Namaste: I Greet the Holy Within You

Dear Friends,

The Fifth Week of Lent begins today. Jeremiah speaks of a new covenant that God will write on our hearts. God says, “I will be (your) God and (You) shall be my people…All from the greatest to the least shall know me.” What a tender sentiment for God to have toward Israel and us. We have known the misery of the pandemic, even the loss of our daily bread. One young person told her companion a fact about her decimated home life: “It is not my day to eat.” In a country of over 300 million people, we do not always see that some of our fellow Americans have lost so much: food, heat in their homes, their very homes. Their Jobs. Survival is not apparent. Other sicknesses beyond COVID-19 are not attended to. Is there a future? Is Easter real? Yes, God says. I will be your God and you shall be my people.

This awful year has also seen the rise of violence – domestic, racial and political. Why don’t we agree to set aside violence, hatred of the other who is brown, black, yellow, red and do what Jesus did? He shows us the way.

The author of Hebrews says to us today in the second reading that Jesus was heard because of his reverence. Jesus’ reverence for God, his Abba, was displayed primarily through his reverence, his respect for other people. That’s what made Jesus so attractive to people. Jesus did not pity others. There’s a difference between pity and reverence. Jesus rather saw the goodness, the uniqueness, the dignity of the individual. He embodied a way of treating others that the is summed up in the word Namaste. Namaste: I greet the holy within you. I greet the goodness within you. I greet God within you. This reverence for you, the other, is of the very nature of God. The word Namaste itself is of Hindu origin, but its meaning is for all of us.

One reason to continue wearing masks and to maintain social distance is out of reverence for others. It all comes down to seeing ourselves, without exception, as belonging to God.

The least valuable way we can think of Lent is as a time of temporary change of insignificant aspects of our lives. The most significant way to think of Lenten change is as transformation – becoming lastingly new in ways that make our world and ourselves a better place. As individuals, as families, as institutions of all kinds, can we take the risk of acknowledging God in that other person? Can we take responsibility for creating an atmosphere, an environment in which this Namaste – this awareness of God in the other – is acknowledged?

As a nation during this last year, we have suffered a great deal. Storms and fires, tornados and floods have contributed to a sense close to despair in people. But that sense need not be part of our future. Let’s stop looking on the other as a threat to ourselves and instead treat the other as our neighbor, our sister and brother.

Bow your head, ever so slightly toward the person coming toward you: Namaste! We say in our minds and hearts if not out loud. I greet the holy within you.

~ Sister Joan Sobala