[Because Denise was off yesterday and I was left to my own devices, I accidentally scheduled 2 posts today! Please read Nancy Jo's wonderful piece below this one...]
This is a guest post by regular commenter Michelle
Earlier this week Paul Campbell at People for Others posted three short rules for maintaining our relationship with God. He wondered what rules other people might have. I hear “rule” and think “rule of life” — I’ve spent a long time praying with the Augustinians and I fear it shows. Years ago, the Augustinian who was my spiritual director encouraged me to write my own “rule of life.” A whole rule? I was too intimidated to try. Two decades later, I can sum up my rule of life and right relationship with God in three words: Stop. Look. Listen.
Stop. When I’m on the move, I have to watch where I’m going; so I don’t trip over anything, so I know when I’ve arrived. But all this focus on where I’m going too often reduces my vision to a tunnel. “Be still and know that I am God.” All around me.
Look. When I don’t have to watch where I’m going, I can notice what is around me. Stopping lets me see not only God before me, but God behind me, God beside me, God beneath my feet, God above me and — thankfully —God within me. (To take a page from St. Patrick.)
Listen. A friend who is a Sister of St. Joseph and a physicist once pointed out that sound is a touch, there is a direct physical connection between the source and the listener. Can I let God touch me? Can I allow the Word to touch my ears that I might hear; touch my lips, that I might speak His name in thanks and praise and petition; touch my heart that I might love; and touch my soul that my very being may grasp the image in which it was fashioned, the end for which I was created.
And I will admit that sometimes I get no further than “stop” before my to-do list starts snapping at my ankles. But I take heart in Abba Bessiaron’s wise advice from the 4th century. There is no need to cling. God is here, God is everywhere. Even when I’m not looking.
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
Michelle, thank you for sharing such a beautiful meditation. One of the blessings I try to work on is the grace of awareness. You have shown all of us one of the ways to embrace this grace.
Tim, thank you, for opening my eyes to so many wise sayings here!
In one of Karl Rahner SJ’s essays he talks about grace being all, not just an extra thing that shows up now and again, but what we live and move and breathe all the time. It is, he acknowledges, hard to live in that awareness, but we should encourage ourselves and each other to little by little, taste what is around us.
Michelle, this is so beautiful and I am grateful to read your words today. I’ve been away, what a nice return to PFO by finding such wisdom.
Thank you, Fran!
Michelle, this is the perfect day for me to read this. Thank you very much for sharing your insights.
Thank Paul! It’s good me to read it, too
Michelle,
As always, I love your perspective. Thank you for expanding on your original post. Love the “no need to cling” great quote.
The sayings of the desert fathers and mothers, the little gems, tend to stick with me, too. The full story of Abba Bessarion (I spelled it wrong above!) is here (third story down):
http://www.coptic.net/articles/SayingsOfDesertFathers.txt
Oh! Thanks so much Michelle! I always like talking to teachers because it is their natural inclination to give you more!
I’m not sure my kids always think so, Annette!
While these are great reminders all the time, I thik this a particularly great rule of life for Advent. With all the pressures to hurry and get things done, or bought, or consumed — a simple-to-remember, prayerful message like this is a great gift. Thank you
Thanks, Denise! Given that this is the start of exams for my students, your comment is giving me new eyes to see my office hours (where I’m trying hard to give students short memorable bits)…now I’m envisioning them with little ribbons tied around them!
Lovely as always, Michelle.
The idea of sound as touch is beautiful.
When Kathy said this, I was so struck at how obvious it was that the sense of hearing is really a subset of touch in some way, but I’d never thought of it that way at all.
We are always told to talk to the dying; that hearing is the last sense to dissipate, and that our loved ones may hear us even when they appear to be beyond any remaining connection to those who sit vigil with them. This might be a really helpful suggestion to family and friends who aren’t sure what to do as someone dies, or are perhaps too intimidated by hospital apparatus to draw physically near: the sound of your voice is your touch.
I can still remember a friend who called from miles away to play her mother’s favorite violin piece, someone in the ICU held the phone up. A touch that can be transmitted over very long distances….
A friend of mine was just telling me a story of one of our dear priests consoling a family at their grandmother’s deathbed and he assured them to say what they wanted because “hearing was the last to go.” That is something my mother taught me years ago, but for them it made their grandmother’s passing sacramental. These images combined are just so beautiful. Thanks to both of you wise women.
Hearing as touch is a beautiful idea to contemplate. Do we touch God when we speak?
Jane, that is a startling thought…and my first response is terror, the second awe. Thank you, thank you!
Oh, wow. Gee! What an image. . . .
Sound waves do have an effect on the autonomic nervous system. Certain music lowers blood pressure and heart and respiratory rates. Tho’ not a physicist, I think it has something to do with the length of the sound wave itself. Anyone who’s ever been stuck in traffic can attest to the fact that you can physically feel that music! So too does certain music move one to violence. We can feel it. That’s why music therapy is more and more becoming an accepted practice. The harp in hospital wards encourges the healing of patients! Maybe those angels know something that we don’t
As for the stop, look and listen: I seem to be stuck there. Very uncomfortable as my modus operandi is to do and to move. What I need is not to stop, but to go. I’m in a place where a forceful push would serve me well. Thank you for calling that to my attention. My college career is soon to end and what I saw as the goal no longer attracts me. So, here I sit; stopped, looking and listening, at the crossroads. Sigh.
Emma, I’m married to a “mover” – who finds the stop/look/listen triad tough, too. As hard a spot as it is to be at those crossroads, wanting to move, I promise a prayer that you can figure out which street is yours to go down dancing down, soon!