passion
[pash-uh n]
Strong amorous feeling or desire; love; ardor.
The sufferings of Christ from the Last Supper to his death on the cross.

The Passionate Life

The wise ones from all wisdom traditions know that authentic spirituality always engenders personal, cultural, and cosmic transformation. They also know that real transformation happens in and through two primary, interrelated channels: love and suffering. How poignant and evocative that for once our English lexicon— which so often pales in comparison to the multilayered richness and power of other languages— serves us so well by using the word passion to refer to both love and suffering. To be Christ-enend means to be commissioned and committed to live the passionate life. To be an apprentice of Jesus, to “follow” Jesus where he is reported by the first Christ-ones to have gone, means that we will necessarily become familiar with love and suffering.

There is no shortage today of self-proclaimed new age masters, spiritual gurus, and religious experts who peddle and promote either a spirituality of (supposed) love that is disassociated from suffering or in rarer cases a spirituality of suffering that is disassociated from love (I give you Westboro Baptist “Church” — air-quotes required). Within local communities that call themselves Christian there are still a plethora of preachers who offer their congregations an Easter without Good Friday or a Good Friday without Easter.

Love without suffering is like Near-Beer. It is religion or spirituality-lite. It might taste great, but it’s less filling, less real, and too thin and anemic to carry the day when the day turns dark and life itself feels like your enemy. Suffering without love is like Old Crow bourbon (or brown paint thinner). It will gladly destroy you without offering you so much as a moment of pleasure or joy, leaving you parked shirtless and puked shoeless all catawampus on the curb. Suffering when there is no love is either masochism or sadomasochism. It both hides the true self and mocks what is genuinely enlivening.

To be Christ-ened is to participate in the passion of Christ which invites love-in-action and involves suffering-with-trust-and-in-hope that is redemptive.

╬ Dan