Tags
be, encountering time, gift, growth spurt, lists, motivation, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, wasted moments
I woke up this morning full of urgency. I looked at my calendar to try to discern when everything (all “normal” activities) stopped because of the word and reality of PANDEMIC coming to us. It was somewhere in the midst of early March and I have been floating along since then without a definite sense of what to do – and, more to the point – how to be. In one sense I feel as if I have been wasting time while in a different way I think I have begun to live into a new way of encountering time.
It’s difficult to explain what is different but the urgency in me seems to be the need to make lists so I can be more deliberative about this “wrinkle in time.” There are tasks to do which I have been considering for a couple of weeks that still sit undone, connections to be made that need a motivation as well as a different mode of execution (telephone, computer or snail mail rather than meeting in a physical space) in addition to books and articles to be read — some of which have deadlines.
I feel as if we have been given a gift. I know that sounds incredibly counterintuitive and horrific in the face of the sadness and death but in the face of disaster we often find possibility. What is happening this morning to me is the call to be alert so as not to waste this time. It does not mean to use it in the same way as I have before but rather to dig deep to see what will have a positive outcome for the rest of my life.
My lists will hopefully serve as a marker for inner attention but may be a map as well for the kind of a “growth spurt” that I long for but cannot achieve in any active way. The motivation will be more essential, perhaps, than the actual activity and the urgency will provide the energy for everything. In a word, I think it all comes down to discipline, which – as an inner attitude – manifests as wisdom work for myself but also for the good of the world.
Late yesterday just after I had arrived at the party marking the 85th birthday of my friend, Florence, the skies opened and gave a torrential drink of water to the parched earth. Just before I left an hour later to return to the retreat I was hosting at home, the rain stopped. Sometimes things just happen that way. Had I been home without a group of people wrapping up an afternoon of deep reflection, I would have loved to go outside and let myself be washed by the cooling water falling from the sky, as I symbolically felt the sensation of having all things being made new. I opted instead for the reasonable option of staying dry.
6:03AM: It’s impossible to stay asleep with all the different birds that are announcing morning outside! I suppose it’s my fault for leaving my bedroom window open all night, but how could I resist? Spring is finally bursting everywhere and it is glorious! It was definitely worth waiting for, although the delay throughout all of April made me wonder if it would ever happen! I celebrate May as the most beautiful month of the year because new life is visible everywhere outside and, as a result, is rising up inside as spontaneous hope. Listen to how Joyce Rupp describes it:
This morning, a cautionary tale. The lesson: stay always in the present moment. It is all that we ever can depend on.