Taking the Next Step Lord, I think that one day I will "arrive," when my inner life is stable, my discipline is strong, and I am running down the path. Yet it seems that is not so for me. Perhaps for others. The deeper I go, the more the roads diverge. The same problems, yet there is a difference. I take your constancy as a fact that keeps my fickleness under some control. After times of chaos, I still emerge somewhere else, though I cannot name the place. The gift of old age, the greatest boon, is that I do not have to understand, but simply take the next step.- BrMD
There is an old Zen Buddhist saying that life is a journey that leads us back to the place where we started but on our return we understand it for the first time. This is illustrated in Japan in three porcelain plates. The first is a man who stands in a busy market place. The second plate shows the man on pilgrimage. The third plate shows the man joyfully returned to the market place once again. This reminds me of the words of Jesus: Matthew 18:3 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. I think looking back at all the truly saintly people I have met in my life had this wonderful quality of being childlike. I think another quality was they did not talk very much, The they said a lot with very few words. Another quality was that they were great listeners. They were rather like a mother who focuses totally on her baby. They gave other people their total attention because they were not focussed on themselves.
TS Eliot's poem "Little Gidding" says this exact thing about journeying until you arrive where you began and you recognize it for the first time. It perfectly described what it was like for me to receive the grace to return to the Church.
What we call the beginning is often the end And to make and end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. And every phrase And sentence that is right (where every word is at home, Taking its place to support the others, The word neither diffident nor ostentatious, An easy commerce of the old and the new, The common word exact without vulgarity, The formal word precise but not pedantic, The complete consort dancing together) Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning, Every poem an epitaph. And any action Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start. We die with the dying: See, they depart, and we go with them. We are born with the dead: See, they return, and bring us with them. The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree Are of equal duration. A people without history Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails On a winter's afternoon, in a secluded chapel History is now and England. https://www.columbia.edu/itc/history/winter/w3206/edit/tseliotlittlegidding.html
I think St. Paul was getting at a similar point in his letter to Philippians Not that I have secured it already, nor yet reached my goal, but I am still pursuing it in the attempt to take hold of the prize for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 3:13 Brothers, I do not reckon myself as having taken hold of it; I can only say that forgetting all that lies behind me, and straining forward to what lies in front, 3:14 I am racing towards the finishing-point to win the prize of God's heavenly call in Christ Jesus. 3:15 So this is the way in which all of us who are mature should be thinking, and if you are still thinking differently in any way, then God has yet to make this matter clear to you. 3:16 Meanwhile, let us go forward from the point we have each attained.
God has a plan for each of us. Nothing is random. There is a point and meaning to all the events in our lives. I feel so sorry for folks who have no Faith in God. How do they find happiness, meaning and peace if every event in their lives is random?
And I think central to it all ...God loves us so immensely. We allow the evil one to whisper in our ears that He does not love us especially when we encounter suffering and crosses. But its in those moments that His love is the greatest. Peace
