Protecting Our Interior Sacred Space

It has been over two months now since I last poked at these keys as an effort to lay down a digital trail that leads from where I was to where I am. Not that where I am is where I will remain. People are not like film that sits only so long in the acid that develops them. Ours is a lifelong acid bath where we are continually being developed into the image of Christ.

The choice is ours. We choose what we allow the acid bath of life to do to us.

In this acid-process we are either becoming more like Christ, who calls us out of the world, or we are becoming more like the world which entices us with its empty promises.

Quite a lot has happened in these past couple of months. A lot of change has taken place. Not just in the world without and around us but also in the small little world represented by our personal lives. Romans 8:28 comes to mind as I reflect on the past couple of months. And we know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good, to such as, according to his purpose, are called to be saints.

I have to admit that it is hard to see anything but the flames when you are tossed into the fiery furnace.

There is a very simple and basic truth that none of us can ever escape. It is simply that we can never unhear and never unsee anything that we hear and see. Hearing and seeing has an indelible effect on us. The indelible effect of hearing and seeing can be devastating. It can have a lifelong effect, especially when what is heard and seen is brutally ugly. Hearing and seeing changes us. Hearing and seeing changes relationships.

The eye gate and the ear gate are the avenues that lead to our mind and soul where indelible marks are made by everything that we see and hear.

There is a children’s song that I was taught as a pre-school aged child in that little Bible Church that I grew up in. I remember standing there with the other pre-school aged children being encouraged to sing the words. I was a knobby-kneed spindly little boy and easily embarrassed. Some good people loved me and encouraged me through that stage. The lyrics to the song are …

Oh, be careful little eyes what you see …

Oh, be careful little eyes what you see …

For the Father up above is looking down in love …

So be careful little eyes what you see.

Oh, be careful little ears what you hear …

Oh, be careful little tongue what you say …

Oh, be careful little hands what you do …

Oh, be careful little feet where you go …

I also cannot help but to think of the lyrics to the old gospel song penned by W. B. Stevens in the late 1800’s.

Tempted and tried we're oft made to wonder

Why it should be thus all the day long

While there are others living about us

Never molested though in the wrong.

Farther along we'll know all about it

Farther along we'll understand why

Cheer up my brother live in the sunshine

We'll understand it all by and by.

Life is a journey. Life is a faith-journey. Life is a continuous process of change.

Change can be hard. Change can be difficult to accept. It is especially difficult to accept when the causes of change come from without where we honestly have no control over the forces [people] that generate the energies that begin the avalanches that uncontrollably overwhelm us.

Chapters 23 through 27 of the Rule of Saint Benedict deal specifically with the subject of excommunication. One of the primary purposes of excommunication is for the offender to have an opportunity to search their soul and repent of their improper behavior. Another primary purpose of excommunication is to protect the community of believers from injurious offences and corruptions.

One of the things that I have learned from the Rule is that it is perfectly alright to keep at a distance those trespassers who do and say things that penetrate the heart and mind with corruptions and offenses. Especially when the corruptions and offenses are personally directed with anger and hostility.

The Abbot of a monastery is responsible for keeping a thumb on the pulse of life within the community and excommunicating those who need the discipline of excommunication.

Here, living in the world outside the monastery where we do not have the luxury of such an authority figure, we have to decide to what degree we will continue to embrace or interact with people who create offences and corruptions toward us. There are times and situations where we must, for the sake of our own spiritual and emotional well-being, keep at a distance [excommunicate] those whose actions and words violate the solemnity and sanctity of our own interior sacred space.