Wednesday, June 5, 2024
Memorial of Saint Boniface, Bishop and Martyr
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Mastering our tools as co-creators
Ideas from Peter Mommsen:
Crowd out the virtual with the real; be present in the physical world. Give the bulk of your attention to the people who are near you in person. Spend time outdoors; watch sunsets and moonrises. Plant vegetables, go birdwatching or fishing or hunting. Raise puppies and rabbits and pigs.
We are called co-creators, but we get ahead of God over and over, doing His work and then realizing, “Oh, yeah, we can’t do that.” Sometimes that realization comes too late. And it comes, usually, along with the realization that we are not immortal. Because how can I embrace my mortality until it hits me in the head? I often have trouble embracing simple sorrow. But Henri Nouwen reminds me poignantly:
Celebration is only possible through the deep realization that life and death are never found completely separate. Celebration can only really come about where fear and love, joy and sorrow, tears and smiles can exist together.
There can be tears after weddings and smiles after funerals. We can indeed make our sorrows, just as much as our joys, a part of our celebration of life in the deep reality that life and death are not opponents but do, in fact, kiss each other at every moment of our existence.
I think of how I mostly communicate with others, via text or if necessary via voice. Occasionally I see someone in person. It’s great that we can see and talk with our family and friends around the world. It’s not great that we do this most of the time virtually, rather than “real-ly.”
Paul and Timothy did not have cellphones.
Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God for the promise of life in Christ Jesus, to Timothy, my dear child: grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
I love having a computer in my pocket, and I use it all the time. I love even more how I am learning to remember the words of Bartimaeus, before I go blind. “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.”
I am grateful to God, whom I worship with a clear conscience as my ancestors did, as I remember you constantly in my prayers, night and day.
In The Way of a Pilgrim, a spiritual teacher tells his student, who wants to pray continuously as Paul instructed the Thessalonians, to pray “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” Pray it a thousand times and come back tomorrow. Pray it five thousand times and come back tomorrow …
One who accustoms himself to this appeal experiences as a result so deep a consolation and so great a need to offer the prayer always, that he can no longer live without it, and it will continue to voice itself within him of its own accord.
This “Jesus Prayer” changes me from the inside out. It transforms me from a “virtual” to a “real.” I might even raise a few puppies or rabbits or pigs.
For this reason, I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God that you have.
(2 Timothy 1, Psalm 123, John 11, Mark 12)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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