A TRANSPARENT WORLD

The protagonist in Andrew Greeley’s The Bishop and the Beggar Girl of St. Germain makes this astute observation at the end of the novel: “Bishop Blackie, we are so blind and deaf. The world is transparent. God is everywhere whispering to us, talking to us, shouting at us. Usually we do not hear. Sometimes we do. Then we know everything is grace.”

The world is transparent and we are blind. We look but do not see; or if we see, we refuse to believe what we see because we don’t want to see what we see. Why? Because we will have to change the way we think and act. We are not only blind; we are also deaf. God is constantly calling out to us to see God’s presence in our lives, in everything around us and, most importantly, inside us.

What we fail to understand is that because we are children of God, God is part of us just as we are part of our parents and our children are part of us. Is it any wonder that, as we grow older, we say to ourselves, “I’m talking just like my Mom (or Dad)”? It’s in the genes. God is in our genes and there is nothing we can do about it. And isn’t that all grace somehow in some way?

As my Mom used to say about her Mom when asked by my wife why she never spoke badly about someone while, at the same time tapping her shoulder: “My Mother is sitting there.” In the same way, God is sitting on our shoulder, constantly whispering in our ear, reminding us to open our eyes and ears and see what She (Greeley’s often pronoun for God) is saying to us.

We used to tell our kids when they were teenagers and off to somewhere, “Don’t do anything you would be embarrassed to tell us about when you got home.” For the most part, they heard us, but not always and usually to their later chagrin, having to live with the consequences of their actions and, worse yet, having to fess up to us about their foolishness. Been there. Done that.

Still there. Still doing that even at my advanced age and understanding. And if I may be so bold, I think I can say that in this life in this world, there are no exceptions. As we grow older, we become more and more aware of God’s presence in our lives, more open to listening to God speaking to us. And yet. And yet we still do not listen. We still do not see. Even worse, we refuse to do so because what we see and hear will force us to do that which we would rather not do.

But when we see God’s presence, when we hear God’s words, when we live out our faith as we know we should, we are graced. There is grace in everything and everyone because everything and everyone is of God. We have experienced that grace everyday even as we so often take it for granted. May we see even more clearly to be even more graced.