In which I quote Solzhenitsyn and (not for the first time and it won’t be the last) Rilke.
-oOo-
The Pharisees get a bad press, but they were not a single bloc, all ranked against Jesus. John in his Gospel describes them as ‘divided’ (see for example John 9.13-17). Yes there were some who said Jesus was not from God, but others recognised the nature of the signs he was performing. What interests me in this snippet of the story of the man born blind is what they did next. For a short time at least, they didn’t entrench themselves in their tribes, for and against. John records them instead as asking a question – asking the man born blind “What do you say about him?” It strikes me that this is an excellent way forward when opinions are divided, and one that is too rarely practised in today’s world. Ask a question. Ask a third party – ‘What do you say? What do you think?’ Doubt a little.
This word ‘divided’ also takes me to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s writing in The Gulag Archipelago, “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart.” Even the best of us has a corner of evil lurking, and even the worst has a corner of good. I wonder at those people in the news who have been corrupted by power. But even they have a smidgeon of good, if only they could see it and value it and try to nourish it. That would be my prayer for them, anyway. My prayer for myself is that I might recognise my own good and evil. And that ties these two strands of thought together – I need to keep asking questions of myself.
Almost inevitably this reminds me of the quote from Rainer Maria Rilke in one of his Letters to a Young Poet, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
The question asked by the Pharisees – “What do you say about him?” – is very like the question Jesus asked his disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16.15-16) The man born blind answered the Pharisees, “He is a prophet,” and Peter answered Jesus, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
The stories of the man born blind and of Peter don’t end there. There were more questions, more stumbling and more getting up, more death and more life. “And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.”
-oOo-
Lectio Divina, or divine reading, is an ancient and tried-and-tested form of praying with the Bible. Slow reading, chewing it over, offering those reflections to God, and then simply resting in God’s presence. The weekly Lectio group I run is currently working its way through John’s Gospel, and I am aiming here to turn my reflections into the sort of coherent form that might be helpful.