THEOLOGY OF A GATE

It's a mild spring day in Pikesville, Maryland just outside of Baltimore. Fluffy, crisp, white clouds make the day more shady than sunny but the chirping birds are sounding the fullness of spring. Like most days in: life according to the Celtic Monk it's a good day for reflection. Which is what's on my heart.

Surely you've heard the saying "good fences make good neighbors." Having lived in a crowded city with bearly three feet between houses, I can see how that could be true. With a good fence I know what's mine and you know what's yours. With a good fence I don't have to guess if I've mowed too much or too little of the lawn. With a good fence it's clear whose insurance will have to pay if that tree falls and damages my car. A good fence delineates between what is yours and what is mine. It's the law.

But what about a gate? A gate makes a way for you and I to come together. A gate provides access from me to you and from you to me; access to what is mine and to what is yours. It could even be argued that a gate is an invitation to enter, after all a way has been made. If we never wanted to leave our yard, there'd be no need to install a gate. If you never wanted folks to explore your garden and enjoy it, you'd not need to bear the expense of a gate (a gate makes a fence cost more). A gate is kind of an invitation to enter for those who hold no legal claim to the property. A gate is a means of grace.

This week and next with 30 companions and 8 faculty I'll be exploring and practicing in depth, the art of spiritual direction. What I'm taken with as we begin is how so many of us are contented living lives made up of a series of good fences...when a lovely, well-placed and well-worn gate could make a huge difference in our relationship to God and to one another. It's a formality to greet people over the fence... it's friendlier to invite them through the gate.

In our morning session, we were paired toegether with a participant we didn't yet know and given the instruction that after a short time of prayer and silence, we were to share in conversation about whatever we believed God was laying on our hearts. My fence went up pretty quickly. How irregular, how un-natural to verbalize spiritual depth and intimacy with a complete stranger on demand! You must be joking!

When time was called, my partner began speaking first. I realized as she spoke, that God had been working the same image in me that she was describing from her life. How amazing. So rather than reinforcing the fence, I was willing to enter the gate which her vulnerabilty and truth provided.

Even in the Church, or perhaps especially in the Church we are such good fence builders. I wonder what we think we're fencing in or fencing out. What this 30 minute exercise showed me is that all the roadblocks and fences we construct (no matter what else we call them) are keeping us from touching both the heart of God and the hearts of one another. Our good fences are preventing and/or cripling the ability of the Spirit to move between us and among us making us one. We each remain on our little patch of spiritual grass and are quite alone. We wonder what's happened to the Church or to the world...and it never occurs to us that grace is a gate that must be built and used liberally.

Why not spend some time thinking about the fences and gates in your life. Which are there more of? Are there fences that need to come down? Can a gate be installed between you and someone else? What would it mean in your life to open a gate to someone spiritually? Or risk it all. Sit down with someone for just a one minute prayer, 5 minutes of silence and then both share what the Spirit was speaking to you. Now there's a gate! BLESSINGS OF PEACE AND JOY, THE CELTIC MONK