The Encounter in Turning

When you turn back to him with all your heart to do what is right before him, then he will turn back to you, and no longer hide his face from you…

Turning back, a simple move of the heart, an act of the will—in it is accomplished a great deed. Turning to the arms of the one who loves you is more eloquent a testimony to the power of reconciliation than the greatest of sacrifices. It is the offering that saves, for it turns and faces the Savior.

Turning, then, is about encounter. The turn of repentance—complete with heartfelt contrition—is the nearest encounter with the Holy as we can experience. It is such that it leaves us full of awe and we tremble, touched and changed by that which we have felt and known.

It is the change of conversion that brings us into contact once more with God. Many times I have contemplated season of Lent but always seemed to miss somewhere the true beauty and effectiveness inherent in it. Conversion takes practice to get it right, and thus it often takes several seasons of our lives before we begin seeing the power that it holds.

Living is ultimately about getting to know God. We will either be successful or we will fail at it, but our failures themselves do not necessarily signal defeat. As long as we have the will to turn back, to turn again to God, we still have hope. Defeat exists only where there is the loss of hope, yet does our faith not teach us to hope always even where little abounds in which we may find reason for hope? For us—for anyone—it takes only a turn, a change, of the heart. Is it too much of a truism to say that hope engenders hope?

There is a sense in which every encounter in life, every getting to know the other, takes a turning from oneself and a turning toward the other. Thus our lesson is one about relationship, both with one another and with God. Knowing the Holy is about turning to the other, to that which is completely other than self.

I have experienced the power of the other in my working with people who have mental disabilities. Not to claim that anything in particular has made me holier than anyone else—it hasn't. However, disability in itself has the power to place us outside of where we like to be with others, it forces us to gaze upon otherness when we are accustomed to seeing the world as an extension of our self-identity. God is that which is outside of what I call me.

The giving over and giving up of oneself leads to the pathway of penance; it leads to relationship unhindered by expectations. It leads to a direct encounter, but inevitably it leads us outside ourselves—first into the wilderness of the unknown, and then finally home.

Comments

[Carol]

There is much to reflect on here, DDW.. "turning to that which is completely other than self," "hope engenders hope," and it's true that even if the turning to Him again has not been deep or solid in some Lents, it was indeed an act of the will, thus, not necessarily a failure and remains a "pathway to penance," hopeful enough to spur another try asap ("conversion takes practice") into the "wilderness of the unknown." Thanks for all this.

(And the monk coffee sounds good, too.)