Slow Down; Wake Up!

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Book of Hours, Entering the Silence, God, grace, mind, scattered, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton, thoughts

My mind feels this morning like oil on a frying pan that has heated enough to be jumping around like the Mexican jumping beans of my childhood. The thoughts are going as fast as the ticker tape headlines across the bottom of a television screen and, because of their speed, are gone before I can latch onto their meaning at all! So I open Thomas Merton’s Book of Hours for Thursday and find this description of me:

My mind is scattered among things, not because of my work, but because I am not detached and I do not attend first of all to God. On the other hand, I do not attend to Him because I am so absorbed in all these objects and events. I have to wait on His grace. But how stubborn and slow my nature is. And how I keep confusing myself and complicating things for myself by useless twisting and turning. What I need most of all is the grace to really accept God as He gives Himself to me in every situation. (Entering the Silence, p.199)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Going Away

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liten, pray, prayer, psalm 102, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, thoughts, travel

Half paying attention to Psalm 102 in today’s lectionary texts, I began to hear it in a familiar chant: O Lord, hear my prayer, O Lord hear my prayer. When I call, answer me. O Lord, hear my prayer, O Lord hear my prayer. Come and listen to me. As I was moving on to the gospel I finally came to consciousness with a two-pronged question: What are the things that I (usually) pray for? and does my approach to God take such a hurried (and seemingly demanding) tone? In one translation, the way the psalmist ends the prayer is that God answer speedily. I wonder how often my “Amen” is  followed by “Thank you,” or if God needs to wait until the request is fulfilled to hear my gratitude.

Today I’m beginning a long awaited ten-day vacation trip. It’s too late to pray for good weather. The wind is blowing and it is clear that the rain will be constant all day. What should I pray for then? Safe travel, certainly, and maybe connections with new people in my life as well as interesting and even exciting adventures. (I have a raincoat and umbrella, after all, so need not waste God’s time with the weather.) I’m really leaning toward openness to all that will be part of this time away as well as acceptance and gratitude for everything.

In that spirit, I ask that you pray me along. I spent time yesterday choosing quotes from just a couple of sources that seemed to me worthy as “thoughts for the day” and will let Mary Pat, our website wizard, post them as she will. So thank you for your prayer over these days (and your perseverance with this blog). I’ll be back to wish everyone a Happy Easter!

 

Joseph the Dreamer

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angel, assurance, dream, Emmanuel, faith, Mary, Matthew, message, St. Joseph, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, thoughts

Often when I wake up in the morning I know I’ve been dreaming but I rarely have any idea of the content of the dreams. Sometimes I feel as if I have been very busy in the night and I wonder what I have been working out during sleep, but my mind usually goes quickly in other directions so I hope that my soul knows any message that I was supposed to hear. I am confident that if God wanted me to know something of import in a dream, it would remain clear enough on a conscious level for me to grasp it upon awakening – but perhaps I should revisit my “Awakening the Dreamer” materials (a self-taught course from long ago). I wouldn’t want to miss anything…

These thoughts were occasioned by the story of Joseph in today’s gospel and by a conversation with nine women a week ago as we reflected together on the Incarnation. I was asking their opinions on Joseph’s state of mind and heart when he learned that Mary was pregnant…and then after he was visited by an angel in a dream (MT 1:18-24). Our compassion for Joseph was great. We listed shock, helplessness, betrayal, love, disappointment, loneliness, compassion…and more as our thoughts of what it must have been like for him. We concluded that it would be difficult for us who live in such a different culture to apprehend all that he faced even after his dream directing him not to “divorce Mary quietly” but rather to take her into his home. Neither he nor Mary could possibly have fully understood what was happening. It was, we decided, his love for Mary and his trust in God that allowed him to move forward as he did.

And Scripture offers one more point of affirmation. In speaking of the child to be born, the angel echoed the message of the prophet Isaiah – a message that Joseph had surely known since his early youth. Both texts tell us that a virgin will conceive and bear a son and they shall name him Emmanuel. And Joseph likely knew, as the angel reminded him, that Emmanuel means God is with us. With this assurance, and our faith as assent, the way forward – for us as for Joseph – becomes possible.

If Only…

Tags

coffee, gladness, noise, offering, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, thinking, thoughts

This morning the calendar in my head began ticking off events of the day even before my feet touched the floor. When I sat down, having retrieved my coffee and my eye glasses, just for a change I opened the book entitled Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God. Here is what I read:

If only for once it were still. If the “not quite right” and the “why this” could be muted, and the neighbor’s laughter, and the static my senses make – if all of it didn’t keep me from coming awake – then in one vast thousandfold thought I could think you up to where thinking ends. I could possess you, even for the brevity of a smile, to offer you to all that lives, in gladness.

What a lovely thought with which to bless this day!