However determined we may be when we close our doors, when we make conscious decisions to shut ourselves in or to shut everyone and everything else out, we rarely manage to isolate ourselves completely for long. For some it may be a matter of hours only, for others a few days; some of us may manage it for a few weeks at a time, but even that is not long when seen from an external viewpoint.
Our presence in our local community seeps out almost unnoticed through modern communications and our continuing needs for at least some of the essentials for normal everyday living. The one overriding need for each one of us is an absolute necessity for life: the need for food and drink.
Whether our closed door is the physical reality of a garden gate, the door to our house or flat, or, if we are living at home with our parents or in somebody else’s home, the door to our own room; or whether it is a purely internal barrier: a mental closing of curtains, bringing down of a blind, securing of shutters, or closing and locking of a door on whatever psychological or emotional disturbance we are trying to deny, bury, counter, or overcome, the barrier we use to separate us from the undeniable reality of the rest of the world can never be completely sealed. Just as our presence will leak out through an occasional use of today’s means of communication and through the essential answering of some of our physical needs, so also, that which we are trying to avoid will find a way of seeping in.
The process could be regarded as a form of osmosis: an equalizing of all that was created equal, and an underlying tendency to reposition every part of creation where it was meant to be. We are part of the world, and have not been created to live outside it; either in an attempt to survive beyond its influence, or shut away in a sealed cell, even in the midst of it.
This is equally true, if not more so, of our spiritual lives. We are part of God’s creation, and as such we do not have an external view of what goes on in the world, of human nature and of its susceptibility to being influenced by both good and evil, health and sickness, joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, love and hate, life and death. We are part of it; and everything within it: both sides of every conceivable coin, is, or is potentially, part of us. Just as our physical life is unalterably tied in with all other life on the planet, and will strive to stay in balance with it: equalizing the pressures on both sides of our doors in a lifelong attempt to maintain today’s take on the evolutionary and ever refining status quo, so too are we created to become aware of our spiritual nature, and to be drawn towards the spiritual realities that permeate the whole of the world around us. Whatever we believe, feel and think, it is not possible for any of us to shut God out, or to hide ourselves from Him.
‘For I am certain of this:
neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,
nothing already in existence and nothing still to come,
nor any power, nor the heights nor the depths,
nor any created thing whatever,
will be able to come between us and the love of God,
known to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.’
(Romans 8:38-39)
From our own point of view, a door may serve only one of those purposes: either to shut ourselves in or to shut everything else out; but the net result is the same in either case: the degree of separation is the same, and so too, inevitably, is the degree of consequent isolation. Whatever our thinking and reasoning, we are either afraid to venture out into all that the world has to offer, good and bad, or we fear being invaded and overwhelmed by it if we allow it into our lives. We cannot benefit from all the goodness, inspiration and strength made available to us if we shelter (hide?) or protect (barricade?) ourselves behind a closed door. “There is so much blessing and beauty near us which is destined for us, and yet it cannot enter our lives, because we are not ready to receive it. The handle is on the inside of the door; only we can open it.” (John O’Donohue. Anam Cara.)
But the Spirit of God reaches in to us, however deeply buried we may be, and in calling us, and touching us, He brings us to a point at which we may allow ourselves to be grasped, and gently drawn out into the hands of the Living God.
The gently glowing, barely recognized fire which had been lit within us could not have been started if we had never stepped beyond the boundaries within which we now attempt to confine ourselves. The kindling has been dried out during our remote and anonymous waiting, but we had to have gone beyond our present limits at some time in the past to gather those small pieces of fuel. Like Ruth in Boaz’s fields, we had to venture out to glean what we could, and in so doing we placed ourselves where we could be led by stages into a greater abundance of the very things for which we are still searching: food, and drink, and life itself.
‘So she set out and went to glean in the fields behind the reapers. ... Boaz said to Ruth, ‘... You must not go gleaning in any other field. You must not go away from here. Stay close to my work-women. Keep your eyes on whatever part of the field they are reaping and follow behind. ... And if you are thirsty, go to the pitchers and drink what the servants have drawn.'... Boaz gave orders to his work-people, 'Let her glean among the sheaves themselves. ... And be sure you pull a few ears of corn out of the bundles and drop them. Let her glean them ...' He also said, "Stay with my work-people until they have finished my whole harvest." ' (Ruth 2:3, 8-9, 15-16, 21.)
We fetch and carry the kindling to store within ourselves, but we do not carry the flame to light it until we welcome it into our lives; and the lit fire will begin to flicker and flame only when fanned by the breath of the Spirit carried to us in the presence of others: persons guided into our path by that same Spirit, but with whom we can have no meaningful contact without either stepping out into the world, or allowing them to approach us more closely than may at first feel possible.
We have neither the time nor the energy to maintain the attempted separations we contrive for ourselves. There are other doors on which our attention should be focussed; doors which we alone do not have the power to open and close. We need our fellow travellers: the two or three, or more, who will meet in His name and bring us into the abundance of His blessings, ready and waiting in the world beyond our fears.
One way or another, if we have responded to God’s call, He will reveal Himself in the presence of others and at the very core of our being.
‘It is God who, for his own generous purpose, gives you the intention and the powers to act.’
(Philippians 2:13)
