Monday, March 9, 2026
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Welcome
Naaman came with his horses and chariots
and stopped at the door of Elisha’s house.
The prophet sent him the message:
“Go and wash seven times in the Jordan,
and your flesh will heal, and you will be clean.”
But Naaman went away angry, saying,
“I thought that he would surely come out and stand there
to invoke the LORD his God,
and would move his hand over the spot,
and thus cure the leprosy.
At least Naaman didn’t pretend he had no sores, he had no pain, he had no fear. He had all of these, and pride besides. Elisha didn’t care about any of this. He just listened to God. At last Naaman’s servants persuaded him to listen to God himself. Or at least give it a try.
Listening to God often leaves me in the precarious position of “welcoming” what I thought was evil and is certainly painful. Renunciation of leprosy is a complicated thing, but bathing seven times in the waters of Israel requires only simple obedience.
Cynthia Bourgeault is as headstrong an Episcopalian bishop as any. I imagine she was headstrong as a kid. She has talked about the first step of the “welcoming prayer,” focusing and sinking in (see yesterday’s devotion). Now she moves to the second step: welcoming. On page 143 of her book:
Now comes the most inscrutable and counterintuitive instruction in the whole method. Sitting there, steeped in the whole roiling sensation of your upset, you begin to say, ever so gently, “Welcome, anger” (or whatever the emotion is), “Welcome anger.” If it’s physical pain, the same drill applies: “Welcome, pain, welcome . . .”
How’s that again? If this intrusive, upsetting emotion is what necessitated the practice in the first place, why are we welcoming it? Isn’t the goal to get rid of it?
Actually, no, that is not the goal. The goal is not to let it chase you out of presence.
In other words, God is the goal. God’s gift is not. Naaman’s shopping list got in the way of what Cynthia calls “presence.” The PRESENCE of God, not his PRESENTS.
Admittedly, this teaching is paradoxical. Common sense tells you that the unruly emotion is the problem and the solution is to eliminate it. But by welcoming it instead, you create an atmosphere of inner hospitality. By embracing the thing you once defended yourself against or ran from, you are actually disarming it, removing its power to hurt you or chase you back into your smaller self.
Living with paradox is like living with itch; both these lives require that I forego my normal need to solve a problem. When my itching grows “intolerable,” and it does sometimes, there is only one thing to do after the salves and creams and pills have gone back on the shelf. That thing is to sit. Still. Wait. Tolerate it, no. Thank God for whatever patience I can muster, yes. Thank God for what I once hated, yes. And gradually, or quickly as happened to Naaman, I care about God, and how he loves me, MORE than I care about the itch. Or the paradox. Or the anger. Or the terminal diagnosis.
Seek ye first … and for this moment on this day of my life, that’s what I’m doing. And I see in a flash that, as psychiatrist Gerald May says, this moment I can endure. When I’m solidly in this moment, the next moment is not on my mind, no it is NOT. It does not exist. Cynthia speaks:
The act of welcoming anchors us firmly in the Now. This is the moment of unconditional presence, the moment where those two great streams, awareness and surrender, converge. You are able to stay present in the Now regardless of its physical or psychological content. It is a secret the great saints and mystics have always known.
Knowing does not imply understanding. Understanding doesn’t matter now, only surrender and obedience. Cynthia notices birds perched on a wire. No matter how high the voltage, the energy will do them no harm as long as they don’t give it a pathway to the ground.
We thinking humans create that pathway the instant our awareness of the “flow” of Spirit pouring through us is no longer coupled with surrender. Always there’s a good reason, something we suddenly see we need to do with it: we need to name it, save it, bottle it, mentally appreciate it, decide what to do with it. But no. For now, it’s one or the other. Be … or Do.
Deep calls to deep
   in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
   have swept over me.
By day the Lord directs his love,
   at night his song is with me—
   a prayer to the God of my life.
Send me your light and your faithful care,
   let them lead me;
let them bring me to your holy mountain,
   to the place where you dwell.
Then I will go to the altar of God,
   to God, my joy and my delight.
(2 Kings 5, Psalm 42, Psalm 130, Luke 4)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
