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Am I an I Am?
 God cannot NOT love you, writes Richard Rohr. It is a truth that has stirred in my gut for so long. How can He love me, I ask - when I do so many things wrong, and think about self, and fuss about things, and criticize others, who don’t need nor deserve my judgement. It’s hard for me to be aware of my True Self. Apparently, there is the True self and the False self - and the latter is that which makes me feel inadequate, unworthy, wrong, heart-less. It’s those times, which are often, when I twist my heart like a tourniquet because I see the same hate, errors, coldness, inconsiderateness, rudeness, lovelessness in so many.
We all need to grasp our True self, which is the one that is “God-in me” doing what God calls us to do, ministering in the ugly or difficult places where Jesus would have been, indulging in the work we are supposed to be doing, knowing that, in the doing what we were made to do, I cannot really be hurt because it’s the real me, the True Self, the God-in-me believing in whom God wants me to be. The I Am.
Does that mean I march around saying “I Am?” It is that part of me that loves God, seeks to do God’s will, and should assure me that God loves me, always has, always will, no matter what I do or who the “I Am” I am. There is something of the divine image in me, Rohr says. I search every vein and muscle trying to see this, but I think it rests in my soul - and I know that the soul is in the hands of God, a place that is in me, that Isn’t control, but that controls my heart so that I see God in everyone else, and so it throws out compassion and love to a degree I don’t understand. Yet it is a compass of the I Am, the divine image in me that I’m so afraid to touch, to know, to let loose on the world.
It’s amazing to me that those around me, the tough ones, the criminals, the police, and guards, the rich and the poor, see this in me, this walking love, and I don’t see it. But I sure feel that burst of emotion every time I walk into a prison, especially where youth are incarcerated because their lives have been atrocious, loveless, harsh, and unfair. But I try to convince them that God is in them, that he loves them, that no matter what they do they cannot shake him out of their soul, because it is the sacredness in them, their universal belonging, and that each of them has the dignity of the divine presence in them, like it or not.
Important is that God cannot NOT love them. It’s not if you behave yourself, if you confess your sin, if you live on the straight or narrow, you will get to heaven. That’s the carrot on the stick, the reward if you do good, the egoistic approach - pat yourself on the back because you did it good., right, etc. You made the winning basket, caught the winning pass. So, you are “in.” It’s not this kind of thing. You already have the prize; you already have won the biggest victory - God’s love. You didn’t have to do anything for it. It’s in you. It is you. The divine God in you. Remember this.
Decades ago when I started working in prisons, it seemed to me there were all these young men and women, whose lives had been so tragic, so ejected, so loveless, that the light we all have in us - that makes us in Christ or Christ in us - had been blackened by the fight, the torture, the homelessness, the sadness of youth on the streets. It’s as if the light bulb in their solar plexus had been tarred and so not a glimmer of light can peek through. Our job, as deacons or priests, are to put hope in their hearts, and to reveal that light to them. We must quickly start scratching off that tar to let the light of the Christ within them shine through.
A favorite thought by Dorothy Day is right on. “If everyone were holy and handsome, with “alter Christus” shining in neon lighting from them, it would be easy to see Christ in everyone. If Mary had appeared in Bethlehem clothed, as St. John says, with the sun, a crown of twelve stars on her head, and the moon under her feet, then people would have fought to make room for her. But that was not God’s way for her, nor is it Christ’s way for himself, now when He is disguised under every type of humanity that treads the earth.” (Watch for the Light.)
~ Rev
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audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
www.audreytaylorgonzalez.com
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