Sunday, June 9, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
First step is to pause
I heard you in the garden, but I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.
I think this experience of Adam, alone in his dis-grace, broke the heart of Yahweh, his father. But God made him clothing and did not leave Adam naked or alone. I don’t know whether Adam could be grateful for this.
Clarence Heller writes about how he sees the second scene, which he calls the thread of goodness, after Adam has been re-graced by God. This may not have happened in the Garden, but it has surely happened to us, to Adam’s descendants across the earth, in the days following Jesus’ sacrifice for us:
Thread
What helped us once, we pass along…
a prayer shawl, a recipe, a joke, a hug.
Consenting to the thread of goodness is heart-warming.
And yet, I want more.
I want to give away more,
everything in fact, to you.
We need poems along with acts of grace and giving every day of our lives. When we encounter brutality, hatred, and careless selfishness from each other, we need the opposite experience waiting beyond the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, waiting as an obviously unconditional gift of God.
Even when we don’t grasp this gift which is all around us, mostly unacknowledged or experienced, it isn’t going anywhere. Cynthia Bourgeault says “Mercy is the water in which we swim. Mercy is the length and breadth and height and depth of what we know of God—and the light by which we know it.”
If this is true, and it is, then God enriches our lives beyond anything or anyone which might endanger or remove our comfort, our family, or our physical lives.
So making way and taking time to put myself in position to receive this gift becomes more than just a hobby, more than a habit, more than a moment now and then, I want to be in place always.
“Jesus, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Pray ten thousand times and come back tomorrow. The prayer gets in your bloodstream, metronomic as a heartbeat, resting inside you, allowing you to rest in God.
Here’s an excerpt from Christian Leano’s story in the National Catholic Reporter which surely would charm Wendell Berry or Annie Dillard or Mary Oliver.
As I rested in silence and stillness, God’s love was palpable through this embrace of nature’s beauty. I could feel my body relaxing, as I felt myself becoming a part of the natural surroundings instead of being a mere observer, or even consumer, of the beauty. I, too, was a creature, fitting into this interconnected web of life.
Pope Francis says in his encyclical Laudato Si’, “An integral ecology includes taking time to recover a serene harmony with creation … contemplating the Creator who lives among us and surrounds us, whose presence ‘must not be contrived but found, uncovered.’ “
This invitation to recover a sense of harmony with creation seems simple — especially when immersed in nature — but not easy. For as Francis also says, “Nature is filled with words of love, but how can we listen to them amid constant noise, interminable and nerve-wracking distractions, or the cult of appearances?”
The first step in contemplation is to pause. Again simple, but not easy. By pausing, we make space to connect with our intention, our heart’s desire, or better yet God’s desire for us, in the moment. It does not necessarily mean physically stopping, but simply making space to connect with what matters.
No matter what else, this is the only part of life that lasts.
We are not discouraged; rather, although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen; for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.
(Genesis 3, Psalm 130, 2 Corinthians 4, John 12, Mark 3)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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