Las Tres Tentaciones (or The Three Temptations)

San Miguel is a place of deep dreams for me.  The altitude? The alignment of stars?  The ability simply to be away?  Perhaps all of it.  A week ago, I had a dream that I have entitled “Las Tres Tentaciones” or “The Three Temptations.”

In the dream, it is late at night I have been somewhere and heading home.  I step out onto the darkened cobbled streets.  The streets are uneven as I make my way.  Ahead in the distance, I hear some noises in the street; it sounds like teenagers laughing and running around in the street.

I see three small lights swirling around the ground where their feet would be.  They are not laughing but taunting.  As I approach, there are no bodies only shadows.  I try not to be frightened.  What do they want?  It seems as though the swirling around is meant to trip me up.  One of the things stops and looks at me – an eye in the center of the bluish spiral light.  It is a taunt, a challenge, an accusation.  It simply says, “God admires you.”   It then laughs and says “I’ll leave that with you for the moment.”

My heart sinks.  The accusation is in how I would like to think God thinks of me but I know my own failings; and the accusation is a challenge or a question: “God admires you?”

As I move down the road, another swirls around my feet, laughs, and taunts me with another one, “Others admire you.”  And there is the accusation: “Others admire you?”  How I would like others to think of me; the accusation hits home.  Yet, how I know how I have failed others.  I am being pulled under.

And then the last strikes its accusation, “You admire you.” – unsaid but behind it: “You admire you?”

All three strike at my heart.  All three true in one form of how I would like to be  - admired, well thought of, yet undermining it all is a false vision of value, of my life, of my successes and failures.  It is a trap.  All three are false.  It is the three temptations. 

I awake – I think.  I could still be dreaming.  

I say a loud “Enough!”  “Go away!”  I lay there.

 

“God,” is my prayer as I drift back to sleep.

….

 As I have sat with this dream, I am reminded of Jesus’ three temptations in the wilderness.  The three are related to God, others, and one’s self.  Each one the accuser lays out in front of him; and each time he lets go of that which can be seductive for us all.  How do I understand myself in relation to God, others, and myself?  Where does the accuser strike home?  What is true?  What is false?  Admiration is a false temptation.  God is.  God loves.  “Love one another as I have loved you.”  Here lies the center.  God loves you – always has, always will.  And as you are loved, so love.  God’s grace sustains all. 

I am surrounded by that grace all the time.  Grace is all around us all the time, in life, in death, in choices made and not made, in paths taken and not taken.  May I know the sufficiency of that grace.