I first saw this a very long time ago when reading Rumi. I hadn’t thought about it in ages, but was brought back to it when I found it in a booklet of Easter season meditations from the church where my spiritual director serves as rector. Thank you for that.
Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow
a thousand times.
Come, yet again, come, come.
Doubt is not the opposite of faith: fear is. Fear will not risk that even if I am wrong, I will trust that if I move today by the light that is given me, knowing it is only finite and partial, I will know more and different things tomorrow than I know today, and I can be open to the new possibility I cannot even imagine today.
I enjoyed listening to Steven Charleston’s sermons via podcast when he was the assistant bishop of the Diocese of California and he would preach at Grace Cathedral. Thanks to Susan Russell for sharing this and allowing me to connect with Steven on Facebook.
Did the minds behind the hands that raised Stonehenge imagine their reality would go on forever? Did the citizens of Sumer or Chichen Itza or Harrppa believe theirs was the way the world would stay? Each culture claims its moment. Each age assumes reality. But even the foreheads of nations are marked with the ashes of time. Do not despair, Ozymandias, for loss of the ephemeral. Even the Pleiades may be passing, but the God who spins the seasons and knits the threads of time will offer a gift eternal to let love the last Word be.
I don’t generally look to the Writer’s Almanac as a source of spiritual insight, but I have to say that this got my attention. Particularly these days as I have been focusing on developing and practicing patience.
Every day I want to speak with you. And every day something more important
calls for my attention—the drugstore, the beauty products, the luggage
I need to buy for the trip.
Even now I can hardly sit here
among the falling piles of paper and clothing, the garbage trucks outside
already screeching and banging.
The mystics say you are as close as my own breath.
Why do I flee from you?
My days and nights pour through me like complaints
and become a story I forgot to tell.
Help me. Even as I write these words I am planning
to rise from the chair as soon as I finish this sentence.
I was going to forego my blog for Good Friday, but somehow this seemed appropriate for this day. I remember it very clearly from my childhood. It was on the Phil Harris LP in my dad’s collection.
My Lenten reading has included a wonderful series on the Psalms by Barbara Crafton, presented by the good folks over at Spirituality and Practice. I loved this comment, which I know to be true, but tend to forget. Nice, too, because it reinforces what I’ve been reading in Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living:
In spiritual direction, I often recommend against taking on too much in the way of new spiritual practice; it’s better to start small and grow than it is to start big and shrink. I know this because I have bitten off more than I could chew so many times, and then been discouraged when I fell short. Most spiritual growth is incremental, not sudden. Most of it happens bit by bit, over time.
When we cling to a desire for things to be different from the way they are, we are flirting with impatience because things aren’t different than they are. They may not be fair, kind, or just, but they are as they are.
and
“When I start to become impatient I stop and ask myself, ‘How important is this in the light of all eternity?’” —a Catholic Nun
Finally, Lokos provides a hint on how to practice patience:
Patience is born when we create a pause between our experience of a feeling and our response to that feeling.
A limousine has two seats behind the driver facing each other, a phone to talk to the driver, and a supply of alcohol. My brother rented a limo for my grandmother for her 90th birthday celebration, which we all rode in to his house.
When Terry’s company had a 20th anniversary celebration in Las Vegas a few years ago, we were told we would be picked up at the airport by a limo. It was a town car. I was disappointed.
A couple of weeks ago when I went to Houston for a work conference, I understood I was going to be picked up at the airport by a shuttle bus. I was picked up by a town car. I was delighted.
As I’ve been writing here, our expectations have so much to do with how we see the world and whether our level of frustration and anxiety is high or low. I’m glad to be making progress on that front.
Thank you to Diana Butler Bass for this. It’s is good to be reminded that our changing and evolving thoughts, perspectives, and beliefs are an integral part of our spiritual unfoldment.
Saw some folks last night who I knew 30 years ago. Although only a brief reunion, it reminded me that people whose hearts pant for God do not stay in the same place for long–we follow the stream of the spirit wherever it flows. And for that, thanks be to God.
