Someone (Me-one?)

[markdohle]

Someone
(Me-one?)

Death to self is necessary in order to serve God…
someone has to give in…someone has to approach life with love and be giving of oneself
…someone has to listen…someone has to be patient.
---Gail Bardis, (from one of her essays). ---

To place oneself in a position of just embracing life and others is difficult.  To show compassion towards someone who can’t return it, to listen to someone who has no idea how to do that in return, to show empathy to someone who has none, is not easy.  Yet Jesus asked; where do you find me (?)…..it is in the least he says.  What does that mean…the least?   It is those that cause the heart to expand because we have to work to appreciate them, to see them, to listen to them….those that call us out of our comfort zone.  Individuals who teach us the importance in seeking “to understand rather than to be understood”… for we all want to be understood, but how many want to understand others, to step outside of the ordinary and to become present to the one in front of them?  Our hearts need to break open, to allow the joy and sorrow of others to enter in, to learn to see with new eyes, which for a Christian that would be with the eyes of Christ Jesus.  When St. Paul said that it was not him but Christ Jesus who lived in him, he was not talking abstractly, but of a reality.   When we seek to become ourselves the ‘me-one-with-others’, we begin then to understand, for we draw on the love and grace of the Infinite.  It is in our simple doing that we become. In stepping out in trust and faith that we begin and make our true journey, with one small halting step….until one day we run freely and with joy.