Well-Lived and Well-Loved

What does it mean to live a life of meaning when we let the wind carry away our notions of longevity or prosperity?

Dear Friend,

I recognize it’s been a while since I’ve written. Forgive me. I love you very much, and I’m sorry that I neglected this for so long, but things are changing. The Lewis quotation I am highlighting today is not terribly long, but it is shocking and perhaps would fit well in its original context. When talking about “the face of Christ” in the people around us, Buechner closes chapter 1 of Remarkable Ordinary with C.S. Lewis:

Then there’s that wonderful passage in C. S. Lewis’s Letters to Malcolm where Lewis speaks of having met a European minister who had seen Hitler. Lewis says, “What’d he look like? What did Hitler look like?” and the minister says, “Like Christ, of course.”

Our secret face is that face. Paul’s right—the whole creation is moving, the whole great complex show has started, so that we may eventually obtain the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, but to see it, the artist says, you have to stop and really look, look for it with X-ray eyes.

Yet, I cannot agree here. I can’t believe that any amount of effort we make to look for the face of Christ in another is likely to be rewarded. Nor do I believe that ability to see through these eyes to be a matter of effort, at all, and I’m convinced there is no secret formula that allows us to see through the eyes of our hearts except the Herculean surrender to Grace, which I believe is what Jesus was talking about when He discussed dying to self and being reborn. God forbid you hear me suggest that any of this is an easy matter of just quitting. Just quitting (even our most self-destructive behavior is often the hardest thing we do, isn’t it?) Hello, ex-smokers. Hello, ex-drinkers. So, too, I think, it is with surrendering to grace our illusion of control dissipates. Certainly it is not a healthy thing to which we cling. Imagine if you can, what it might feel like to accept your own belovedness and for it in no way to depend on how good you are able to act, but only on the grace and capacity of the one who loves you to love. Liberating, huh? No pressure! None.

So then we arrive at the original question. What does it mean to live meaningfully beyond prosperity or longevity metrics? Because I am increasingly convinced that none of us , or at least very few of us will be satisfied by the number of days we are allotted. (I personally know of two wealthy nonagenarians who fought and fought hard to remain in Life, despite having exceeded any rational longevity and prosperity expectations. No, I think it likely we will, most of us will be disappointed by the prospects of our own deaths no matter how long or how prosperous our lives are. Meaning, it seems to me we must transcend, simple/traditional notions of longevity or prosperity.

Rilke said it this way in I.69 of “his Book of Hours,Love Poems to God”:

“God speaks with each of us as he makes us,

Then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent beyond your recall

Go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.

Flare up like a flame.

And make big shadows I can move in

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror: Just keep going. No feeling is final

Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness

Give me your hand.”

I’ve thought a lot about this, about what it might mean to embody God, and I am coming to wonder if it means only that to the extent that God is Love- to embody God is to embody Love and to recognize one’s belovedness is assured by God and not by deeds or even in beliefs. I think our belovedness comes from being made in God’s image. And a meaningful life means we never miss an opportunity to be love and to accept the love that we’ve been offered. When we go, I think that’s the answer.

Oremus,

Chris

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Father, your name is life. Your name is Love and when Paul says to live is Christ and die is gain, you are inviting us to love and to live. Help us rely on you for the love that is poured on your people without conditions. I beg you let me offer my love as freely as you have. Remind me always that you are there to show us the way if we look closely enough. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Amen.