I had a post all ready to share about living in the tensions of our lives when last night at 11pm the news hit about Osama Bin Laden being killed. I had wanted to share how Ignatius saw living in tension to be a good thing because we can find God or invitations from God in all things. Anytime we are living in the black and white, acting with total certainty about anything other than the presence of God in the moment at hand, we are not living in the tension, not wanting to face the possibility that we might be wrong or there might be some Truth in the conflicting position or opportunity.

Ignatius implores us to live in the tension so as to not seek either extreme, neither wealth nor poverty, sickness nor health, a long life nor a short one, but in all things to seek only God. As an Ignatian Associate, I have tried to live in these tensions of life, and some other tensions as well including finding a balanced way between things like intimacy with a few and hospitality for many, service to others and care for the self, contemplation or reflection and taking action. God is truly in all of them. I stumble a good bit, often leaning to the extremes that my culture or society or even family baggage have ingrained in me and then, gracefully, through my self-awareness and my community, I am gently called back to making God my focus and the strain of going too far to either extreme is corrected.

But what of the tension between the US and al Qaeda? Some would see it as the tension between good and evil. Others as the tension between Islam and Christianity or east vs. west. So where am I to fall in that tension? What would Ignatius say? What would Christ say? Rather than take a side, even the side of my own country, I am called first to seek where is God in this tension, where am I called to grow?

I believe in the God of justice. I believe in the God of forgiveness. I believe because all human beings are created in the image of God, God can be found in all life, innocent or guilty. I believe that God, the Divine, dwells in all things, and so I am called to find the divine even in the most heinous of places. And I am called to be self aware and admit the ways that I or my country has harmed innocent life as well. I am called to challenge evil in all its manifestations. I receive no consolation from the suffering of another. I am desolate at the perpetuation of violence continuing to keep us so far from the God of love that we seek.

I am living in the tension. I pray I’m not alone.

Photo: “Tug of War” by “toeffhoff” from Flickr (Used under Creative Commons license)

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