Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 27, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Being here, now
I noticed I no longer have any room for wanting things to be different.
Nature especially, including the weather this day,
is so very rich and marvelous,
and beautiful and alive,
and interwoven
that each day I welcome what is
as what is welcomes me as I am.
I am beginning to wonder if I still have a favorite season.
I noticed that I am more grateful than I ever imagined I could be
for this life,
my life as it has been and now is,
and I realize that gratitude has the power to crowd everything else out.
Couple weeks ago we ate at Perry’s Steakhouse, a fine dining establishment with three $ signs next to its name on Google Maps. We were there at 10:30 am on a beautiful (hot) Friday morning to get in on their $19 four-inch pork chop special, served only on Friday, only until they run out of chops, only until 5 pm, when the usual $$$ prices kick back in. Our server Lou (a high-functioning smiling INFJ) became a friend for 90 minutes.
We ate a sumptuous lunch in an extravagantly over-the-top décor, surrounded by lots of others, mostly young, eating their own chops. Even the water tasted great. We had a wonderful time. In due course, we headed back out the door, and the heat hit us like it always does, like a blast furnace that has been at top temperature for over 50 straight days.
I will summon my servant and clothe him with your robe. I will place the key of the House of David on his shoulder; what he opens, no one shall shut. What he shuts, no one shall open. I will fix him like a peg in a sure spot, in a place of honor.
I thought of bringing a penniless, maybe homeless, person here … inviting him or her off the street on the way to the restaurant. No dress code, opportunity for a fancy meal, out of the heat for a couple of hours … why not? If I were a poor man, would I say yes?
Of course I would. But as we walked out, I imagined our new friend walking out with us, and thought again of how he might feel now.
A yo-yo hits me right between the eyes, my moment of cool luxury faded away – snap your fingers, just like that. They’ll drop me off in a few minutes, back again to hit the streets, stand in the sun all day, hold up my sign, occasionally walk back and forth between the cars, grateful for dollar bills or fives, uncertain at the possibility of holding down a job, nowhere to call an address. “Even 25 cents helps!”
It’s one thing to live in the moment of luxury, another to live in the moment of heat, humility and exhaustion. Which one could I call suffering?
Maybe both? Maybe neither?
I noticed that I am more grateful than I ever imagined I could be
for this life,
my life as it has been and now is,
and I realize that gratitude has the power to crowd everything else out.
No, I think, this is not a trick. Neither the fancy nor the fallen, neither the kind comfort of air conditioning nor the blazing heat, neither the good nor the bad, all are only what they are. There is a time for every season under heaven.
The Lord is exalted, yet the lowly he sees, and the proud he knows from afar. Your kindness, O Lord, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.
(Isaiah 22, Psalm 138, Romans 11, Matthew 16)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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