Small Bursts of Flame

Photo: Karen Streveler, OSB

Sometimes I actually remember. Sometimes when I’m looking into the gentle eyes of one of our older sisters, I’m powerfully reminded again that everything and everyone that exists has “Godness” within. It wouldn’t “be” if “Godness” did not call it forth into being. The sister I connected with seems to have no idea how much “Godness” her eyes convey. It occurs to me that “Godness” may be a code word for “unconditional love.”

Most of us are not that good at regularly exuding unconditional love. So sometimes, when I’m struggling with seeing unconditional love in someone that easily ignites anger in me, I’m surprised by a flashback of something I learned in the book My Grandfather's Blessings by Rachel Naomi Remen. In this book, her Hasidic grandfather spoke to her as a preschool child and said, “You must bless everyone and everything. Because when you do, you blow on the ember of God in them.” And somehow, I imagined that that breath made the “Godness” burst into flame. I don’t always remember to breathe out that blessing in the moment of my anger-event. But later, when I’m rerunning the event in my head, it occurs to me what I can do to gentle my being.

I’m reminded to very slowly breathe in a memory of someone who has loved me unconditionally. I invite that in-breath to soften my heart with unconditional love so that I can slowly breathe out an unconditional-love-breath on the person who disturbed me. It seems like such a small thing to do. Yet, it teaches me to gift my own heart with unconditional love in the process. Maybe that one breath somehow increases the balance of how much unconditional love is present in the universe at that moment. As we walk this life path together, may we each discover life-giving ways of encouraging unconditional love to burst into flame around us.

Mary Rachel Kuebelbeck, OSB