Monday, August 22, 2022
Memorial of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary
           (click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Mother Mary, come to me
Grace to you and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
So, the guy who wrote the Christian bestseller The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry (John Mark Comer) suggests that in the simple life there is no need for organization. “If you have enough stuff to organize, you’ve got too much stuff. Keep it simple.”
That got my attention. I wonder if Margaret and I have that kind of life in our future. I think we like the idea. I think it is very difficult. We’ll have to see. We subtract, but then we add. And we aren’t in any hurry. At least that’s one good, simple thing.
Here’s a haiku I wrote on August 16:
Choose a simple life
Read just one book at a time
And think just one thought.
We talked about finding a way back to the Garden of Eden in our Sunday School class yesterday. Start with five minutes. Do nothing – just sit (or walk). Picture a place of peace for yourself (kataphatic, with images), or just close your eyes and imagine a blank wall (apophatic, without images). So I sat on the edge of my bed in the afternoon and did the apophatic thing. For five minutes. My mind swam with thoughts, plans, activities, ideas, pictures. It always does.
The payoff comes later, when I calm down in an almost mysterious way. I’m sure the two experiences are connected.
This is evidence of the just judgment of God, so that you may be considered worthy of the Kingdom of God for which you are suffering. We always pray for you.
At the moment I’m reading (or listening to) six books. Maybe I can finish them and then start on just one? I just added two more books to my reading list for the month (I don’t want to forget them).
There is no hurry.
So don’t hurry.
In First Things, columnist Ephraim Radner talks about children. We’re with Jasper today. I hope children are near you too.
Children mirror God’s perfections insofar as they “just are”: “I am who I am,” the Lord tells Moses. Adults mirror God in this way as well, but with visible difficulty. Like felled trees, adults have been cut, stripped, smoothed, and inserted into the social machinery of human devising.
Children mirror God well, not because they are more perfect than adults, but because their lives are unobstructed by adult accretions. It was Therese of Lisieux who showed us that large vases with large flowers are no better than small vases with small flowers.
Jesus told the little children to come to him. My favorite image of Jesus involves myself as a child, hugging his legs through his robe while he sits on the edge of a village well. Today marks the end of an octave celebrating his mom Mary. I think she can help me too, now that I am looking away from the confusions of adulthood and cherishing childlikeness.
 … Wordsworth got it right when he wondered how one might describe the mind of children, whose thoughts seem to have “no beginning.” A child’s growth in learning, tasting, seeing, smelling, thinking, speaking, and finally (most wonderfully for Wordsworth) imagining … all these enacted capacities emerge from something mysterious and lead into the unfenced landscape of divine giving.
(2 Thessalonians 1, Psalm 96, John 10, Matthew 23)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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