My "Small is Holy" reflections for today, Sunday, May 8, 2022, is steeped in this insight from Henri Nouwen. I am reflecting on the need to periodically step away from the fray for a moment to get re-grounded in grace. My point is that the sacred unforced rhythms of the liturgical year teach us how to engage, step back, reflect, and then return to a public life of compassion and right relations. Without the emptiness of our down time, our lives tend to becocme filled with anxiety, anger, and exhaustion. No wonder Nouwen writes:
Contemplative life is a human response to the fundamental fact that the central things in life, although spiritually perceptible, remain invisible in large measure and can very easily be overlooked by the inattentive, busy, distracted person that each of us can so readily become. The contemplative looks not so much around things but through them into their center. Through their center he discovers the world of spiritual beauty that is more real, has more density, more mass, more energy, and greater intensity than physical matter. In effect, the beauty of physical matter is a reflection of its inner content.
My point, should you choose to tune in to the live-stream at 4 pm, is that the movement of the soul in Eastertide - a seven week inward journey in anticipation of the outward witness of Pentecost - invites us to practice radical trust. When we know from the inside out that we are "One with the Father and Mother," then we are free to sensitively bring healing and hope to all that is broken. Without such inner assurance, however, we often try too hard, quit too early, and wear ourselves out. We will never be able to soothe all the pain or right all the wrongs; that's where radical trust comes in with the deep awareness that we are simply part of the movement of God's grace in creation.
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