We are more than we are - Chris Gleeson SJ

My retreat work often involves a good deal of air travel. Whether I like it or not, I am frequently exposed to mobile phone conversations at airports and lounges between people who seem unconcerned about sharing intimate details of their personal and professional lives with total strangers.
One of the more endearing exchanges was between a father and his young daughter which he generously shared with all of us on the air bridge boarding a plane for Brisbane. As it took place right next to my right ear, I could not miss the detail.

‘Daddy, I love you.’
‘Darling, I love you too.’
‘Daddy, I love you more.’
‘No, darling I love you more.’
‘No, I love you more.’
‘No, I love you much more than that. Is your mother there?’

This conversation, to which I was reluctantly but inescapably privy, reminded me of something Sr Maryanne Confoy rsc said recently at an Edmund Rice Education Australia (EREA) formation day. One of the delights in working with the  EREA Board is the opportunity to meet frequently with some wonderful, like-minded and generous-hearted people serving the same cause. Maryanne, an EREA Council member and one of Australia’s fine theologians, jolted me with her simple words: ‘We are more than we are’.
I wonder how many people really believe this or actually live by these words in practice?
Throughout 2008, I have had the privilege of giving several retreats on the writings of Dutch priest, Henri Nouwen, still a powerfully influential writer in our Christian tradition after his death in 1996. One of his central themes focuses on the need for all of us to hear and take deep unto ourselves those words the Father speaks to Jesus at his baptism: ‘You are my beloved Son; my favour rests on you’.
These words are addressed to each one of us individually. Indeed, our whole life should be directed, Nouwen claims, towards becoming the beloved person we all are in the eyes of God. Becoming the beloved is about realising that we are always more than we are. For Henri Nouwen, the greatest trap in the spiritual life is not success, popularity or power, but self-rejection. It is our greatest enemy because ‘it contradicts the sacred voice that calls us the “beloved”’. In Life of the Beloved he maintains that it is the result of listening to the ‘wrong voices’ which say to us: ‘Prove that you are worth something; do something relevant, spectacular or powerful, and then you will earn the love you so desire’.
We are always more than we are. I recall some wonderful words preached by Australian Jesuit and Madonna writer, Peter Steele, at the Mass of Thanksgiving for the life of Deirdre Rofe ibvm in 2002. He said: ‘She was above all a God seeker: a tracer of his many signs in her milieu—in her world, in her work, and in her relationships. One of the things which made her so deeply attractive was her evident sense that there was more to common events and circumstances than their ordinary face: and that “more” was good, and promising, and fertile. She spoke and acted, and indeed she looked, as if life was a sponsored thing, and as if each day was a sponsored day.’
Our spirituality is about this quest for ‘more’. Indeed, Joan Chittister would maintain that ‘this is our single greatest proof of the existence of God’. There is ‘more’ to life than the sum of our experiences and relationships. We are longing to be part of something larger than ourselves. We are looking for a sense of mystery, for an adventure of the soul. Like Jacob, we want to wrestle with the angel. We crave something more in life. This ‘more’ is our meaning and purpose for living, our reference point for keeping everything in perspective.
In his inaugural speech as the first black president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela quoted the words of Marianne Williamson to demonstrate that we must always live by the belief that we are more than we are.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us: it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others (A Return to Love, 1992).
As we move into a new calendar year, let us strive to live by the conviction that we are more than we are. Let us remember also that God is always much more than our pictures and words for God. In contrast to what the fundamentalists and extremists might think, God cannot be watered down or controlled by any religious formulations. Ultimately, God, the Trinity, is much more than our descriptions, because God is mystery.
To use Gerard W. Hughes’ term, God is ‘a beckoning word’, constantly inviting us to travel beyond our narrowness to encounter him in awe and wonder. May we strive to live in the year to come by the truth that we are more than we are.