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The Innovative Work of Love


The word, innovation, is not used very much in the arena of religion and spirituality.  When I think about the language of religion during my growing up years and even years in higher education, I don’t recall folks encouraging me to be innovative.  Certainly, my graduate school professors and others hoped I would be creative.  In some sense that is the expectation when it comes to writing a dissertation.  I guess I was creative enough to get the Ph.D.!
   
I would grant there are many similarities between the words creative and innovative.  But I probably thought the language of innovation belonged more to the world of science and, especially to the world of business.  And I belonged to neither world, I thought.  I was wrong!  We all belong to the world of science.  We are part of evolution.  I might not even believe in evolution---as some religious fundamentalists do not---but I would argue they are part of evolution nevertheless. 
   
And I would argue that we are all part of the business world.  Even non-profit organizations need money.  We cannot “stay in business” if the expenses exceed the income.  We might make it for a little time, but eventually the party will be over and someone will turn off the lights.  And so it is simply not true that religious folks can opt out of business.  All of us are participants in an economic reality that shapes and sustains our lives.  In fact, non-profits ought to hope that businesses do very well.  Then they have resources to share with those of us who are not doing jobs that make money.
   
The one thing religion, science and business have in common is the fact that all of us are in some sense dealing with the future.  The past is there and can be studied.  Too often we don’t pay enough attention to the present time.  Most of the folks I know are dealing with the future in some way.  Students are working on college degrees to get a job, etc.  Older people may be dealing with retirement, reworking their identity and figuring out how to die.  Scientists think about things like life on other planets, climate change, etc.  Businesses think about new products, new markets and the like.
   
All of us assume the future is coming; in fact, it is always dawning.  The question is how we can anticipate it, prepare for it and, perhaps, even shape it.  That is where innovation comes into the picture.  Innovation is my way of preparing for the future by shaping it as I can.  In the business world I can do this by coming up with a new product.  Or I can tweak a new product to gain a new run on sales.  Think of the iPhone.  It appeared in 2007.  And how many iterations have we watched (and perhaps bought!).  That is innovation.
   
All this is background to a comment I read recently when I turned again to Thomas Merton’s Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.  Written in the 1960s, we can be sure his thoughts originated in a time of drastic change---even in a contemplative monastery in the no-where land of Kentucky.  As I re-read these words, I thought this is about innovation.  He does not use that specific word, but Merton was an innovator.  In times of drastic change and even chaos, innovation is a winning ticket out of the mess.  It is the way to anticipate, prepare for and shape the future.  Listen to the words of Merton.
     
“In a time of drastic change one can be too preoccupied with what is ending or too obsessed with what seems to be beginning.  In either case one loses touch with the present and with its obscure but dynamic possibilities.  What really matters is openness, readiness, attention, courage to face risk.  You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope.  In such an event, courage is the authentic form taken by love.”  For the innovator the present contains dynamic possibilities.  Only the innovator searches for and actualizes creative possibilities. 
   
Merton offers to all of us what an innovator needs to bring to the present: openness, readiness, attention and courage.  I think all of these characteristics are true for God.  Why should they not become characteristic of all of us who are God’s children.  And then Merton ends this little quotation with a clarion call to innovation.  Courage is the authentic form taken by love.  That’s it!
   
I suspect most of us who are spiritual lack courage.  We are so keen to talk about love that we miss the incarnational form love takes, namely, courage.  Love language can get sappy.  Courage language never gets sappy because courage does not put up with sappiness.  Sappy people are not innovative---only courageous people.  I realize spiritually speaking, the innovative work of love is the work of courage.
   
Until religious folks and churches realize this, we probably will have no hand in shaping the future.  And if the scientists are correct, the future will come and we will evolve.  And God will have an innovative hand in it---working through love.

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