Of Fruit and Fear

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life, patience, readiness, rules, safe, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, wrong

There is a very rotund, very large groundhog living under our conference hall right now. Lately s/he has a routine of coming out and heading directly for the pear tree in the back yard. S/he doesn’t seem to mind that the pears are still very hard and (I suppose) unripe. I wonder at the quality of this amusing animal’s digestion. We also have an apple tree out there whose fruit is looking quite enticing. One of my housemates is eagerly awaiting the first frost which signals the moment of readiness of the apples for consumption. Since they have already begun to fall to the ground I suggested that they may have defied the usual moment of truth this year – but she tried one yesterday and only needed one bite to know the necessity of following the rules. So I wonder: would the groundhog get a stomach ache if s/he ate an apple today? Would the pears go down easily for us? Otherwise expressed: Does the same rule apply to all fruits and all eaters?

Life is complicated and it’s hard to know all the rules, even if you’ve lived a long time. The choice that we face most days is whether to risk being wrong once in awhile or staying safe by never testing the rules. At issue is our willingness to miss some tasty fruit in order to be sure we never have a stomachache.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Use Your Imagination!

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English, French, grammar, imagination, justice, kindness, kiss, kiss and make up, message, Peace, personification of virtues, psalm 85, rules, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, truth, words

Although English was one of my favorite subjects in school I was never very enamored of grammar until I began teaching French. Now as I try every morning to write sentences that attend to case and tense while trying to avoid dangling participles, etc. I’m grateful for all the rules that have become (almost) second nature to me. This morning I was struck by Psalm 85 where the fanciful personification of virtues got me thinking.

Kindness and truth shall meet; justice and peace shall kiss. Truth shall spring out of the earth and justice shall look down from heaven.

What does Kindness look like, I wonder. A bespectacled grandmother, maybe, who stands tall when Truth enters the room because she knows the importance of engaging him at every turn. The partnering of Justice and Peace is essential for any success on the world stage and a peaceful kiss certainly goes a long way toward settling issues of justice between siblings. “Kiss and make up” has been advice for as long as I can remember. What would they look like at a world conference, these two hoped for conclusions? What colors would they wear? How would they style their hair?

Silly? Perhaps, but it seems that these words need amplification if the underlying virtues are to help us at all these days. What is true justice and how do we achieve it? It seems that we need to keep it close to peace in our hearts even to approach an understanding. What about the infusion of kindness into our truth-telling? It certainly would help when the message is a difficult one to swallow. Sometimes imagination is more useful than concrete, serious thinking. Maybe today is one of those times.

Welcome Laws?

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alert, enlightened, law, Matthew, psalm 19, rules, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

I was captivated this morning by a verse from the Psalm (19) which is one of my favorites because it speaks in the first half of the majesty of the universe. I rarely get past the part that begins, “The heavens proclaim the glory of God…” and sings of the grandeur through verse seven. I suppose (and will investigate later) that the second half of the psalm could be continuing the theme by looking at the stable patterns in the workings of the universe when it speaks of the laws and decrees of the Lord. Nevertheless, before I realized that it was psalm 19 I was reading (from verse 8 to 15) I was taken by the notion that The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The command of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eye. I began to muse on a common response to the word “law” which often, it seems today, is effort toward “getting around” it or at least resisting internally what the law calls us to if we haven’t been part of creating it. Now some of this is more appropriate to a discussion on the everyday “rules” that govern our lives. On the whole though, I’m not sure most of us rejoice in coming up against a law that we need to follow if it entails work or discomfort for us.

When I read the gospel from Matthew 25 about the sheep and the goats it all began to coalesce. Living with the love of God at the center of our hearts we are enabled to see clearly and respond to the needs of those who cross our path. The impulse to reach out to those we see becomes automatic, such that if we were questioned about our acts of charity and justice, we would hardly think of them as such. Rather it would spring from our desire for God and God’s reign to be realized in the world. No hesitation – just doing from our being.

Today I will work (again) toward willingness, asking myself whose hunger I can satisfy today, what thirst I will notice in another, how I might welcome a stranger or companion someone who is ill. Might I even find a key to unlock the prison in which someone sits? Only if my heart is alert and my eye enlightened. May it be so.