Rejection and the ability to receive

The other day, during discussion in class, I sat silently dismissing each of my classmates' thoughts as irrelevant; I didn't contribute my own thoughts.

As I sat there, I remembered the words I'd recently read by DOM Mauro Giuseppe Lepori about the scene from John 6:22-71, in which Jesus reveals his flesh is the living bread of life and many of his followers leave because this teaching is too difficult for them.

Lepori writes: "Can there be any sadness greater than that of the rejection of a gift at the very moment when its full value is displayed? But although the people's ability to receive seemed to have been exhausted, the Lord's gift of love could never be."

"Ability to receive."

These words turned my thinking about rejection upside down: before I've thought if I'm rejected, it's failure on my part. But maybe that's not so; maybe it's when I refuse to receive others' genuine gifts of their thoughts, time and self I need to re-examine myself and my priorities.

There is a need for people to give their ideas, to share all of themselves. There is an abundance of hard places, throwing out, bouncing off, gates closed, no-not-here in the world. There is an abundance of judgment and rejection.

What we could use are more people who are willing to say, "Yes. I will receive you. You are welcome here."

Blogger Rebekah Teal writes, "The air is grace." It is all around us. We live in it.

She says we can step out in it with confidence, living life as an experiment. If we fail, we still live in this grace. We still have all this air surrounding us, we are still breathing it into us and back out into the world through ourselves.

Not only can we live as confident receivers, then, we can live confidently as givers, too, knowing that any part of ourselves or our gift that is rejected is not a deficiency on our part, not because of something we lack, but because of an unreadiness for the depth of receiving necessary that it takes to accept our gift on the receiver's part.

We can accept people where they are and lay all of ourselves on the line, knowing this is the beautiful thing about love: It doesn't have to be returned.

Deepen my ability to receive, God.

Let my ability to receive never be so shallow that it rejects you or others -- who are also you -- in their genuine giving of gifts, their genuine giving of self or anything else that matters to them.

Let me receive all gifts gratefully and all sorrows and hardships and burdens gratefully, because these, too, really are gifts.

Deepen my ability to receive with love all that is given to me, whether wanted or not, and to let you transform it, and then let me be also able to give deeply, in love.