Tags
Beverly Lanzetta, coronavirus, humility, pandemic, slow down, Spiritual Practices & Formation for the Monk Within, The Sophia Center for Spirituality
As I was checking my e-mail this morning I found a message from yesterday that I hadn’t seen. It’s a great follow-on to yesterday’s post about love. The topic is humility. I learned long ago that humility is not beating yourself up and thinking less of yourself but rather is a recognition of who you really are, what capacities you possess and – most importantly – the willingness to embrace of the truth of yourself as a great gift, regardless of what/who you would prefer to be.
During this pandemic that we are all living in, many of us see ourselves as “less” than we thought we were: less energetic, less creative, less useful, less competent… We watch the days go by and the projects we planned either done poorly or not at all. We continue to plan but seem unable to achieve. For most of us it’s more of a “slow-down” than a failure, but we wonder, nevertheless, when we’ll “get back to normal.” A little humility, in the words of Beverly Lanzetta in a forthcoming book, may be helpful.
Humility implies radical trust in divine reality…Humility says, accept the limits of your situation and the fullness of your life the way it is. Humility says, be content with where God is taking you. Be content with what you are given. (Beverly Lanzetta, Spiritual Practices & Formation for the Monk Within, Forthcoming in late fall 2020)
I woke up this morning at around 3:00 and realized about ten minutes later that I was not likely to go back to sleep as my mind had begun ticking off things on an already-made list and things that I needed to add for completion in the next few days. I gave up trying and, in a rare move, got up to read what was left of our “assignment” for the book club meeting tomorrow. I smiled at God’s sense of humor as I read the chapter heading: Intention: Slow Down. Sprinkled throughout the chapters of this book (Life Is A Verb by Patti Digh) there are activities which the author calls challenges. What I read before I was finally able to go back to sleep for two more hours certainly fell under that title. There were two parts to the challenge. I was happy to see the first part because I have recently begun such a practice – at least while I eat – but the second will, I think, be the more difficult process for me. Here is what Patti recommended.
Having set up the coffee last night for the Sisters staying on the guest floor at our Province Center, I was surprised to be the first arriving in the kitchen this morning. I thought someone would have been awake before 6:30…I could hardly click the switch on the coffee maker, however, so glorious was the scene unfolding outside the window. The still darkish dawn sky was splashed with waves of deep magenta, growing brighter by the minute! But there was nothing hurried about the sun’s rise to the top of the hills across the Hudson River in Troy – nor of the coffee maker, I might add…
I’ve been thinking lately, because of recent experiences in a number of situations, of the value of good conversation for deepening understanding and recognition of how similar we are, even in all our diversity. It wasn’t a surprise, therefore, when my copy of Turning To One Another, a book by Margaret Wheatley that I’ve had for years, showed up when I wasn’t looking. The book is subtitled “simple conversations to restore hope to the world.” This morning I read what might be a good reflection for those of us who are preparing to travel – near or far – during this Independence Day holiday time. Here’s some of what she said: