“We are being invited to call others by their true name, to view them in their deepest identity, to see and think of them not primarily for their failings, but first and foremost in their original nature, made of God. Each one of us is essentially brother of Light, sister of Light, no matter what we have done, even those in whom there appears to be only falseness and violence. At the heart of our being is the light from which we have come. We can choose to live from this place of deepest identity and, at the same time, confront the darkness that violates the light in ourselves and one another. We can call each other back to live from these true depths, not because we have somehow achieved sacredness in our lives, but because we are made of sacredness, pure grace.”

J. Philip Newell, “Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul”

I was recently leading a meeting where we were discussing making amends for our character defects in the past. I won’t acknowledge the group by name, but those who know probably know. It was a deep conversation and has been running through my mind.

How does one come to a place of forgiveness for the sins of others? How can we make amends to someone who has been a source of violence in the past? How can we even begin to make amends to people who say horrifying things like “It was consensual when I hit him”? How do we come to a place where we can even begin to clean up our side of the street when their toxicity is so great that threats and demands are their only way of communication? How do we do that when it is still a fearful thing to even acknowledge such situations are a part of our lives?

I know that I am not the only person who has these questions about people in their lives. Even if you are not in a recovery program, it is really difficult to think kindly of the people who have done real and significant harm to you and the people in your life. Thank goodness the call of Jesus is to love our neighbor and not to like our neighbor. We can sometimes force the verb of loving even if we never get near the feeling of liking someone.

It is with all this in mind while waiting for my computer to process and encode the video of the service from two weeks ago that I came across the paragraph which I have quoted above. I found it in J. Phillip Newell’s book “Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul.” In the paragraph previous Newell writes about John Scotus Eriugena (ca. 817-817 CE) and his view of Lucifer. Eriugena believed deeply that all things have their essential nature come from God. Lucifer is an Angel of Light who has lost connection with that which was meant to be: As Newell puts it, Satan is “an archetype of the false self, living in shadow and exile from his true center.”

Newell states Eriugena’s belief that Satan will one day come around. Although that is not exactly in the scriptures as I read them, I can see the thought process at work. If all things that come from God come to fruition, then creation itself must eventually come to fruition. It is a very generous outlook on creation and perhaps the kindest treatment I have ever read of the figure of Satan. Again, I don’t necessarily agree with the theology, but I can see where it is coming from and the theological and philosophical intent.

In all honesty, the fate of Lucifer is definitely something I see as a matter well above my pay grade. I know what scripture says, which is effectively that the choice of offering salvation rests in the hands of God. As a Gentile, I have been grafted into a tree of salvation through the grace of God. I neither earned salvation nor did anything that makes me worthy of demanding a place at God’s table. I was offered a gift and it is my choice to decide whether or not to accept that gift. If I don’t even have the authority to make such a demand about my own life, I’m certainly not in a place to say whether or not someone else is worthy of grace.

The understanding that I am not the decider of such things is at the very core of why this quote bothers me. There are people in this world who resemble the violently false people described by Newell. There are people who resemble the remark when Newell writes “Each one of us is essentially brother of light, sister of light, no matter what we have done, even those in whom there appears to be only falseness and violence. At the heart of our being is the light from which we have come.”

The person at the farthest on the right of the categories of “Ready to make an amends to them,” “Not quite ready yet to make an amends,” and “I will never make an amends” is a sister of light in the eyes of Newell. I will note that there are no people in that last category for me and I have an open offer to make my amends if and when it is consensual, but even as I am willing to make those amends it is hard to think of that individual as a sister of light given the violence and falseness of the past.

The situation is complicated further by the fact that I just returned from a pilgrimage where I walked through the places and sat in the spaces where people bled and suffered to stand often non-violently for the rights of people who were and are sisters of light, brothers of light, and beloved people of light. This is echoed in Newell as he writes “We can choose to live from this place of deepest identity and, at the same time, confront the darkness that violates the light in ourselves and one another. We can call each other back to live from these true depths, not because we have somehow achieved sacredness in our lives, but because we are made of sacredness, pure grace.”

There’s the rub of it, right? You can live in a place where you stand for what’s right while recognizing that something is inherently good within someone who has been a source of violence and pain. How do we do that with any level of competency? I won’t claim to be an expert, but I think it begins with a perspective like that shared by Eriugena through Newell.