Living From The Place Where We Are One

[Note: Today’s guest blogger is none other than our dear Associate Pastor, Rev. Celie Katovitch. Rev. Celie’s words – in print or spoken – are always rich and meaningful. Thank you, Rev. Celie!]

Today’s beautiful first reading for Isaiah is a passage of consolation and hope. The poor are fed, prisoners are set free, the desolated land is restored. Hunger and thirst are no more, scorching wind and sun are no more, but green pastures flourish everywhere, and the people are led beside springs of water. A pathway—a way forward—appears… And God reminds us of the divine faithfulness: “In the time of favor I answer you, on the day of salvation I help you… Break into song, you mountains, for God comforts the people, and shows mercy to the afflicted.” What
auspicious words to begin our day today! Maybe you’ll want to just sit with them in a silent moment of gratefulness meditation this morning.

This is the God I know. Rich in kindness, and mercy upon mercy. God welcomes all people— “see, some shall come from afar; from the north and the west, and some from the land of Syene.” This means, people from beyond the fold of the prophet’s own religion— perhaps from outside religion itself. God welcomes and embraces people of from everywhere, and with all different spiritual backgrounds. God’s compassion is likened to the unconditional love of a mother. The people cry out in their ditress, “The Lord has forsaken me; the Lord has forgotten me.” But God replies, “Can a mother forget her infant, or be without tenderness for the child of
her womb?… I will never forget you.”

Reading this scripture, I always think of my own mother. You have likely never seen her at Spiritus, as she is not a church person. But it was she who taught me about virtues like being brave, being yourself, practicing forgiveness, standing up for the weak, having reverence for nature, and including everyone, especially those who might feel overlooked. And, from the day I was born, she gave me my first and best religious education. By her example, she showed me what the unconditional love of God really is.

I experienced it in her, when—having been born two months premature—I spent my first months in a hospital incubator in the NICU; and while I was there, my mom showed up to be with me, every single day. I believe I have carried the- stamp of that love with me in my bones somehow, and this is why I have such conviction of how unconditionally loving God is, of each and every one of us. Every person. No exceptions. Who are the people in your own life who have taught you about God? Perhaps taught you not so much with formal studies or words, but with their actions?

In the Gospel today, Jesus speaks about the complete unity of his own will with God’s; his wish that every action he takes, be utterly in union with the loving energy of God flowing through him. I believe we all have moments when we live similarly: when we live from the spark of the divine within ourselves, and so our actions are completely in union with the loving will of God. Thus, through my mother’s love, I felt the divine love. They were one.

Today, in ways big and small, may we each seek to live from the place within ourselves where, in the words of Meister Ekchart, “God and we are one”— and so be a sign of God’s love for others who encounter us.