Shining Spirit

Br. David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, introduces us to the term “religiousness” in his 2023 book: “You Are Here: Key Words for Life Explorers.” He writes: “That we have to interact with unfathomable, inexhaustible, unstoppable life is the basic fact of our human existence. The human mind is by its very nature bent on diving into mystery, on understanding it, and on guiding our actions based on that understanding.” This, he continues, is “the primal religious feeling” which he calls religiousness. We all have it and we express it through a wide variety of “religions” or belief systems. Religiousness is common to all human beings: religions are the ways we live it out.

I find this further explanation helpful. Compare religiousness “with a huge underground reservoir from which a multitude of wells draw water. At different moments in history, the founder of a religious tradition comes along and digs a new well. The wells may differ widely from each other, according to the personality of the one who built it, the given circumstances of the place and its people, and their needs at this historic moment. We can enjoy the resulting differences between the wells if we remember that from each flows one and the same water.” One reservoir, many wells, same water.

How do you think our religious landscape would change if we accepted this idea? If we valued the things that unite us, ultimately one God of all, one Source filling many wells, instead of defining the uniqueness of each well?

In an attempt to decipher some scribbled notes, these things emerged:

Some things change and some things don’t. The trick in life is to figure out which is which. Locked down rigidity narrows life to a razor’s edge. Anything goes often abandons principle. Discerned wisdom is never in the half-priced aisle.

Some things are worth fighting for, but some things aren’t. Not every fire is three-alarm. Thinking like a child, reasoning like a child, acting like a child is for children. Some things have to go in order for new things to grow.

It takes courage to live by faith, not to talk about it, but to live by it. Talk is cheap. Faith costs. Some of us are great conversationalists.

It has been said that fighting the riptide current is a sure way to lose your life. But, if you float with the current instead of fighting it, there’s a good chance you’ll be around to swim another day. One way is struggle; the other way is surrender. Life is not just sink or swim…it’s also float.

The great river, wide and deep, that runs to the sea is fed by many little streams, each bringing its contribution of water. By the time the river breaks into the sea, many waters have become one and the sea welcomes its return.

Just because it tastes good, it may not be good for you. Just because everybody does it, that doesn’t make it right. In order to be yourself, you have to know yourself.

Deciding is not the same as discerning. I decide; the Spirit and I discern. Big difference.

Scribbled notes are sometimes revealing, if you can still read your writing. Press on into this good day. Make some notes.

I have wondered, as you have, in a quiet, reflective moment: What is the purpose of my life? Why am I here on planet earth? What am I to be or to do? And I know the traditional answers. If you are secular, it is to be successful. If you are religious, it is to live in praise of and gratitude to your Creator. If you are a humanist, it is to do good for others. If you are entirely self-centered, it is promote yourself over all things. The fundamental problem with the question: What is the purpose of my life? is that it is set in constant, unpredictable, sometimes unwanted change. I am one person, a constant, in the midst of change that often borders on chaos. What if question was: “what is my purpose in this particular moment, this experience, this encounter? What if the question is daily or hourly? Let me give you an example.

Last evening, just before sunset, I drove to the highest point I could find here in the White Mountains in order to catch beautiful photographs of what was to be a spectacular sunset. Well, the sunset itself was a dud. I watched the sun go down without any colorful fanfare, returned to the car to put my camera away, and saw in an entirely different direction the rays of sunset bouncing off giant, puffy white clouds. And for the next few moments, I took photo after photo of this magical scenery. It seems that I missed a sunset in favor of a cloud. But my purpose was to capture a sunset. That’s what I thought originally. Instead I came home with a cloud. What if I stopped asking “what is the purpose of my life” and began asking “what is the meaning of this moment?” By not getting the sunset in the lens of my camera, did
I miss the mark? Fail to accomplish? Go home empty-handed? On the contrary, I got the most beautiful, stunning, remarkable cloud picture possible in that moment.

Consider the possibility of living moments and days instead of months and years. Maybe who I am is not the finished doctoral dissertation at the end of my life. Maybe who I am is a day by day conscious encounter with the mystery of life. It’s not what it all adds up to…it’s what happens right now. You’ve heard the expression: “Think big!” Not for me. It’s the moments that count, and I don’t want to miss any of them. That particular cloud will never happen like that again, and I was there to witness its grandeur. Purpose enough.

