Finding God in All Things
September 22, 2008
Writing about making space for God
conjured up images of serene garden walks,
reading, and speaking softly with others. I
don't remember such a day. I don't like
gardening, I'm a poor reader, I usually talk
loud. I'm usually too busy with things far
removed from the natural and the humane. My
life is filled with telephones, machines that
don't work right deadlines which have passed
without the job being finished, people who
want to talk, cars that are a thousand miles
past due for a tune-up, airplanes to catch or
which haven't arrived on time, conventions to
attend, interviews to conduct, talks or
papers to be written, people to visit.
Making space in the midst of all that is a
trick. Space doesn't happen. Keith
Clark, Capuchin Monk
We become consumers. The surest way to
suppress our ability to understand the
meaning of God and the importance of worship
is to take things for granted. Indifference
to the sublime wonder of living is the root
of sin. Abraham Joshua
Heschel
Those who hurt, are angry and have nothing
left to give, they are my meeting place with
God. Dorothy Day
Earlier this week, I'm standing in line at a
bank.
Not my bank.
The line is long.
I have other places I'd rather be.
It is a small bank, so eavesdropping is unavoidable.
"I can't take it anymore. I swear to God," a woman is telling a friend, her tone exasperated. "I just can't take it."
I'm waiting for her to elaborate, but behind me, a woman on a cell phone (in a tone of voice not recommended for small spaces) is saying, "Call me now. NO, I SAID NOW! I mean it! This is urgent."
Two other women in line are talking, "If he tells me that again, I'm not going to put up with it."
This is better than reality TV, but I am now uncomfortable, not knowing how to process the tension in the air. Of course, it's not my bank, so maybe this is "vent-while-in-line-day."
What I do know is that I had other places to be, and other things to do, and my own aggravation escalates. Whoever said, "there are no unsacred moments," was not in this bank-teller-line, on this day.
I'm not a happy camper now, and certainly not in any mood for a spiritual reverie of any kind. Although (and this is the truth), I decided to try to practice what I preach. I closed my eyes, settled my thoughts, you know, tried to create a mini-Sabbath moment. Which worked until the man behind me poked me and said, "Hey! Are you going to move or what? You're holding up the line."
We all have days like this.
Sometimes, too many days like this.
Here's the problem. This is the kind of thing that makes me compartmentalize my life. I know that there are places where I can find or see or experience the sacred (or know God's presence), and then, there is the rest of my life. You know, the noisy, the hectic, the annoying, the clamor and the yammering of imbeciles. If I want to find the sacred, it is certainly far away from here. But then, in the bank queue, I wasn't looking for God, I was just trying to cash an insurance check.
There is certainly a precedent for removing oneself from the clamor. Mother Teresa said that we need to find God, "and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence."
Her viewpoint was confirmed this past weekend. I spent three days at The CASA (http://www.thecasa.org/), a Franciscan Renewal Center in Phoenix, Arizona. A retreat space designed and specifically set aside for slowing down. Walking the grounds somehow takes the urgent out of your step and re-calibrates your breathing. While at the Csas, it is easy for me to believe that there are no unsacred moments.
It is easy to see the fingerprints of God.
Camelback Mountain stands against a watercolor blue sky. Absent of trees it's surface is moon-like, a rust colored rocky outcropping. In the pre-dawn light the sun hits the mountain crevices, and the red is the color of rubies, as if shellacked on the stone. Yes, I tell myself, this is what it is all about.
Here I am fully engaged.
In this moment.
Because I am, literally, paying attention to my life.
However. I will miss the point entirely if I dismiss all of the days I stand in hassled bank lines.
It is easy for me to dismiss the "bank-line-moments," and head for the retreat center. I find sanctuary there. And that is a good thing.
But here's what I learned. I know I will live an impoverished life if I compartmentalize my life (or numb myself to those parts of my life I find less than holy or enriching). Someone once suggested that if we are looking for god, if might help to look lower, to the much more modest, ordinary days of our life.
I read an amazing quote. Did you know that Fyodor Dostoyevsky (author of The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment) lived his life plagued with epilepsy, episodes of mental problems and periods of great poverty? Even with and through all of that, this is what he writes, Love all of God's creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light! Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. And once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it ceaselessly, more and more every day. And you will at last come to love the whole world with an abiding, universal love.
To find God in the bank line?
Easier said than done, at least by my way of thinking.
But Dostoyevsky is on to something.
So I return home from my retreat space. And I know this: I will take that sacred space with me back to the bank. Because you never know what fingerprints of God you might see there.
Not my bank.
