"Contemptus mundi...Amor mundi..."

I'm up way too late, but my heart and mind both feel full this evening.

We had a long day of running to and fro, doing Saturday errands. The sweet girl had a hard time settling in for bed, and kept fretting about her very loose top tooth (she's lost three on the bottom but none on the top yet). It's loose, but not loose enough to pull yet.

D. and I stayed up for a bit together, tired as we were (are). We read an article on spiritual formation by Richard Foster from the January issue of Christianity Today. It's thoughtful stuff, but the final page really spoke to me this tired evening.

Foster is writing about the training/formation of the heart "in two opposite directions"...

"...contemptus mundi, our being torn loose from all earthly attachments and ambitions, and amor mundi, our being quickened to a divine but painful compassion for the world."

As he explains it: "In the beginning God plucks the world out of our hearts -- contemptus mundi. Here we experience a loosening of the chains of attachment to positions of prominence and power. All our longings for social recognition, to have our name in lights, begin to appear puny and trifling. We learn to let go of all control, all managing, all manipulation. We freely and joyfully live without guile. We experience a glorious detachment from this world and all it offers."

But he goes on: "And then, just when we have become free from it all, God hurls the world back into our heart -- amor mundi -- where we and God together carry the world in infinitely tender love. We deepen in our compassion for the bruised, the broken, the dispossessed. We ache and pray and labor for others in a new way, a selfless way, a joy-filled way. Our heart is enlarged toward those on the margins. Indeed, our heart is enlarged toward all people, all of Creation."

He goes on to give examples of saints who have gone before who have been propelled by this deep sense of amor mundi. Having just finished up our week on Celtic beginnings in my English church history class, the phrase that particularly grabbed me was this: "It was amor mundi that hurled Patrick back to Ireland to be the answer to its spiritual poverty."

Yes. Yes about Patrick, and yes about all of it. God plucks the world from our hearts, and then once we're free (as Patrick, having followed God's voice and escaped his captors was free) God hurls the world back into our hearts. Yes. How could he not? He wants our hearts to look like his.