In a recent Sunday, in church, we read Second Kings, 5:1-14. This is a wonderful story about Namaan, a top commander for the King of Aram, a man who had saved the King's fat in battle at various times.
Namaan was a leper. "The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy."
In one of their raids on Israel, the Arameans captured a young girl and she lived in Namaan's house, serving his wife. One day she told Namaan's wife that if Namaan would go to meet the prophet Elisha in Israel, Elisha could cure him of his leprosy.
When Namaan told the king of Aram of this, the king said that he would give Namaan a letter to the King of Israel along with much gold and 14 precious garments.
When Namaan presented the letter to the king of Israel, the king was terrified, thinking that the king of Aram was giving him a test, trying to pick a quarrel with him. But Elisha, hearing of this, sent a letter to the king of Israel telling him to send Namaan to him so that he would know there is a prophet in Israel.
So Namaan went to Elisha's house and when he pulled up his chariots and horses in front of Elisha's house, Elisha sent a servant out to tell him, simply, that if Namaan would go to the River Jordan and enter the water seven times he would be healed.
Namaan was furious. He was a powerful man and Elisha didn't even trouble to come out to greet him. Namaan thought he would come and wave his hand over him and cure his leprosy on the spot.
So Namaan drove away in a rage, thinking that they had many more powerful rivers in Damascus.
But Namaan's servant interceded and implored him to do as Elisha said, saying in effect, what did he have to lose? And Namaan did go to the river Jordan and washed himself seven times and his skin was as a young boy's.
This story is a marvelous story about acceptance. Acceptance of what is, of what life brings us, often puts us at risk, makes us enter uncomfortable situations and places when we would rather stay within our comfort zones.
Acceptance is about the grace we are given to experience insecurity and the unfamiliar. Familiarity can be the kingdom of the lost.
Acceptance as a practice takes into new territory in our personal relationships and in our dealings with the world. Acceptance does this by asking that we receive life with our eyes and heart wide open, receiving whatever life brings us, including invitations to enter into strange new circumstances and new situations. Acceptance would have us inhabit these new experiences, dwell in them.
James Carse, in The Silence of God, tells of the Irish monks who, each day, set out in the sea in boats without oars, letting the waters take them where they will.
That's a little extreme. The point, however, is made. To accept life we must be willing to meet it and ourselves in strange and uncomfortable places. Often we find a great surprise waiting for us.
As Ezra Bayda puts it in Being Zen, acceptance leads us outside of the confines of our 'substitute life,' the powerful set of beliefs and assumptions that imprison us in a comforting but blinding familiarity.
In the practical spirituality of the gospel of life itself, acceptance's path often leads us into new and uncomfortable territory, asking us to do what we so often are reluctant to do, so that we may open our eyes and our heart even wider to the life itself that waits for us, the strange waters that can renew us.
All of my adult life I have been either a participant or a teacher about politics. As a result my daily life is often a roller-coaster of hopes and disappointments. My practice of acceptance, one which I fail miserably each, is to come to accept this turbulent experience, is to experience this insecurity rather than cover it up in explanations.
I must learn to dwell in this felt experience of insecurity as my best teacher, showing me that nothing can separate me from the joy and beauty of the life that we have been given, granting me the serenity to accept that life itself incomparably overshadows each day's headlines. I must recall the words of John Adams, in his last days after a long and turbulent career in politics: "Rejoice ever more!"
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