[Compost]
Dear Donagh,
…. A neighbour made a passing remark that in a way gave me hope. We were talking about another neighbour whose life is a complete shambles. If we have no hope, he said, we have no future. The words struck me. I carry a lot of worries with me but I hide it well. Most of it is regrets about the way I lived in the past, which I can't do anything about now. I lived in London and no one knows but myself. It’s a heavy weight to carry. I'm just wondering if you could give me a bit of advice. I heard a priest talking about your website. Frank
Dear Frank,
If you look back two months in this section of this website you will see a letter headed ‘Secrets’. See if what I wrote to that person could provide a bit of encouragement to you too. Then I’ll add a few more thoughts. It’s bound to be somewhat random because we’re not face to face with each other.
The first thing I think of is the Sacrament of Reconciliation, or what we called Confession. It was designed specially for people like you who want to unshackle themselves from the past. In case you have any hesitation or reluctance, I can tell you from long experience that you won’t shock the confessor! In fact, like everyone else, he needs a bit of job satisfaction, and he much prefers giving absolution from big sins than from peccadillos. It was Meister Eckhart, a 14th-century Dominican, who put that thought in my mind. He said that God much prefers forgiving great sins than little ones. He also said that afterwards God has as much confidence in you as if you had never sinned. In other words, you will be as free of the past as if you had never set foot in London.
Once that break happens you can then begin to see the past with hope – because there’s a future waiting for you, as your wise neighbour understood. It won’t change the historical facts of your life, but it will change the way you look at them. It’s not easy to abandon old habits of thinking and feeling. You will need to make a leap of imagination to enter a new way. By way of experiment think of your past as compost.
My sister-in-law used to make compost, and I took an interest in it for a while. Those maggots were no fun to watch, but what a great job they were doing! They were transforming all those leavings and all that grass and dead leaves into perfect soil where new things would soon grow. It’s the same with you and with everyone: all the disowned and disgusting stuff of our life becomes a source of new life - fresh, spotless, and full of hope. God is not a God of the past, but of the present. That too is from Meister Eckhart. I wish the whole world could get a transfusion of Meister Eckhart’s spirit! Here’s the relevant passage, one of many similar ones. “If God finds you ready, He pays no regard to what you were before. God is a God of the present. As He finds you, so He takes and receives you, not as what you were but as what you are now. All the harm and shame that God can bear on account of all sins, He will gladly bear and have borne for many a year, so that you may come to a greater recognition of His love, and so that that your love and gratitude may be the greater, and your zeal the warmer, as indeed is the proper and frequent outcome after one has sinned.”
I hope you get comfort and assurance from those words, Frank. Eckhart says in a thousand ways that God is much better than the best we can imagine. There’s hope for us all.
Donagh