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answers, beauty, Hearts on Fire, impatience, instability, listen, progress, questions, Rainer Maria Rilke, slow work of God, strength, Teilhard de Chardin, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, time, trust
There are two adjacent ranch-style houses on our road whose owners each planted four trees in a row across their front yard. I have watched them grow over the years and sometimes wonder if it was the desire of the owners to have a lot of shade, to hide from the road or just to satisfy their love of trees. They have seemed to me as they’ve grown like a line of sentinels from one yard to the other. Because I am always driving when I pass them, I really don’t know if they are the same kind of trees; I just admire their beauty and their strength.
On my drive home early yesterday evening I was luxuriating in the lush green all around me (not much traffic on our road at 7:00 on a Sunday) when I was brought up short by those trees! Suddenly, after years of tiny incremental growth, they are mammoth and have totally obscured the houses! Today I wonder if I need to pay more attention to the obvious lesson that I have been getting on our own land and now elsewhere about what Teilhard de Chardin calls “the slow work of God” and Rilke describes as living the questions rather than being impatient to find answers. Sometimes it seems as if they have conspired with God on the same message!
I was not surprised this morning on opening the Jesuit prayerbook, Hearts on Fire, to find Teilhard’s words on the page before me. So once again I will try to slow down and listen carefully.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We should like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability – and that it may take a very long time…(p.102)
It is said that behind every great man is a great woman and this is certainly obvious as one learns the story of Saint Louise de Marillac. Born on August 12, 1591 near the small town of Meux in the southwest of France, Louise had lost both her parents by the age of fifteen. Discouraged by her confessor from becoming a nun, she was married and had one son but soon became the longtime caregiver to her beloved husband until his death. Although she had wise council from two notable men – one a bishop and the other later declared a Saint (Francis de Sales), Louise’s vision of her spiritual path came from an “inner illumination.” In this way she understood that “she was to undertake a great work under the guidance of another person she had not yet met.” That person was St. Vincent de Paul. Vincent, busy with his “Confraternities of Charity” – aristocratic ladies who were helping him serve the poor and neglected children – was reluctant to become Louise’s confessor, but he soon realized that she, of the peasant class herself, could not only meet the poor as an equal but also was gifted in teaching and organizing helpers of their own class.
The gospel this morning tells Luke’s version of the encounter Jesus had with a blind man. I am always struck in the healing stories when Jesus asks the desire of the person he meets who is in need. I never doubt that he can see that condition in the person, so either he is looking for a statement of faith or he wants to be sure of the depth of the person’s intention or desire to be healed. Although life might be easier for the man if he gets his sight, there may be new responsibilities attached to the healing as well. Maybe he will have to find a job, rather than sitting by the side of the road begging. Certainly he will need to become attentive to people who are in need of help with certain life tasks because of infirmities. Who better since he has been there himself?
It has become my practice every morning to consider each day a clean slate for my living. Of course there are on-going concerns or projects and I have my lists of “unfinished business” from the previous day (or week or month…) but my intention is to look at everything from the perspective of this day and leave yesterday to the history books. Even more important does that intention become on Sundays for two reasons. It is, after all, the first day of the week, the beginning of a new cycle of events. Additionally it is for Christians the Lord’s Day, the day of Resurrection, thereby giving impetus to thoughts of God and my own sense of hope for myself and the world.
The Sophia Center for Spirituality 