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Time to PauseRev'd Cate Thorn, Priest Associate
Evensong, 29th October 2006
Recently I’ve had a sense of being overwhelmed by a lack of hope in the goodness of humanity and of the future of our world. There has been a lack of stories that tell of human kindness, of our capacity to give of ourselves, of the dignity of being human and the opportunities and possibilities that being human offers us. There’s this ongoing ‘discourse’ between the United States and various other parts of the world about who has the right to develop or possess arms, and what particular military action is deemed to be working for peace or for terror. And in our own country violent crimes are on the increase. Apart from my abhorrence of the violence itself, what concerns me even more is the nature of the violence; the apparent nonchalance that one human being has toward the value of the human life of another.
Could this be symptomatic of our society - moving ever faster, forever striving, seeking to achieve or acquire, so busy we haven’t sufficient time to draw breath, much less pause for self-reflection, or at least no longer seeing the sense or priority of doing so. Increasingly our living demands more and more of us - just to remain in one place. The sacrifice of working long hours is no longer the exception but the norm, with all our waking hours demanding and directing us toward an elusive betterment and busyness. This week I was dismayed at a news article that spoke of a growing trend in the US for parents to engage tutors for their children from the age of three. One parent said she wanted to ensure her child had an advantage, an edge, so they could get ahead. “Over whom and for whom,” I couldn’t help but wonder. As the measure of success and who can achieve it narrows, does this also mean that the measure of failure, and who gets that, widens? And what does this do to understanding, acceptance and valuing of each other as we are?
As we are exposed to more and more of what’s happening in the world, such information surely offers us greater freedom to choose and to respond. Yet might such overwhelming information, shown to us through an ever narrowing lens of interpretation, also leaves us caught in a web of anxiety - fearful, knowing that we’d like things to be different, yet feeling increasingly powerless to effect change. It can be difficult to sustain our hope in an environment of whirlwind activity which offers us, decreasingly, the power to choose.
Tonight we hear from Ecclesiastes, “When clouds are full, they empty rain on the earth; whether a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie. Whoever observes the wind will not sow; and whoever regards the clouds will not reap. Just as you do not know how the breath comes to the bones in the mother’s womb, so you do not know the work of God, who makes everything.” Here the powerful simplicity of the images causes us to pause, to still our frenetic activity, alleviates our anxiety and our conscience that we alone must be responsible for the world and our lives. It makes us aware of our limitations. For all our worrying, for all our seeking to be in control, for all our frantic striving, we are bound by our mortality.
Might this be what are we running from? Of what are we most afraid? That place of stillness where we’re faced with the smallness of our existence relative to the enormity of creation, the eternity of time, confronting that which makes our life have meaning. Most of us, I think, want to feel we’ve left a mark, made a difference, had some impact in the world; to have a sense of being more than mere footprints in the sand, washed away with the tides of tomorrow. So we try to do more within our lifetimes, sooner and faster and better than ever before.
Let us return to the wisdom of Ecclesiastes. Having opened us to the mystery of a God that brings to us the breath of life, although we know not how, the author continues to exhort the listener “remember your creator in the days of your youth … before the breath returns to God who gave it”, and in final admonishment instructs “Fear God, and keep his commandments; for that is the whole duty of everyone.” Rather than depending upon our own resourcefulness in our search for meaning and purpose we should still ourselves and then we will find that that which gives us and our lives, meaning and purpose is found in God.
In the eyes of the God who creates us we each are precious! Created not in competition one to another but, out of love, we’re created simply to be who and what we are. And that is enough. Rather than using our lives to construct worlds of our own creation, in the belief that we’ve the capacity to attain divine omnipotence or immortality, we might invest our energy growing and deepening our relationship with God our creator. As we see, reflected back to us, the image in which we’re made, as much as we’re able to perceive it, as much as we can let go of making God in our own image and allow God to be Godself, we learn how to love ourselves as we are. Freed and empowered to love as we are loved, we grow into the fullness of the likeness in which we’re made.
How do we live, in the words of the letter of Timothy, “strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus?” What is the teaching that we’ve been given to “entrust to faithful people who will be able to teach others”? This way may not be one of great busyness, with notable, measurable attainments or triumphal pronouncements marking it. Transformation, although profound, may seem immeasurably slow, happening as it will within the framework of divine priority. As we learn, so may we teach others, to know meaning, find hope and purpose within the simple rhythms of daily living where we encounter the God who loves us into being. |