Faith, hope, and love. Three important words in the Apostle Paul’s vocabulary. I wonder how many times those words popped up in his preaching, teaching, and personal conversations? Probably quite a few times. I remember them, of course, from the beautifully poetic section of his letter to the church at Corinth, our Chapter 13. “Faith, hope and love remain; and the greatest of these is love.” Called “the love chapter,” I commend it to your reading today. In what some scholars designate as the oldest document in the New Testament, 1 Thessalonians, those three words appear again. Paul tells the Thessalonica church how dear they are to him personally and how he holds them in daily prayer: “We always give thanks to God for all of you”…constantly remembering “your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.” Of course, Paul learned the meaning of these three foundational words when he chose to leave his old way of life and “put on Christ.” Not only did he learn the meaning of the words, Paul demonstrated their practical applications in the lives of people in varied life circumstances.

It’s one thing to know the meaning, the definitions, of the words. It’s quite another to move them from dictionary to daily life, to apply them to specific moments . Faith – Hope – Love. In life’s great joys and certainly in the darkest moments, these words are like stepping stones across the quicksand, foundational pillars that hold the house up, and they work together like this: I have faith: I believe in that which I cannot see; I believe because of the witness of others and the testimony of Jesus, His life and His presence. I have faith, but when that faith starts to wobble, I have hope: Hope for me is one step beyond faith; sometimes when faith is assaulted by life’s brutalities, I hold faith as firmly as I can but I know that hope will withstand attacks of evil, hate, or cruelty. Lord, I have faith, but help me when I struggle. That’s when hope takes over. Against all odds, regardless of the circumstances, in spite of what might be lurking out there, I hope. The rest I leave in the hands of God.

But the greatest of these, love, is the capacity, the choice, to be Christ in the world. Faith may falter; all may seem hopeless, but still…but still I can love, for it is in loving that faith and hope are resuscitated, revived, renewed. I believe those who love out of tender hearts and grace-filled spirits are as close to the heart of God as those bursting with faith and hope. “The greatest of these is Love…” Paul’s own admission and his antidote to faltering faith or hopelessness.

I write this to anyone who cannot get beyond the eternal struggle between faith and reason, someone whose faith suffers because “it just doesn’t make sense,” to one who finds faith futile. Hope. Even if faith doesn’t make sense, seems out of date, is illogical or irrational, hope for the good. Hope for that which you know is intuitively right, fundamentally good. A waste of time? No. Hope is the middle ground between faith and love. Hope is a bridge that moves us to the ultimate expression of life, which is love. You don’t need faith or hope in order to love as Christ loved. Just decide to do it. Do it for the feeling love produces; do it to get a glimpse of joy or gratitude; do it for any self-serving reason you want to because love given eventually becomes love received. That’s the mystery, isn’t it. Love given returns to knock on your door, and love eventually brings two friends along…faith and hope. Whether you invite them to stay is up to you. Love is up to God. When we give it, we step into a realm that is beyond our common humanity, bigger than faith or hope, the closest place we know to the fulfillment of life’s meaning.

Short on faith and hope? Do love. Then set two extra plates at the table.

The unspeakable tragedies of flooding in Texas and New Mexico weigh heavy upon our hearts. We join our prayers with the grieving who wait anxiously for information, and we hold close to our hearts those lost in the raging waters, especially the children. In times of joy and laughter, imagination can be a wonderful friend, but in moments like these, imagination conjures up more than our minds and hearts can hold.

Submerged In Sorrow
Sometimes imagination is a horrible companion.
I lock the door, draw the curtains
around my inherent curiosity,
refuse to acknowledge the insistent knocking.
But it will not go away; it feeds on
the bizarre, relishes the possibilities from
the pain and suffering of others.
Imagination, freed from the guidelines
of common courtesy, splashes the canvas
with crimson paint and calls it art.

