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compromise, excuses, God, gratitude, inertia, intention, Lynn Bauman, meditation, praise, psalm 96, refreshed, The Sophia Center for Spirituality
Sometimes it’s just the vocabulary of a line or two that snaps us open to possibility. Occasionally there is a convergence of small events that sparks a new knowing. Let me give this morning’s example.
In the semi-darkness of the kitchen as I poured my coffee, Sister Paula mentioned yesterday’s blog and the essential nature of what Dave Peters had written about intention that I had quoted. Ten minutes later, settled in my chair looking out at a tree stripped of any sign of life and then back at a blank computer screen, I picked up and read Lynn Bauman’s enthusiastic translation of today’s lectionary psalm.
Come sing to God, O earth, sing out this song anew. And bless God’s holy name in praise, for day by day we are renewed, restored, refreshed again by glory’s light. Proclaim good news among the nations of the earth, tell all the peoples everywhere God’s work, God’s ways, the wonders that God does…This is your God, bring all you have and offer it in honor of that sacred name. (Ps 96: 1-3, 8)
At that moment I recognized that I had been moving on “automatic pilot,” slipping deeper and deeper into a place of inertia. I didn’t need to search for explanations, blaming the weather or the political climate or anything external. I just knew that the discipline of intention had somehow leaked out of me and left me in that state. As I resumed reading the psalm something in me began to lift and let me know that today needs to be different.
O, heavens rejoice with fullest joy. O, earth express your deepest praise. O, oceans roar in satisfaction and delight, and lands from sea to sea join in. You trees on earth and mighty forests deep, shout out to welcome God’s return. For God has come to us as fairest judge to settle all our wrongs with right. (vs. 11-13)
No compromises today will be tolerated. No excuses will be good enough to give in. I’m due on my meditation mat right now, then to the shower and soon to work, all with determination and deep gratitude.
I believe that I understand at this moment what Thomas Merton wrote at dawn on a day a half-century ago about waking up. It is totally silent inside my house; everyone is sleeping still or again. (The coffee is made so someone was up before sunrise.) Outside is a different story. The mourning doves punctuate the conversation that is constant and loud – some would say cacophonous – among all the other birds large and small. And through it all the rooster reigns, splitting the silence with a voice that carries to the river and back again calling us all to wakefulness. “It is like the first morning of the world,” Merton writes, “when Adam, at the sweet voice of Wisdom, awoke from nonentity and knew her…” Only in silence, I think, is it possible to have such an experience. And so I will dress and go into the day, carrying with me the pure sounds of praise in the natural world, hoping to know the wakefulness that is available to me this day.
Today’s lectionary offers us the shortest of psalms for response to the first reading. Ancient Songs Sung Anew gives a good idea for a spiritual practice using this text, saying that since it is one of the most universal in its meaning, “it could rightly be said by almost any person from any nation on earth.” Here’s the psalm, the challenge and the rest of the commentary.
Sometimes virtual travel is almost as good as being there. So it was last evening when a large rowdy band of Christians walked up a hill in Stonington, Maine and was transported from St. Mary’s Church to the chapel at Taizé, France to worship God in song. Not unlike Stonington, Taizé is a tiny town with a stable population of just under 200 people. in the summer, however, over 100,000 people, most of them young pilgrims, descend on Taizé to sing and serve in what becomes for them a spiritual homecoming.
Sometimes when life feels very complicated I like to find some simplicity somewhere. This morning, since light had already arrived at this task before I did, I looked up and saw that my prayer plant had found a way to untangle herself from the tight configuration her leaves had been living in since I transplanted her a few weeks ago. She seemed happy to spread her arms in praise. That moment was enough to call me to do the same.
I come late to this task this morning. Perhaps it was the cold that kept me sleeping until the shocking hour of just before eight o’clock! The temperature continues to hover around zero degrees and warnings of frostbite because of wind still make the national news. I feel rather stuck here in my chair with the only thought being that of the impending turn of the calendar. Today is not the last day of the year; that reality dawns with tomorrow but seems all around me now in shadow. Psalm 96 calls me to praise but I feel like a person on a diving board who isn’t sure of how to swim in the water that awaits me.
Every once in awhile I ask myself if writing this blog is still worth the time and energy it takes to do it. At those times – and in between as well – I look at the statistics. Yes, I can tell how many people read what I write each day and once in awhile someone leaves a comment about what s/he has read. In addition, there is a way to ascertain where readers live – by country. That is the most amazing part of this endeavor as it shows me the reach of the “worldwide web.” Who would have thought that someone in Norway and/or Azerbaijan would be reading my simple morning musings! I generally remain unfazed by all of this information but occasionally realize I am worrying when the bar graph shows a dip or the number on the blog page says someone stopped “following.” Those are the moments when I usually hear gratitude from someone – especially someone I don’t know – who leaves a supportive comment and I breathe a sigh of relief.
When I was teaching school, this used to be an important day for me as it still is for many folks. The Wednesday after Labor Day sees our young people returning to school after their long summer vacation. It isn’t the same everywhere in our country. In some places, school has been in session for weeks but in those places dismissal for the summer also happens earlier, primarily because of the heat, I think. Right now it seems that some young people will not return to their schools at all this year; the schools are no longer habitable because of Hurricane Harvey. What will become of them, I wonder, for many reasons. Some will likely be home-schooled. Some may be shuttled to other locations. That happened in my own town after a flood in 2011. A Catholic parish school that had been closed and used for other parish functions was given back its identity for two years while a new school was built. Will the youth of Texas be so lucky as to find schooling together with their familiars?
In the “good old days” when I was young and eager – especially in the novitiate, but also in the convent at my first teaching assignment where I lived in a group of 21 Sisters – life was very structured and predictable. The “horarium” (schedule) of the days was built around times of prayer, teaching school, meals and community sharing time – known in the novitiate at least as “recreation,” a.k.a. the hour after supper when we relaxed and talked to one another while knitting or listening to music or some such simple activity before preparing schoolwork for the next day. Saturdays were set aside for cleaning and other charges (read: household tasks) or meetings and the occasional planning time for community celebration days.
I love the feast that we celebrate today: the Visitation of Mary to her kinswoman, Elizabeth. This was no “stopping ’round for tea” visit. Mary traveled “to the hill country” and stayed for three months. Elizabeth was a woman past child-bearing age – whatever that meant in those long-ago days. In her 30s, perhaps, and probably concerned since she had heretofore been unable to conceive. Mary was just a teenager, and likely frightened by the process of carrying a child. For both of them this “favor” wrought by God was what many would have called “hard grace.” On a human level, how lucky they were to have each other! We speculate that Elizabeth was further along in her pregnancy so it must have been a relief to have Mary around to help her. The Scriptures intimate that Mary had rushed off to Elizabeth soon after receiving the message from God that she was pregnant. Her comfort would likely have been an older woman, who obviously loved her, to lean on and share with as she interiorized what was happening to her body and her life. Such a great story!