the patience of ordinary things...

At this moment in my life, I feel like I can live as an authentic person of faith with increasing vigor. My life's journey has been a slow pilgrimage towards trust and freedom in the spirit of Jesus. Like the late Henri Nouwen noted, too often my soul has often been in conflict with my practical realities. Nouwen wrote that often he felt constrained to conform to the demands of his wounded emotions. There were times when the social expectations of the institutional church or the professional obligations of academia kept him hostage to a lukewarm status quo, too. He ached to live fully into the freedom of God's love made flesh in Jesus Christ. Yet time and again he found himself compromised from doing so. I know that bondage. I know that tension. I think that is why I so cherish his candor as refreshing and humbling in this confession:

At issue here is the question: “To whom do I belong? God or to the world?” Many of my daily preoccupations suggest that I belong more to the world than to God. A little criticism makes me angry, and a little rejection makes me depressed. A little praise raises my spirits, and a little success excites me. It takes very little to raise me up or thrust me down. Often I am like a small boat on the ocean, completely at the mercy of its waves. All the time and energy I spend in keeping some kind of balance and preventing myself from being tipped over and drowning shows that my life is mostly a struggle for survival: not a holy struggle, but an anxious struggle resulting from the mistaken idea that it is the world that defines me... As long as we belong to this world, we will remain subject to its competitive ways and expect to be rewarded for all the good we do. But when we belong to God, who loves us without conditions, we can live as (God) does. The great conversion called for by Jesus is to move from belonging to the world to belonging to God.

There is a poem by Melissa Shaw-Smith that I saved two months ago. Often I find contemporary poets articulate what I am feeling in life better than what I see in most prayer books. In "Presence" she writes:

The year has rocked this world to its roots.
What if for one day each being put down
their burdens, their words of hate, their inhumanity
and breathed in the presence?
Stopped fighting for history, for fears, hopes, dreams
and stood facing the morning sun
letting the warmth of the moment
and the next, the next, accumulate like dust at their feet
Listened instead of spoke, acknowledged truth,
embraced silence. 

What if for one day each being acknowledged the fear
and let it go? Suspended beliefs
opened their arms, drew strength
through earth, grass, rock, sand
Found the sparrow singing from a lone bush
the small heart-shaped cloud
Felt the currents of air wash of them, mingle
with the breath, and let the seams unravel
borders blend, walls dissolve
and be
one.

Most of my life I have been a "Christian realist." I admire the work or Reinhold Niebuhr. He has been a theological rock for my work in both social activism and the local church. But with increasing urgency I now find myself saying good-bye to Brother Rennie. He served me in his season, but now that time is complete. Today asks me to belong more fully to Christ - not the world. To let go of my fears, suspend many of my long held beliefs, and listen to the call of love as well as the cries of despair all around me. And strive to love as God loves. Another poet, Pat Schneider, puts it like this in "The Patience of Ordinary Things."

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

Like Nouwen before me - or St. Francis before him - or Jean Vanier right now: the patience and sacramental wisdom of ordinary things makes more sense to me than anything else. I am grateful to have lived long enough for this to become so.