It is 6:37 a.m. and still dark outside. It is totally quiet inside and out – the only sound being that of my keyboard. As I wait for the light to come I wonder when the niggling anxiety will cease – inside and out. Today I will go to Albany – a 2 1/2-hour journey from here, the safety of home, the bubble I have lived in for eight months. My only travel has been to the tiny post office in our village and the drive-up window outside at the bank, except for a few antiseptic trips driving people to doctor’s offices and generally waiting outside in the cocoon of my car.
It is a strange feeling – inside and out. I am going to a “long-range planning” meeting with nine of my Sisters in religious community at a time when any sort of planning is tentative at best. We plan for a future that has been on hold now for over seven months – a future full of important projects necessary to our lives in this time of diminishment of numbers. One would think it a futile challenge, but as I begin to see the outline of the trees outside and the sound of my alarm that tells me it is time to wake up, I do.
I hear St. Paul in the lectionary today encouraging the Ephesians, praying for them that God may grant you in accord with the riches of his glory to be strengthened with power through the Spirit in the inner self, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you (we), rooted and grounded in love, may have the strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you (we) may be filled with all the fullness of God. (EPH 3) As I draw breath and strength from those words the psalmist weighs in with the certitude that “the earth is full of the goodness of the Lord. (PS 33)
The birds are awake and singing now. I see the clearly the tree outside and a faint expanse of pink in the sky. I am ready to meet the day and all its potential for me and us – inside and out.
Late yesterday just after I had arrived at the party marking the 85th birthday of my friend, Florence, the skies opened and gave a torrential drink of water to the parched earth. Just before I left an hour later to return to the retreat I was hosting at home, the rain stopped. Sometimes things just happen that way. Had I been home without a group of people wrapping up an afternoon of deep reflection, I would have loved to go outside and let myself be washed by the cooling water falling from the sky, as I symbolically felt the sensation of having all things being made new. I opted instead for the reasonable option of staying dry.
The Sophia Center for Spirituality 