Every week or two for many years, I have spent a couple of hours in conversation and reflection with men in the prisons at Attica or Sing Sing. It has been my privilege to learn with men who are keen to think and feel their way through the possibility of changing their lives. In this, the men I know show more inner freedom than the average person on the outside . . .
In the wake of the Gulf oil spill last spring and summer; in the mental aftershock of not knowing the fallout from the nuclear reactors now burning in Japan, how strange to hear the Lord’s command to the human, male and female: “Fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea . . . and over every living thing that moves . . . ”
In this season of Lent, we desire to see our sin and its consequences. Here we are also in another season, at the conclusion of a month celebrating the history of women. By its very existence, such a celebration refers us to the context which gave rise to it: that the contrivances of men have for so long mismeasured the reality and power of women. But first we must deal with the biblical Letter of Timothy. Women-sit-down-and-shut-up Timothy. Women-make-babies-Timothy. He is still here. . .
When is temptation temptation? Is it when someone plans to sway you to do a thing which would turn you from your path? This is the cartoon we continually conjure about temptation—an evil spirit clad all in red, intending harm. But this is foolishness, or worse, for no one sure where his happiness lies is tempted by persuasions. Is it when we fall from our path, when we know that what we are about to do is not right, but we do it anyway? That is another cartoon diversion from seriousness . . .
Is not this your transfiguration: “Now that I have felt him, I can see him?” Jesus is not visible except to the inward eye, the feeling eye. There was nothing there for all to see. The gospels are plain-spoken in this–some saw him as devil, some as disturbed, some as miscreant, some as master, some as transfigured in the light of God, some face to face. Never suppose that your faith, and your deepening faith, depends on some fact yet to be pinned down, or on your forlorn acceptance of some assertion that seems to you contrary to nature. Faith is not a thing so small. It is a feeling for life that gives sight to the blind.
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