The line is long.
I have other places I'd rather be.
It is a small bank, so eavesdropping is unavoidable.
"I can't take it anymore. I swear to God," a woman is telling a friend, her tone exasperated. "I just can't take it."
I'm waiting for her to elaborate, but behind me, a woman on a cell phone (in a tone of voice not recommended for small spaces) is saying, "Call me now. NO, I SAID NOW! I mean it! This is urgent."
Two other women in line are talking, "If he tells me that again, I'm not going to put up with it."
This is better than reality TV, but I am now uncomfortable, not knowing how to process the tension in the air. Of course, it's not my bank, so maybe this is "vent-while-in-line-day."
What I do know is that I had other places to be, and other things to do, and my own aggravation escalates. Whoever said, "there are no unsacred moments," was not in this bank-teller-line, on this day.
I'm not a happy camper now, and certainly not in any mood for a spiritual reverie of any kind. Although (and this is the truth), I decided to try to practice what I preach. I closed my eyes, settled my thoughts, you know, tried to create a mini-Sabbath moment. Which worked until the man behind me poked me and said, "Hey! Are you going to move or what? You're holding up the line."
We all have days like this.
Sometimes, too many days like this.
Here's the problem. This is the kind of thing that makes me compartmentalize my life. I know that there are places where I can find or see or experience the sacred (or know God's presence), and then, there is the rest of my life. You know, the noisy, the hectic, the annoying, the clamor and the yammering of imbeciles. If I want to find the sacred, it is certainly far away from here. But then, in the bank queue, I wasn't looking for God, I was just trying to cash an insurance check.
There is certainly a precedent for removing oneself from the clamor. Mother Teresa said that we need to find God, "and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence."
Her viewpoint was confirmed this past weekend. I spent three days at The CASA (http://www.thecasa.org/), a Franciscan Renewal Center in Phoenix, Arizona. A retreat space designed and specifically set aside for slowing down. Walking the grounds somehow takes the urgent out of your step and re-calibrates your breathing. While at the Csas, it is easy for me to believe that there are no unsacred moments.
It is easy to see the fingerprints of God.
Camelback Mountain stands against a watercolor blue sky. Absent of trees it's surface is moon-like, a rust colored rocky outcropping. In the pre-dawn light the sun hits the mountain crevices, and the red is the color of rubies, as if shellacked on the stone. Yes, I tell myself, this is what it is all about.
Here I am fully engaged.
In this moment.
Because I am, literally, paying attention to my life.
However. I will miss the point entirely if I dismiss all of the days I stand in hassled bank lines.
It is easy for me to dismiss the "bank-line-moments," and head for the retreat center. I find sanctuary there. And that is a good thing.
But here's what I learned. I know I will live an impoverished life if I compartmentalize my life (or numb myself to those parts of my life I find less than holy or enriching). Someone once suggested that if we are looking for god, if might help to look lower, to the much more modest, ordinary days of our life.
I read an amazing quote. Did you know that Fyodor Dostoyevsky (author of The Brothers Karamazov and Crime and Punishment) lived his life plagued with epilepsy, episodes of mental problems and periods of great poverty? Even with and through all of that, this is what he writes, Love all of God's creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God's light! Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. And once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it ceaselessly, more and more every day. And you will at last come to love the whole world with an abiding, universal love.
To find God in the bank line?
Easier said than done, at least by my way of thinking.
But Dostoyevsky is on to something.
So I return home from my retreat space. And I know this: I will take that sacred space with me back to the bank. Because you never know what fingerprints of God you might see there.
Poems / Prayers
My space is the world created and redeemed by God. God is in this true world, not "only" and restrictively a prisoner in the monastery. It is crucially important for the monastery to abandon the myth of itself as a purely sacred space-it is a disaster for its real "sacredness." Here I see my task is to get rid of the last vestiges of a pharisaical division between the sacred and the secular, to see that the whole world is reconciled to God in Christ.
Thomas Merton
What I Have Learned So Far
Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
Looking into the shining world? Because, properly
Attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just the
Ideal, the sublime, and the hold, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don't think so.
All summations have a beginning, all effect has a
Story, all kindness begins with the sown seed.
Thought buds toward radiance. The gospel of
Light is the crossroads of -indolence, or action.
Be ignited, or be gone.
Mary Oliver
If there is light in the soul,
There will be beauty in the person.
If there is beauty in the person,
There will be harmony in the house.
If there is harmony in the house,
There will be order in the nation.
If there is order in the nation,
There will be peace in the world.
Chinese Proverb
Peace,
Terry Hershey
