Massage. I keep looking at the list of Advent words and seeing the
one for today as “massage.” What message is my brain sending me?
I can certainly understand it as “good news,” but I’m pretty sure
it’s not the good news I’m supposed to be pondering in my heart these days. On
the other hand, if we are to love our neighbors as ourselves we do have to have
some understanding of and practices of love for self. Maybe that massage
message is telling me something that I should hear.
Of course, if I leave it at that, then I’m missing the whole part about
loving my neighbor. Ah, and there’s the rub, as it were. Because I soon as I own
up to the fact that I owe my neighbor the same love that I feel owed, in some
sense, then I have to interrogate all kinds of things:
Who is my neighbor? Who is included in that? Does it include the
one up the street who posts his MAGA signs? Surely it includes the guy who has
been down on the corner holding the “need money” sign. It probably includes Mitch
McConnell, too.
What does love look like for those neighbors I don’t really too
much like? Surely that must include wanting for them the same things I want for
myself, my family, my close circle of friends, my church communities.
What, then, do I want for those whom I love?
Massages for all! Well, not really that, exactly, but I suppose I want
for the ones I love the same sense of peace and general well-being I experience
when I do treat myself to a massage. The Biblical word for that would be shalom,
and so, my wish for myself, my beloveds, and my neighbors this season is simply
that: shalom in body, mind, and spirit. May you experience that, and then,
grounded in that sense of deep peace, may we find ways to work together to
ensure a world in which all of God’s children can lay their claim to the same
peace.
That sounds like good news to me. That feels like a message worth passing along.
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