Ex=Out Com=together, with others

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Yesterday and today, the rule spoke about excommunication: to take a person out of communication, community, living together with others.  Sister Joan speaks of the justice of this punishment for those of us who want things to be all about me.  This I understand.  We all tend to look at the world through the lens of our own experience, and too often interpret events as if we are at the center of this world. 

When I left the hospital a few weeks ago, I asked folks to visit.  I knew that if I sat in my own house alone, living in my own head, in my own world, I would devolve into depression and despair.  I would become the center of my own broken world.  I need the voices of others to be able to hear the voice of God.  These are the voices that kept insisting that my living and breathing presence among the living was God’s miracle. 

It’s easy to want to live according to our own vision and rule of life; it’s too easy to stray from God’s way.  Time apart, separateness, is a reminder that we separate ourselves from the love of God when we separate ourselves from the rule.