Giving the whole world a hug

Wednesday, September 9, 2020         Memorial of Saint Peter Claver, Priest        

(today’s lectionary)

Giving the whole world a hug

Listen to me, the time is running out,

The world in its present form is passing away.

Peter Claver’s memorial, always celebrated on this day, comes at a good time this year. Battles rage online and on the streets over how to offer ourselves to other races, genders, cultures, and ethnic groups. How do I, White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) privileged male and oldest son, offer myself to you? And just as important, how do I receive what you have to offer me?

Blessed are you who are poor, for the Kingdom of God is yours.

But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.

Peter Claver kept it simple. For forty years he said little, but did much. In the Columbian port of Cartagena he lived with his parishioners – the slaves behind the mansions. A hacienda is both the hut and the mansion, you know. From the sky, high in heaven, they look about the same. St. Peter Claver saw it that way too. When he died this day in 1654, the city magistrates, from whom he so often protected the slaves, paid for his burial and praised his work.

I think about what Peter Claver was doing with his mother in Spain at age 3, almost four? My daughter’s recent notes about her son, who is that age, suggest possibilities.

In my adult world, since bridges to others are often blocked, I ask how to offer myself but don’t spend much time on the answer. But that was not the case with our grandson.

“HERE’S WHAT I’D DO. I’D HUG THE WHOLE WORLD!”

And then we get down to action items, like setting up a giving budget, like having $5 bills in the glove compartment to share, like leaving food and fun stuff at your neighbor’s door, like LISTENING for heaven’s sake and hearing other points of view.

As he got ready for bed our grandson said tonight he was going to dream about the whole world. Andi laid with her son on his bed and looked up at the stars sticking to his ceiling. Don’t we all see the same stars? We are so connected, so close to one another, so “all one river, all one sea?”

Thomas Merton felt this family joy in Louisville on March 18, 1958. Everything changed for him that day.

I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, and this was such a relief to me that I almost laughed out loud. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

Henri Nouwen, praying not far from Peter Claver’s world in Columbia, joined this mystic family in 1981, praying each day in a convent chapel.

I realize that something is happening which is so deep that it becomes like the riverbed through which the waters can safely flow and find their way to the open sea.

Like Merton and Nouwen, Andi is also a writer. The stars on her son’s ceiling brought to life for her the people of the whole earth.

I may think those people are very different from me and find it hard to relate to what they are going through, but I can feel connected to them by the idea of seeing the same stars and being made by the same Creator. Every person I walk by, every person I hear about, every person I’ve ever met and will never meet is pursued by God with a never-stopping, never-giving up kind of Love. Intentionally thinking about people this way brings about a different way of living and this way of living brings about a better way of loving.

I am sure St. Peter Claver would have been as proud of his daughters as we are of our’s. His daughters, of course, were the sweet sisters and children and mothers of slaves in the quarters behind the mansions. So many, so loved by God. He “instructed and baptized 300,000 slaves in his lifetime.” Did I read that right?

All glorious is the king’s daughter as she enters

Her raiment is threaded with spun gold,

She is borne in with gladness and joy.

So it is that we love each other, offer ourselves, listen, give and receive in new ways every day. She lies on his bed with her little boy, dreaming about the whole world.

             (1 Corinthians 7, Psalm 45, Luke 6)

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