Thursday, April 2, 2009

ROBERT : There will always be . . .

There will always be some distance between the person we are trying to become and the person we actually are.
      Certainly Lent reveals that gap clearly, perhaps as you said, it even shows that distance more clearly than other seasons do. Though I confess to being able to see the distance between who I am trying to become and who I actually am pretty much the whole year around. It does not take Lent for me to see how poorly I measure up, I can see it on almost any feast or fast day. An Ember Day can remind that I am something less than holy. Thursdays often do the same to me as well.
      ‘Wherever we go there seems to be only one business at hand, writes Annie Dillard, ‘that of finding workable compromises between the sublimity of our ideas and the absurdity of the fact of us.’ She is so right that it makes me want to just lie down. Or fall on my knees. Or giggle at myself and all of us, the way that I suspect the One Who made us does sometimes.
      I have long believed that a fair portion of whatever I write — whether it is about prayer and the contemplative life, about spiritual practice and discipline, about this long pew that we call the Church, about trying to become the person I was dreamed into being to be by the One in Whose image we were all dreamed into being — whatever and whenever I write about those things, I am more often than not putting on paper the things to which I aspire rather than things I have already become. I write out of a sense of hope in the journey rather than out of a sense of arrival at a destination.

Here is what I am hoping just now :
      That as this Lenten journey ends in the next few days and hours, and we join the crowd that follows the One Who Came on his triumphant journey into the city, and we end this coming week in darkness and discouragement at the foot of the cross, having once again chosen the criminal over the Messiah, I hope that we find new life again in the garden two Sundays from now, in the morning light of Easter, and that we are able to go forth and live our lives in astonishment and joy as well as in aspiration and hope.
      Perhaps that is the way to cut down the distance between who we are trying to become and who we are.

3 comments:

Joanne : The Simple Wife said...

Yes, and amen.

I think that so often that's part of the creative act of writing--putting on paper the things we aspire to be.

Creating a picture of what we could be like, want to be like, hope to be like that we can walk toward.

Creating with our words both an accountability and a reminder as we walk there. A witness that the journey is one we desperately want to take on those days when the the road gets rough.

Robert said...

I like the things you say, Joanne, they remind me of the risk that comes with writing about the spiritual life — namely that what you write somehow communicates that you are somehow more than you often really are.

Thank you for reading us in the first place, and for taking the time to join the conversation. Hey to Toben and anyone else you see who will admit to knowing me.

Namaste —

R. Benson

GailNHB said...

Ah, that great abyss between who I am and who I long to be. Between what I write and what I live. Between the dreaming and the coming true, no? Not only God's dreams for me, but my own also.

I need a dose of astonishment and joy, aspiration and hope these days. I just sat in my study and took communion, alone, in prayer, looking at a painting of Christ on the cross, thinking of Him sharing that final meal with his friends and betrayers. I am among them, so much a part of their band. But I ate anyway. I drank anyway. I prayed. And I received His forgiveness and blessing even though I know I will soon leave this place and betray Him all over again.

Oh, what wondrous love is His.
Oh my soul. Oh my soul.

Peace to you.