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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.
Some years ago I had the privilege of visiting the town of Assisi in Italy. The visit was brief and the focus was, as one might think, the holy places associated with St. Francis. It was an extraordinary six hours, and I often long to return for a longer visit. One of my most vivid memories, however, was not of the places and stories of Francis alone – although those remain as well – but of walking down the path to the Church of San Damiano. Somehow, the olive trees that lined the path seemed to shimmer in the sunlight as if they were saying to me, “Pay attention, for this place you are approaching is extraordinarily holy.” San Damiano became the home of St. Clare and her followers in 1212 and she never left but died there on August 11, 1253. The intense holiness of the saint and her Sisters, who lived a poor and very simple life of prayer, can be felt in the walls of the refectory, in the oratory where they prayed and the dormitory where a cross marks the spot of Clare’s death. What, one wonders, creates such a living vibration in a place where life was so “daily?” Intention and motivation, I suspect. A famous quote of St. Clare gives a hint of an answer.
There’s an urgency running through the Scripture readings this morning that calls us to recognize this moment. It’s as if we are crouched at the starting line of a race, having registered late, maybe, but waiting for the gun to signal: “GO!” The prophet Joel starts it off with his initial words: Even now, declares the Lord. St. Paul picks up the theme telling us that now is the acceptable time and Psalm 95:8 (the gospel acclamation) chimes in with the familiar line: If today you hear God’s voice…These are the prompts that get us from “READY” to “SET” but what will start us running?
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