The faces of parents shielding their children
in the rubble of a Ukranian building.
Sudden flashes of light in the night sky
as the car rumbles over a scarred roadway
in a Gaza village. The feeling of her
heart being ripped out of her body as
her child is yanked from her arms
by the flooding river filled with
debris and death.

For so long I thought imagination always
led to cuddly puppy dogs or riding the
stars through a benevolent universe
or chocolate ice cream on a Sunday afternoon.
But I was wrong.

I hate imagination’s insistence that
overpowers compassion’s limits.
My soul is submerged in sorrow.
The raging rivers of imagination
have swept away the pieces of
my shattered heart.

Who knows the secrets of the great deep?
The hiding places of ancient life still unknown
to the human eye? The outer reaches of space
are not the only discoveries yet to be made.
You and I play on the beaches with buckets and
shovels, sandcastle makers who watch the tides
roll in and out, churning and smoothing,
churning and smoothing, fashioning its own art while
laying low what we thought indestructible.

Who knows the thoughts, the mind, of the great deep?
The wave? Perhaps. It is not the ocean of itself,
it is a single note of the eternal song,
one word from the encyclopedia of life,
a single taste of the sweetness that seems
inherent in the great mystery.

There was once a revealing of the Silent Deep,
a wave upon the shore where children play and
build their castles. For a moment, we frolicked
in the wave’s charm and invitation, but then
it was gone. Back to its source. Back to the
place of sending. And yet, mystery of mystery:
the wave returns again and again,
bringing a hint of the deep, a glimpse of
a deeper consciousness that reaches out in an
eternal rhythm, something we call life.
We play as children on a shifting beach, always
aware of the wave’s revealing, joyful in its song,
unfulfilled in its absence, renewed when it returns,
sent by the benevolent depth
that blesses again and again.

I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.
A couple in their 80s, walking quietly hand in hand,
turning to smile into each other’s eyes: that’s Love.

The wide eyes of a little child who sees the
big red balloon for the first time; the giggle:
that’s Wonder.

The homeowner bringing a glass of cold water
to the delivery person as she stands at the door:
that’s Kindness.

The willingness to say NO, that is not right, to
power or pressure: that’s Courage.

Always setting the dining room table with one
extra plate and one extra chair: that’s Hospitality

The smile in the face of adversity; the calm word
when people are shouting; that’s Hope.

I may not know how to define it,
but I know it when I see it.

And when I look at you:
a Friend.
Priceless.

Can there be anything more horrifying that searching for your child in the debris of disaster? Take time today and walk the Texas streets with those parents; be there with them. They need us right now. We are their family, too. Extend your hand and your heart into the hurting. This is who we are.

i’m Life isn’t perfect; don’t expect it to be. That said, try to find something that makes you want to sing today, or dance, or throw a party. The dancing flower people at the Botanic Gardens in San Diego have it right. Find a song and sing it. Find a dance and kick up your heels. Hum a tune. Write a poem. Call up a friend. Here’s an idea: how about remembering something good about the nation. I know. We don’t all agree on what’s happening or not happening in the world. Granted. But isn’t there some way that common gratitude can hold up a light for all of us to follow? Sky rockets and fireworks burst and then fizzle. They are gone in a flash. But gratitude is the perpetual light that shows us the next few steps along the path. For those of us who are pleased with currents events, be grateful. For those of us who are not, be grateful. Eventually we will find common ground on which all of us can walk together. Life isn’t perfect. Don’t expect it to be. And neither are we. But we can choose the common trait of gratitude, undergirded by hope, as the sign of our willingness to envision a future that honors the diversity of our dreams.

On the day before the big show, before the first Skyrocket streaks into the July 4th night, maybe it would be a good idea to remember who we are: “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” One nation, not many defined by cultural or political boundaries. Under God, the Source of our diversity, the Advocate for our commonality. Indivisible: united, bonded, committed to a shared oneness. Liberty and justice: two words that define our community. For all: no interpretation needed.

Say a prayer today that the varied colors and shapes and designs of tomorrow’s fireworks will remind us of the essential meaning of unity in the midst of diversity. It’s the variety of color and the creativity of design that make the fireworks beautiful. So it is with all of us who look up to the heavens in hope. All of us. Amen.