent much of her short life unable to walk.
I just spent a week on a silent retreat, and realised this is Eileen’s call to action, too, expressed through my novel about her. Like many religious orders, Eileen’s nuns are dwindling in number. They have loyally carried Eileen’s baton of compassion and caring for others for over a hundred years. Their calling to provide free home nursing care to the abandoned sick poor in Sydney has now passed to a lay organisation, The Brown Nurses.
But we can become part of the story too.
Eileen and her sisters have left a legacy of kindness, and we are all invited to pick up that baton and pass it on.
Comments