But now we are well into Advent which is one of my favourite times of the 'religious' year. Advent talks about someone coming who will make a difference in our lives. Someone who is love and who cherishes each of us with all our gifts and meannesses and worries and burdens.
I have just been re-reading (for the umpteenth time) Sr Wendy Beckett's beautiful book 'Sr Wendy on Prayer' (Continuum, 2006)and found a couple of passages I wanted to share. I think they are difficult because they leave us a bit vulnerable but I think she means to challenge us to a spiritual adulthood . She is talking about 'does prayer work?':
Almost invariably when one talks about prayer, people think it is about asking God for something...It may seem to us we are asking God to give us something - good weather, good health, good exam results - and that of course, is our explicit intention. Since God is not a puppet-master who will stretch out and change the weather, adjust the cells of our body or jiggle with the examiners markings, and, at a deeper level we know this; the essential nature of our plea is not that God will change the real world, but will strengthen us to bear the impact of it.
She goes on to say: Life is unpredictable. Tragedy and comedy come down upon us without warning...We would like God to change these stresses. This will not happen. What will happen is God's support in making everything in our lives a means of deepening our capacity to be human. Not God the puppet-master ... but a God who has resolutely refused to people the world with puppets. God has paid us the compliment of creating us as free and intelligent,, able to choose and reject and look clearly at the truth.
I find myself reacting to this strongly because I want a God who can save me from myself in an almost physical way. And yet, I am coming to recognize that it is because of my ability to choose, my ability to let suffering transform me, my ability to try to let other people be themselves that I have the chance to grow up and be as fully human as I can be.
I think of the images we use at Christmas. There is is the image of a small, vulnerable baby - there is a chance here that this special child might never grow up, might be hurt or killed before the time of his mission. That is an amazing thing to me. Then even at Christmas there are shadowings of the suffering and darkness of human hubris to come so it is not all light and joy but a very human journey that is beginning. In this man's life we are shown how to live fully in our vulnerability and gifts.
Finally, one of my other teachers has this to say about our human journey:
We would all like to have the time to sit and appreciate the stillness that comes from doing nothing. But if we were given the time, would we be able to be still and quiet? That is the problem with many of us. We complain that we don't have the time to rest, to enjoy being here. But we are used to always doing something. We have no capacity to rest and do nothing...We are workaholics. ...That is why learning how to be right where we are without doing anything is a very important practice, as well as a very challenging one. (Thich Nhat Hanh:Keeping the Peace)
Wouldn't it be a wonderful way to celebrate this season of gift and joy if we could just be present to each moment with our families, our friends, our life's journey and not let any moment go by without living it as fully as we possibly can?
No comments:
Post a Comment