Take your time

 ‘… I still have many things to say to you. .…’ (John 16:12)

John 16:12-15 (Year C: Trinity)

Listening

‘I still have many things to say to you’ says Jesus to his disciples even though the evangelist John is up to the fifth chapter of that long and final discourse reported, uniquely, in the gospel of John.  God has, indeed, a lot more to say to us. The Holy Spirit provides when our words and thoughts fail as they must at some stage.  Jesus, the Word, came to speak love and life to everyone. Some listen; others don’t and quite a few listen, only, to what they want to hear. 

Lifelong learning

Our lives are learning lives. We start learning in the womb and we never stop learning until our last breath. Educationalists call it ‘lifelong learning’.  Learning is very simple and very complex. It is simple because babies manage the miracle of learning to make complex sounds based on reasoning and observation and experience. Language and all of its complex nuances is learned over many years but the first few years of life are critical. We learn more from speaking with others than others speaking to us (as Saint Augustine said). But, learning is doing as much as talking and thinking. Learning is thinking, talking and doing all in one seamless process and it never stops. At the age of 80 if we are not still astonished by new things and insights every day then we are not fully alive and we need to do a crash course in living before it is too late!

to learn is to suffer and to enJoy

Learning and suffering – as in undergoing something challenging – go together. But so does joy.  Philosopher and theologian, Jürgen Moltman, drew attention to two things:

1. persons who are alike know those who are alike;
2. persons who are different and know difference.

Learning is tied up with correspondence and unity among person that are alike as well as among those who are different (implying pain, conflict or ‘agon’ in classical Greek).  Hence, Motlman * (1991: 171) is not surprised that the Greek words ‘mathein’ (to learn) and ‘pathein’ (to suffer) are frequently brought together in many sayings.  To know someone is to enter, to some extent, into their world of suffering, joy and constructed meaning. This has profound significance not only for the way we understand the Blessed Trinity but how we live out that understanding in relationship to each other. Learning happens through an encounter with difference and it is in embracing that difference that human growth happens.

• Long live difference!
• Long live unity!

*Moltman, Jürgen (1991) ‘On Community’ in Leroy Rouner (ed) On Community. Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press.