Be Patient

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Canaanite woman, Israelites, Jesus, keep faith, live the questions, love the questions, Matthew, Numbers, patient, Rainer Maria Rilke, struggle, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

This morning’s readings are about struggle, first of the Israelites in the desert who are convinced that God brought them out of Egypt to die because their situation was discontinuous from the miracle of their escape through the Red Sea. (NM 13 & 14) The Canaanite woman in the gospel presents an opposite view. An outsider, she was willing to approach and then challenge the negative response of Jesus to her cry for help, such that in the end her request was granted. (MT 15:21-28)

Sometimes it’s hard to keep faith when things are difficult and there seems no end to struggle in sight. As often happens for me when I am looking for a “way out” or something that will keep me going, I opened a book this morning to find a quote by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke in his Letters to a Young Poet. It speaks of what I know as successful process as I look back on the life I’ve lived so far, and seems appropriate advice in times of struggle.

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…Do not seek the answers that cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gladly, without even noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

Good Food to You

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bread alone, food, Israelites, Jesus, manna, Matthew, Numbers, psalm 81, The Awakening Tales, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, the spiritual center, wisdom

Everything in today’s readings speaks of food. The Israelites in the desert grumble because instead of fish or meat to eat they have the manna sent from heaven. (NM 11:4-15). Jesus feeds a huge crowd with five loaves and two fish. (MT 14:13-21) Psalm 81 ends with the promise: I myself will feed you from the finest wheat. I will satisfy your longing for earth’s sweetest food, with honey I so carefully extracted from the rock. But it is the verse before the gospel that brings it all together with the lesson I will carry with me through the day. One does not live on bread alone, it says, but on every word that comes forth from the mouth of God. (MT 4:4).

There is a lovely story* familiar to many of our friends and the people who come to our home, the Spiritual Center, for retreats or workshops. Set in a beautiful glen, inhabited by animals and a wise, kindly Wizard, it tells of the day a human comes to the Glen. He arrives just as some of the animals are sharing breakfast at the Crystal Pool. When Fawn approaches him with a greeting of “Good food to you!” the man retorts, “Strange way to say ‘Good morning.'” Fawn replies, “Mornings are always good. It’s food I wish for you, stranger.” Then follows a wonderful exercise where the animals show the man what they mean. At the Crystal Pool, Fawn and Joyhopper, the Rabbit, stand close to the water, first look into each other’s eyes and then into the Crystal Pool saying, “Good food of sweet grass to you, Fawn” and “Good food of young carrots to you, Joyhopper.” The wind stirs the water and miraculously a bunch of young carrots and a pile of sweet grass appear in front of the animals. The man, Alan Stuck, misunderstands the miracle and thinks that he has a way to obtain treasure, going to the pool and commanding, “Jewels!” (Nothing happens.) “Gold,” he yells. (Nothing.) “Steak with all the trimmings!” (No luck.) It takes a lesson from the Indigo Wizard for Alan to understand that it is in generosity and community that one receives the food necessary to live well.

So my wish today is for “Good Food to all.” May the God of wisdom grant us all that we need to make the world a better place.

*The book, The Awakening Tales (book one of The Tales of the Indigo Wizard) is available by writing to hrtcenter12@gmail.com for more information.