Monday, May 6, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Life lives us
We sat and spoke with the women who had gathered. One of them, Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth, listened to us and invited us to stay at her home.
The poetry of Clarence Heller scuds through my own darkened sky. Inside my summer Sunday nap, I hear his quiet voice.
Sometimes I need to close my eyes and rest,
and listen, just be.
When we notice that life lives us, we can relax,
and gratitude colors everything.
Immersed in love, to be loved, to offer love,
to ache because of love, and to rejoice.
We talked about David and Moses in Sunday School, and we also began to reflect a bit about ourselves. I thought David and Moses must have begun as introspective, introverted, intelligent men with a not-so-hidden desire to be invisible. God knew what he was doing. Rather than choose an extraverted soldier full of himself (as He had done with Saul, for example), he chose someone who knew the insides of things, and who wanted to see more, especially something of what God saw.
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts.
Henri Nouwen was such a man, without the crown, without the prophet’s mantle, without the staff that pulled God’s water out of stone. God showed each of them the inside of things. He shows that to any of us who will take time to see.
We can look not so much around things but through them into their center. Through their center we discover the world of spiritual beauty that is more real, has more density, more mass, more energy, and greater intensity than physical matter. And we see that in effect, the beauty of the physical is really a reflection of its inner content.
Beginning with babies, we need not ignore their outer charm, but their beauty calls us deep inside them. Each day, studded with sunrise and sunset, becomes something to breathe in and breathe through. Sunday on the church bench, I sat warmed by the sun, surprised on a day full of clouds, willing myself at first to sit still but then soon with no desire to stand back up. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.
Nouwen knows that’s true.
The central things in life, although spiritually perceptible, remain invisible in large measure and can very easily be overlooked by the inattentive, busy, distracted person that each of us can so readily become.
I think of Jasper’s middle name, carefully chosen by his parents: “Kazushi,” which refers to “a state of stillness where the wind has died down and the waves are calm.” The pond in San Antonio’s Japanese Garden is just such a place. We hurried Americans do our best to get things done quickly, so we can make the short trip to the pond, where the waves are calm.
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
Ahhhh. Why flee? I can breathe a little deeper, let the sun settle on my skin, and not get up quite so quickly from the church bench. Lydia is heading our way, and I hear she will invite us to come weave some purple cloth with her.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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