Before our secretary at work retired, Mary Frances Hancock, who is a very classy lady and always dresses smartly, would share books and authors she liked and enjoyed reading. Mary Frances really enjoyed reading author, Jan Karon’s The Mitford Series. The Mitford Years, chronicling the life of Father Timothy, an Episcopal priest of the small Blue Ridge town of Banner Elk, North Carolina (called Mitford in the book), serves God and a varied assortment of parishioners with all his heart. The stable pattern of his life, though, is beautifully disturbed by a sweet unruly black dog named Barnabas who adopts him, an untutored mountain boy, Dooley, abandoned by his parents, and the kindling of an intimate relationship with his neighbor Cynthia, who is an illustrator of children’s books. Each of these figures calls Timothy out of his solitary independence into the risks of loving and opens him to a vulnerability he has never known before.
As Father Tim finds himself enrolled in the “school of love,” so do we all who follow the path of Jesus. The challenges of love, though, are significant. Some chase every bright feather that comes along. Others sit in the cave of their heart with a stone rolled over the entrance. We over love or under love, love in fits, plagued by unfulfilled yearnings, plagued by restlessness or worse, even problems with fidelity. Yet, we are made in God’s image and that divine love shines within us though smudged and blurred to our vision.
According to Roberta Bondi, professor emerita of the Candler School of Theology of Emory University, the desert fathers and mothers believed that “the passions” block or distort love, those “habits of seeing, feeling, thinking and acting which blind us to who we ourselves, our neighbors, and God really are.” They include lust, desire for wealth, depression, anger, restless boredom, love of praise, pride and gluttony (the insatiable desire for variety). Something else that we don’t always think about is “perfectionism, fear of abandonment, and the need for approval” that deprive us of the true freedom to love as well.
The wounds we bear from failed love and abuse are deep. But Christ’s power to heal operates through prayer, the community of faith as well as good counsel. In praying to learn to love as God loves, our hearts are transformed, sometimes without our knowing, until we risk being broken open in love – again and again.
Prayer: O Living Flame of Love, teach us to pray and to love as You love. Amen.
A friend of mine, Rev. Jerry Hooper, pastor of Midway United Methodist Church in Adamsville Alabama, says that every minister should be required to read the Mitford series of books in preparation to serve on a church staff. I agree with Jerry, but would add, since we are all called to minister, gifted with various gifts, it would behoove us to read about life in Mitford and think about how we too, can love as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her.
With a song in my heart and the opportunity to serve with you, I am
Your friend,
Mark David Jackson
