The Element of Surprise

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anxiety, life, Rainer Maria Rilke, sadness, surprising, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

The days seem to be getting shorter and the nights longer now but it’s really just an illusion since the calendar still promises 24 hours (give or take a few seconds). It’s really just the light that has changed or diminished and it’s sometimes harder to keep our inner light switched on. I read a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke this morning that is somewhat comforting as I yawn my way into the morning, remembering how rich in events yesterday was and hoping for the same on this grayish, chilly day.

You mustn’t be frightened if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.

Perhaps today will be as surprising as any other…Why not?

Taking Time

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anxiety, experiences, future, gratitude, Jesus, John, live in the present moment, past, present, St. John the Evangelist, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, time

Today Christians mark the feast of St. John, “Apostle and Evangelist.” There is much commentary about this companion of Jesus, the one known as “the beloved disciple” who was at his side at the Last Supper and the Crucifixion and figures prominently in the Resurrection narratives. His own gospel passage of the Resurrection is read at services today (JN 20: 1-8) and seems a bit out of place for two days after the feast of the birth of Jesus. Because of this telescoped view of the beginning and end of the life of Jesus, I was brought to a consideration of the concept of time.

We know, of course, the beginnings and ends of things that have happened in the past. We live as well as we can the present time in which we live. Because of present events we may be looking toward the future with expectation or anxiety, but ultimately it makes the most sense to live in the moment we are in. As many wise people have said in different ways, the present is the only moment we are sure of, the only one in which we are confident that we can change or choose. An internet post from a site called exactlywhatistime.com was quite prolific in its definitions that began by saying the following.

Time is something we deal with every day, and something that everyone thinks they understand. However, a compact and robust definition of time has proved to be remarkably tricky and elusive.

Before I get too bungled up in philosophical wanderings, let me suggest that the best way for me to look at time is the one that will allow me to look kindly on the past from which I have learned lessons in living well, the present in which I garner deeper understanding and gratitude each day and the future to which I look with hope for ever better applications of what I have learned.

I am still left wondering, however, about the juxtaposition of gospel passages from Christmas to Resurrection events this week. Are we meant, do you suppose, to live everything in the present, to contain all experiences at this moment? A question for physicists perhaps…What do you think?

The Slow Work of God

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anxiety, believe, forming, grace, hurry, impatient, incomplete, instability, mature, slow work of God, suspense, Teilhard de Chardin, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, trust, universe

This morning, pondering a meeting I attended yesterday of the Long-Range Planning Board of my religious community and a subsequent conversation with one of our “younger members” I was reminded of a valuable quote from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a theologian and paleontologist who had much to say about the universe and its workings, including those of humans who seem always in a hurry to get things done. It is always good for me to return to his wise advice. I share it today in hopes that we might draw from it some consolation in our troubled times.

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.

And so I think it is with you; your ideas mature gradually – let them grow, let them shape themselves, without undue haste. Don’t try to force them on, as though you could be today what time (that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your good will) will make of you tomorrow. Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within you will be. Give Our Lord the benefit of believing that his hand is leading you, and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not Knowing, Encore

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anxiety, compassion, death, devastation, distress, Louisiana, Rainer Maria Rilke, sadness, sharing, Texas, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

That place of “not-knowing” that I spoke of yesterday still holds me today as I think of the storm called Harvey that just won’t quit. How do people recover from that kind of devastation – both environmental and human? Even here, at almost the farthest northern point in our country away from those swirling waters and broken lives, I feel viscerally the distress and death. Physical death, the death of dreams, of possessions – all must reside inside any of us who have even seen the images on television and more likely if we know people living in Texas – and today in Louisiana. I have rarely felt the draw of depression on such a scale.

Slogging through the images in my mind I try to focus on the concomitant pictures of and interviews with those who have come with their boats or their bodies, strong enough to contribute to the rescue of so many stranded inhabitants of the flood zones. And then I read a small snatch of something Rilke wrote that seems like a far-fetched thought to bring to the present conversation but is all I have to offer to my sadness.

You mustn’t be frightened, he writes, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than you have ever seen; if an anxiety, like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.

Perhaps that sadness and anxiety is leading to a deeper ability to be compassionate, a deeper willingness for unity – knowing that we are all connected and owe each other our sharing in that pain of loss. I don’t know and so here I can only sit offering my “not-knowing.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

A New Moment

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anxiety, Christ Jesus, cosmic dance, fall, God, Philippians, prayer and petition, St. Paul, surrender, Thanksgiving, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton, winter

It’s 33 degrees (Fahrenheit) outside this morning at my house and although it’s too early to see, I can imagine that the colorful leaves of the tree outside my window are falling fast to the ground. The glory and loss of autumn has now arrived in full measure. Loving each season, I am prone to pooh-poohing the letting go that is happening everywhere in nature as plants die or sink into the ground for winter and the bears prepare for the long sleep. But it behooves me to take their example of being in this moment of surrender, offering up the season that has ended in order to be present to what is, as we move forward on the journey. What will today offer me as challenge and/or joy? Will I accept and join in “the cosmic dance” of which Thomas Merton spoke?

St. Paul’s message to the Philippians (4:6-9) is quite apt for this morning, as I see it. “Have no anxiety at all,” he says, “but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to  God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”