Conversion of Life

Brother Robert Gallagher, OA

May 2, 2021. Order of the Ascension Retreat

You can only be saved by Jesus Christ.

If you want to understand conversion of life, the goal of it, the means of it, you start there. You begin with remembering Jesus Christ. You continue with the knowledge, the stance, that you can only be saved by Jesus Christ.

Identity

You are not saved by being white, or Black, or Asian. You’re not saved by being cis or trans, by being straight or gay. You are not saved by the NRA or the Brady Campaign. You are saved by Jesus Christ.

Three people. Friends, maybe 4 or 5 circles out.

A 60-year-old Black woman. When she’s on Zoom, she has a Black Lives Matter poster on the wall behind her. She’s the chair of the African American Advisory Council of the police department. She’s played a role in improving police practices. She’s helped recruit and support an increased number of Black officers. And her sense of truth and justice have had her in a struggle with the defund-the-police city council.

An amateur crossdresser porn model. On how she deals with people who get aggressive or nasty with her -- “Some people are kinda quirky and come off in a weird way, but if I know that’s how they are, I just roll with it.  I’m never aggressive with anybody … only defensive if attacked.  And never ever mean. … I’m an open book and strive to always be honest and forthcoming here, because it’s just who I am.”

A Marine Corps and civilian firearms instructor. He works to reduce the number of firearms deaths by suicide. He had learned that 60% of deaths by firearms were suicides. 37% murder (mostly around drugs, gangs, and domestic abuse) and 3% other causes.[1] His commitment to protect others has him working alongside gun safety supporters to reduce the number of suicides.

Each person is a mix of given and chosen identities. Each must cope with various groups of people angry about their identity and the related behaviors. For example, the Black woman must deal with the hate of white racists as well as the extreme distain of more “progressive” whites and Blacks.

Each person, someplace along the line, decided that their primary identity was a stance that transcended some other true part of who they are. They took a stance of love that showed itself in striving for truth and justice, kindness and compassion, and protecting human life.

I remember as a child hearing my father comment on the new enthusiasm of his siblings about being Irish-American. A world of songs, dances, jokes, and legend. Dad said, “It’s enough for me to be an American.” It wasn’t so much a dismissal of their new interest as it was about how he defined himself by something more central. Something he had fought for, seen others die for, and that he wanted in a quiet way, to live for.

Children of God

All of us make decisions about our identity. We give ourselves to a uniqueness, a web of characteristics that defines us. For us in the Order we have a particular central identity. One that infuses and drives all the other elements of who we are. You might think of this too as a set of concentric circles.

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. (1 John 3:1a)

³for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. ⁴When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. (Colossians 3:3-4)

For us, you and me, the primary identity is that we are children of God (you are free to phrase it differently). It’s the central circle. Given by grace and sacramentally secured in baptism. It is our life and witness in a world that has a weak grip on Reality.

Identity seems to be one of the driving anxieties of our time. A kind of obsession. The more uncertainly we feel about being simply a child of God, the more desperate and insistent we seem to get about all sorts of lesser identities. And that obsession takes us into a place and onto pathway. At the moment, many people seem to seek places and paths of resentment and impatience. We want vindication.

Vindication

Often bound up with the issue of identity is our desire for vindication. A desire for vindication that overrides our desire for community, reconciliation, and love. We are desperate to be right. Even we, who like to think we know what’s going on, and believe that at the center is our being a child of God, even we seek being right and long for vindication.

Michelle and I walk two times a week. Every so often we’ll have a three-minute argument over who is right about some fact or how we recall an event some months earlier.  We get very certain and insistent.

We all seek vindication. In big ways and small ways.

Priests and laity forced from parishes want to hear that what was done to them wasn’t right.   Black Americans want to hear that their anger is justified. White Americans want to hear that they are good people. It seems like everyone wants total acceptance and no one is willing to offer that to everyone else.

We are a nation tired, worn out by all the blame and accusation.  The blame and accusation heaped upon us. Even the blame and accusation we heap upon others

And what is our vindication?

The psalmist wrote,

But at my vindication I shall see your face; * when I awake, I shall be satisfied, behold in your likeness (Ps 17:16)

The psalmist pleads innocence, wants God to look for justice, and claims he has been faithful to the law. He has been assaulted by the wicked and pressed hard. He wants the Lord to bring them down, to deliver him. We cry out “Give us justice as we understand it. Let us know that what we have suffered was wrong and that those responsible will be judged. Bless our views, our way of seeing things.” And God responds, “I love you. See my face.” God is so disappointing sometimes!

Conversion of life

And finally, what we are offered isn’t justice or justification.  What we receive is the face of God. And we are offered the path of conversion of life.

I must be ready to pick myself up, and start all over again in a pattern of growth which will not end until the day of my final dying. And all the time the journey is based on that Gospel paradox of losing life and finding it. ..my goal is Christ. Esther deWaal

Our contemplation begins with fact and truth. We each have many identities that fail to save us. We each carry our brittleness, fear, and resentments as useless baggage.

My primary identity is that I am a child of God, beloved by God, and by the grace of God a member of the Body of Christ which offers me a pathway. A life of sacramental grace, daily common prayer, and routine contemplation. There is a second range of identity that is all wrapped around the first. All about guiding me on that pathway of grace. I am a priest, parish development practitioner, a Professed Member of the Order of the Ascension, and a friend of Michelle Heyne.  And outside that are the lesser identities. All acceptable. Unless they try to move to the center.

Conversion of life is both a place and a pathway. We decide to stand in a particular place. We decide to set out on a specific pathway. We accept the center, and we decide what goes around that to live and express it, to support and guard it.

we know that we abide in him and he in us … God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. (I John: 4:13 and 16b)

We are in a world, and a church, desperate for change. That’s always a dangerous time. Individuals and society are inclined to go off the rails at such moments. Our understanding of the change, the conversion, that is needed is often driven our lesser identities, our grievances, and our desire for vindication. Yet it remains that our conversion, and our pathway, have one end—we are saved by Jesus Christ—and one route–we lose life to find life.

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[1] In 2017, six-in-ten gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides (23,854), while 37% were murders (14,542), according to the CDC. The remainder were unintentional (486), involved law enforcement (553) or had undetermined circumstances (338). Public perception generally underestimates the number of suicides giving more attention to mas shootings. Depending on which definition used the number killed in mass shootings is relatively small, in 85 or 373 in 2018. Pew Research Center - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/16/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/

The Promise: 2021 Three reflections on the Benedictine Promise offered at the 2021 retreat of the Order of the Ascension. Includes an introduction by Sister Michelle Heyne, OA the Presiding Sister.

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