I read…a lot, though perhaps not as much as some.  Much of what I read weaves into my daily discourse, so often at “just the right time.”  My one brother would be horrified to know that when I read I underline, write in the margins and occasionally mark a page for quick return at a later date by bending over the top corner.  To me, this is sacred behaviour with a book; for him it is sacrilegious. 

Once done at least a section of a book, I will go back and read again the words that I underlined.  The words that are still compelling – making me stop and think, feeling them land solidly within me – are copied into my journal for a deeper weaving into my thinking, my activities, my relationships and my ongoing conversation with God.

Over the past couple of months I have repeatedly returned to the words of Walter Wangerin and Miroslav Volf, feeling my soul etched and challenged; encouraged and at times admonished; always ultimately renewed in awareness of the gift of my dependence upon God.  I am filled with gratitude for his grace without which I would be miserable and most incapable of anything more than solitary and isolated existence.

What follows are some of those words that have been included in my journal, remembered again and again as I discover they have continuing and varied applications at this time:

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From Wangerin, Ragman and Other Cries of Faith:

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Or what, for heaven’s sake, is the incarnation, if it doesn’t announce God’s personal immersion in the events – the bloody events, the insignificant and humbly common events, the physical and social and painful and peaceful and daily and epochal events of the lives of people?  In their experience! (75)

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Don’t you know that every private choice which you make for yourself is not private at all…There are no private choices…All selfish action damages those in love with you! (97)

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Love may begin a marriage; but love does not make a marriage…Marriage is the arena in which love comes, acts, goes, and comes again.  Marriage is the house to hold your unpredictable hearts…You do not love in order to have a marriage.  You have a marriage in order, sometimes, to love. (121)

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Silence is the saw-toothed tool of the devil.  It’s also excellent for self-righteous fighting, because it permits the other to imagine the myriad of sins he must have committed to cause such…He stews in his own juice, as it were.  It’s the microwave strategem of attack. (125)

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Learn, all ye who suffer fallings-out with one another and ye whose inclination is to lick your wounds in cold proud isolation!  God doth constantly prepare the way for reconciliation, even by his gimmickry, if only pride don’t blind you to the opportunity. (127)

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The power to build up other human beings, or else to tear them down, no matter how menial the circumstance nor how quick the meeting – that is the power possessed by each member of the Body of Christ, and a mighty power indeed. (128)

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Every time you meet another human being you have the opportunity.  It’s a chance at holiness…you will either build him up, or you will tear him down.  Either you will acknowledge that he is, or you will make him sorry that he is – sorry, at least, that he is there, in front of you.  You will create or you will destroy.  And the things you dignify or deny are God’s own property.  They are made, each one of them, in his own image…Turn your face truly to the human before you and let her, for one pure moment, shine. (129)

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From Volf, The End of Memory:  Remembering Rightly in a Violent World

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What does “remembering rightly” actually involve?…It cannot refer just to what is right for the wronged person as an individual.  It must mean also what is right for those who have wronged that individual and for the larger community. (11)

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What does it take to remember for good, to remember in salutory rather than destructive ways?  How can we help memory become a bridge between adversaries instead of a deep and dark ravine that separates them?  How can former enemies remember together so as to reconcile, and how can they reconcile so as to remember together? (35)

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If I claim to possess the truth, I will be unlikely even to entertain the possibility that others may be right, or at least partly right, and I wrong, or at least partly wrong; unlikely to enter imaginatively into the world of others so as to appreciate the force of their account of what happened; unlikely to take the road of inverted perspective so as to examine from their vantage point my memories as well as their own…Claims to possess the uncontestable truth aren’t always wrong, but they are always dangerous – especially dangerous when a person’s claim to possess the truth matters more to her than the truth itself…Seekers of truth, as distinct from alleged possessors of truth, will employ “double vision” – they will give others the benefit of the doubt, they will inhabit imaginatively the world of others, and they will endeavor to view events in question from the perspective of others, not just their own. (57)

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The future belongs to those who give themselves in love, not to those who nail others to a cross. (83)

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‘I have done that,’ says my memory.  ‘I cannot have done that, says my pride.’   …Eventually – memory yields. (Quoting Nietzsche, 159)

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Final mutual embrace…For forgiveness may well leave the forgiven one humiliated on account of having been forgiven and therefore also repelled from the forgiver; and it may leave the forgiver proud on account of having forgiven and therefore disdainful of the forgiven one.  If nothing more than forgiveness happened each party could still go her own way, the one denigrated and repulsed and the other proud and contemptuous.  // So even after the question of “right and wrong” has been settled by the judgment of grace, it is still necessary to move through the door of mutual embrace to enter the world of perfect love. (180-181)

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It is no random coincidence that the themes have been primarily about relationships and reconciliation.  God knows my passion for the ministry of reconciliation – he is the one that seared it into my soul long before I even knew the words and he is the one persistently teaching me right now about what it really means beyond captivating words on a page.

It is no coincidence either, that my wake is marked by many failings to live in the posture of reconciliation in my relationships – it is the pain of our failure that fans the flame of our passion.  It is the pain of our failure that can leave us open to learning to love as Christ loves.

Indeed, all of this serves to deepen my understanding of what Paul meant when he wrote to the Romans, “For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” (5:10)

The call of the gospel is the call to be reconciled to our enemies in mutual embrace and willing fellowship, actively seeking one another out for the perfecting of love so that we might experience “life to the full”, in the here and now and through time to eternity. 

Anything short of this is a counterfeit of love that isolates us into “(un)holy huddles,” darkens our spirits, inflames our deceptions and pride, quenches our communion with God, empowers our self-righteous measuring and excluding of others, and finally, hinders those who are searching for a God who will truly love “even them”.