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Happy New Year, joy, reboot, slow work of God, Teilhard de Chardin, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, The Wisdom of the Desert, Thomas Merton, trust, vigor
As I opened to my last post to add a new one today, I had to check my calendar to verify that we are already on the fourth day of this new year. I guess I should wish everyone a belated “Happy New Year!” My sister has been home from the hospital since Sunday, the nurse and physical therapists are amazed at her progress and I traveled home yesterday on what appeared to be the least traveled day of the holiday season because of very little traffic and none of the usual slowdowns along the way. The year seems to be flying by already!
So now what? It feels as if a “reboot” is in order. While I looked around a room that I had hoped would be totally de-cluttered and re-arranged by year’s end, I thought of Teilhard de Chardin’s adage: Trust in the slow work of God. Then I sat up a little straighter because of having randomly opened Thomas Merton’s book, The Wisdom of the Desert, in preparation for a February retreat. Here’s what I read:
Abbot Pastor said: If you have a chest full of clothing, and leave it for a long time, the clothing will rot inside it. It is the same with the thoughts in our heart. If we do not carry them out by physical action, after a long while they will spoil and turn bad. (p. 42)
So it looks like today will need to be a time to dive in to the new with vigor and joy at having a new start – even if I have to create it as I go. May it be so with all of us!
Today I am up before even a hint of sunrise, getting ready to travel again to New Hampshire just for today to celebrate the life of Helen Daly, friend and benefactor. Helen, her friends agree, died much too early but gifted the world with a legacy of wisdom. The Sophia Center is just one recipient of grants over the past six years that have seen the creation and continuance of programs for “Wisdom Seekers” far and wide. Before her passing from this world, I was blessed by her light over six years and since I have continued to sense that light that cheers us on in the work we have been blessed to share with others. I invite you who read this blog to give thanks today for Helen and other generous people everywhere who understand the importance of God’s call to seek and serve in the Wisdom Way.
It’s raining again. This week we have had a taste of the destruction that has been rare for us, caused by soaking rains and flash-flooding. It’s as if the earth cannot take any more pain. Having cried too long, her tears now overflow in a mud bath on the streets and structural damage to homes and other buildings near our two rivers and the many outlying creeks. Today the rain feels soft and my desire is to go outside and stand, then walk in it, to listen and accept what is happening, to be washed clean of all distress and the insidious doubt that can invade the soul at times like this.
There is much to say about St. Benedict, whose feast is today, known the world over as the man who brought monasticism to the western world. Although Benedict lived 1,500 years ago his influence is still felt and one might say is being proliferated more broadly than ever before because of a movement called “monasteries without walls.” Lay people who are interested in deepening their spiritual life often turn to The Rule of St. Benedict for guidance and a way to live his principles in secular society.
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.
Here’s a little quote from Thomas Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation that needs to be breathed out one clause at a time to give us a whole day of reflection. See where it takes you.
Yesterday I had one of those mornings when waking early turned into an amazing blessing of silence and recognition. I chose to leave my computer packed away and just sat looking out a giant window in New Hampshire at the mid-point of my journey to Wisdom School. (See Saturday’s post). Fortified with the coffee and an invitation to quiet from by ever-hospitable friend, Bill, I spent an hour reflecting on the feast of Corpus Christi (the Body of Christ) as it appeared to me on the calendar, in nature and in my own self as a cell in that universal body of love. Here’s what I scribbled in pencil at one point so that I would recall the experience – a great beginning to this “wisdom week.”
This morning the psalmist cries out: My soul is thirsting for you, my God! The whole of Psalm 63 is a passionate expression of what it means to be on a spiritual journey and is as relevant today as it was in the lifetime of Jesus or of the Israelites in the desert. Each of us is called, as we wake up to the necessity of relationship with something greater than ourselves, to search for what slakes that thirst. Some of us “go it alone” but most find companions on the way whose desire mirrors our own.
I sit this morning in the quiet moment where nothing stirs except the very energetic birds and where the light came as quickly just now as if someone had flipped a switch to begin the day. Everything is still outside while in my head the thoughts and plans that woke me at 4:30 begin to dissipate so I can notice and embrace the silence…