I’ve got to get to know Alice Walker. I’ve never read “The Color Purple,” but I love and live by her character Shug Avery’s quote, “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” God gives us things to notice, to experience, to enjoy, to wonder about, but it’s up to us to see them.
We are up to chapter six in our study of Luke’s reporting of the Gospel at Christ Church Easton, which includes Luke’s version of the Beatitudes–Jesus’ sermon on the plain, which is slightly different than His sermon on the mount in Matthew’s Gospel. Most people have heard it–“Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God, Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” (Luke 6:20-21)–even if they don’t know it. But it’s fair to say that most people don’t give it much thought.
“Blessed” is a word that is overused and casually used, to the point that maybe it has lost its meaning in daily life, or at least it’s been watered down. As I was looking around this week for thoughts, commentary, and creative takes on the Beatitudes, Alice Walker popped up again. It was her same character, Shug Avery, but in the sequel to “The Color Purple,” the novel “The Temple of My Familiar.” In it, Shug gives her own version of the Beatitudes, but she replaces the word “blessed” with “helped.” And it changes so much (grabbing just a few):
“HELPED are those who are content to be themselves; they will never lack mystery in their lives and the joys of self-discovery will be constant.
HELPED are those who love the entire cosmos rather than their own tiny country, city, or farm, for to them will be shown the unbroken web of life and the meaning of infinity.
HELPED are those who live in quietness, knowing neither brand name nor fad; they shall live every day as if in eternity, and each moment shall be as full as it is long.
HELPED are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception, and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.
HELPED are those who love the earth, their mother, and who willingly suffer that she may not die; in their grief over her pain they will weep rivers of blood, and in their joy of her lively response to love, they will converse with the trees.
HELPED are those whose every act is a prayer for harmony in the Universe, for they are the restorers of balance to our planet. To them will be given the insight that every good act done anywhere in the cosmos welcomes the life of an animal or child.”
I love the way “helped,” changes the way we think about things; blessed is easy for us to think, oh, that’s nice, things will balance out eventually. Helped lets us know that we are helped by seeing things that way, or by being or acting a certain way. We can also look at it as helped by God for loving, living, acting, or seeing in a particular way. But it puts it on us to take action, to be in the world.
Eknath Easwaran was a fascinating, brilliant mystic who wrote about all kinds of religions, on meditation, prayer, and who has written a commentary on the Beatitudes called “Original Goodness.”
To begin his book, Easwaran quotes another mystic, Meister Eckhart:
“I have spoken at times of a light in the soul, a light that is uncreated and uncreatable… to the extent that we can deny ourselves and turn away from created things, we shall find our unity and blessing in that little spark in the soul, which neither space nor time touches.”
Easwaran goes on to outline four principles that Eckhart tried to get across:
- “…there is a light in the soul that is uncreated and uncreatable… a divine core of personality that cannot be separated from God.
- “This divine essence can be realized… it can and should be discovered, so that its presence becomes a reality in daily life.”
- “This discovery is life’s real and highest goal. Our supreme purpose in life is not to make a fortune, nor to pursue pleasure, nor to write our names in history, but to discover this spark of the divine that is in our hearts.”
- “When we realize this goal, we discover simultaneously that the divinity within ourselves is one and the same in all–all individuals, all creatures, all of life.”
From Jesus, to Eckhart, to Easwaran, to Shug/Walker, the idea is that we can know God directly, personally, that He dwells in each of us, and that we would do well to get in touch with this Holy Spirit inside us, which connects us to God; and in order to do so, we need to look past, to strip away so many of the worldly things that we hold up as more important.
Simple, right? Not so much. Jesus calls for a reversal, for us to change our priorities, our way of looking at and being in the world; how we look at and treat each other. That’s the goal, what we aim toward–feeling connected to God, feeling helped or blessed in all that we do. We may never get there (I’ll probably never get there), but that doesn’t mean we don’t pray, meditate, study Scripture, love each other, live it out, and try to get closer to God in our attempt.
We’ll leave it to Shug to say a thing or two more about the “helped:”
“HELPED are those who strive to give up their anger; their reward will be that in any confrontation their first thoughts will never be of violence or or war.
HELPED are those who forgive; their reward shall be forgiveness of every evil done to them. It will be in their power, therefore, to envision the new Earth.
HELPED are those who are shown the existence of the Creator’s magic in the Universe; they shall experience delight and astonishment without ceasing.
HELPED are those who love all the colors of all the human beings, as they love all the colors of the animals and plants; none of their children, nor any of their ancestors, nor any parts of themselves, shall be hidden from them.
HELPED are those who find the courage to do at least one small thing each day to help the existence of another–plant, animal, river, or human being.”