When we are at the very limits of human power and human ability, we turn to prayer. When we do not know how to put love in action, we turn to prayer. When we feel restless and listless, we turn to prayer because we know we need a Savior who can make sense of the world’s chaos and intensive suffering. Prayer calms us and gives us a pathway forward, kindling within us a sense of hope.
Eric Clayton writes about the questions we ask when we face God – Who are you? What are you, O, God? and Who am I? Who am I called to be? As we are in the Advent season, we add another element to the questions? The urgent “now.” The call of Jesus is for “now,” Advent is about being attentive “now,” and our prayer is both a question and answer to the “now” that we face. This is it. This is all we have, and we are faced with monumental questions about violence, war, hatred, and climate negligence, and we sometime feel paralyzed. Our energies are exhausted by a world that demands so much attention.
What is it like to live in the “present moment?” We bring our past into the present too often, and we always have to be prepared for those future days when we are less independent, and our choices become increasingly limited. Living in the present is not something we have been formed to do well.
Our task is to reconcile and to let go, or to use Clayton’s terms, to be restless and to understand our indifference. As we mature, we know our task is to reconcile relationships so that we may live with integrity and authenticity, and that the good that we have been stripped of is returned to us. The Advent-Christmas season is filled with A Christmas Carol or How the Grinch Stole Christmas conversion stories. Our conversion is focused upon this reconciliation, which allows us to heal past hurts so that we can be fully who we know we are.
When a relationship is broken, we think badly about the other person and deny them the possibility of being “good.” We think of them as people who have hurt us or have done something bad to. That is how we perceive them – as a person devoid of good intentions or actions. We cannot truly be happy because that relationship has soured. When we reconcile with another person, or simply with ourselves, we are able to return the “goodness” to the person of which we stripped them, or of which we have been stripped.
Our movement towards reconciliation allows us to create new bonds of friendship that we did not imagine possible. The past hurts and injustices still remain, and we can forge a new, closer bond with the person with whom we reconciled. It opens us up, it brings us new life, it allows us to have a more solid relationship with God.
We find a surprising quality in this reconciliation: it unleashes creativity that we could not imagine existed. We bury the past so we can live in the present moment, and it is more incredible that we can imagine. We are able to be liberated and revitalized, which helps us to see the wonder in the present moment. We find that we are lighter in mood, and perhaps more playful, and certainly more creative. The one who reconciles realizes that the only real moment of life is the “now,” the present moment.
We have to make a choice for this new life, to be more conscious of our choices, and our ability to choose the relationships that are most meaningful and life-sustaining for us. We have a wondrous capacity to continue to evolve into a greater sense of our being. This is the type of existence that allows us to create a world of unity, justice, and peace. This practice of reconciliation is perhaps our most important contribution to the well-being of the world. It may seems small, but it is a life lived as God intends for us.
We have the energy already within us. It is the restlessness about which Clayton speaks. We know it to be the presence of God. It brings about our Ignatian indifference because we are consumed by the glory of God, alive in the human being. There is still so much more for us to discover about ourselves. There is so much more to learn about God.
Advent is a time to do so whether we sit still, meditate, listen to the fullness of the silence, be comfortable in the dark as we light a candle to see the brightness. In our present moment, we reach toward the one who is the power of all life to bear new life. We become still and know that our God remains with us. It is our moment of comfort and joy.
No comments:
Post a Comment