Outlaws of God

These days a title like that is likely to have me answering the door to a group of nerdy little men in bad suits, brown shoes and shiny gold badges... That is, assuming that they bother to knock at all. That doesn't really bother me too much; it wouldn't be the first time.

The chosen title comes from a short bit in the little book of meditations that I've been reading almost daily for the past year. The particular selection was something that I recognized as very familiar when I read it this morning, and then when I noticed its source, I realized that I had been reading it every few months for the better part of the last 30 years. It's originally from my favorite Merton book, "Raids on the Unspeakable."

"Every plant that stands in the light of the sun is a saint and an outlaw. Every tree that brings forth blossoms without the command of man is powerful in the sight of God. Every star that man has not counted is a world of sanity and perfection. Every blade of grass is an angel singing in a shower of glory."

I can't think of a better hymn to the glories of this gorgeous spring day and the radical absurdity of finding joy in the sunlight glinting off the long green stalks of grass (which I should have cut weeks ago), the tiny buds just now popping out on the dead branches of the tree outside my window, or the twitter of birds on the fence next door. Even my cat, Milo (she's not really my cat per se, but she has adopted me), is finding peace in the sunlight next to my zafu.

In my little pocket book of meditations the quote is included in a section on "A Theology of Love." It begins with Merton reflecting on the reality of a "different kind of justice" and "another kind of mercy." A whole new way of looking at things, removed from the rigidity of our limited perception of good, and evil, and justice, and time.

Gandhi is said to have declared that one must "become the change you want to see in the world," and I have been struggling with the sense of that, the real down on the ground earthiness of it, for the last ten months specifically, and most of my life in general. Right here in front of my computer, right now on this fresh spring day, I catch a glimpse of it in the outlaws who surround me; the saints who choose to grant me the gift of today.