Truly being here is glorious
Rainer Maria Rilke
Now – Here
Learning to be present
Grace is the courage to be at home in the moving resonance of the present
Everyone needs to feel at home, to feel earthed, for it is impossible to say, ‘Who am I?”’ without but asking, ‘Where am I?’ ‘Whence have I come?’ ‘Where am I going?’ Without roots we can neither discover where we belong, nor can we grow, Without stability we cannot know our true selves. ….[And] the reason for stability? God is not elsewhere.
Esther de Waal
Image: Edward Knippers (American, 1946–), Moses and the Burning Bush, 2008
People in the Bible – when faced with mystery – exclaimed, ‘Here I am’.
(Moses before the burning bush, Mary before the Archangel Gabriel).
Find a quiet spot – notice how often you are tempted to move away (physically as well as emotionally and spiritually) –
and gently repeat to yourself- before God – ‘Here I am’. Take time and experience your own I-Am-ness.
In English ‘present’ means both ‘gift’ and ‘now’.
Learning to live in the present is learning to live giftedly – graciously- gratefully.
What would it be like to live your life as a gift – as something given to you out of love?
Think about the invitation to move from living
NO-WHERE to NOW-HERE
Image: Jacques Richard Sassandra (French, 1932–), Le buisson ardent (The Burning Bush), late 1980s
Often we live no-where, trapped in the past (what do you worry about, and return to again and again?) or caught in the future (what do you day-dream about, and spend time on anticipating?)
I know for a while again
the health of self-forgetfulness….
…And I know
that this is one of the thresholds
between Earth and Heaven,
from which even I may step
forth from myself and be free.
Wendell Berry
Image: Jyoti Sahi (Indian, 1944–), Holding the Flame of Fire, 2005
This is why “pray as you can: not as you can’t” is so important: why any discipline that allows us to be more present, less self-concerned, more attentive and more aware, allows us to become more fully alive, more fully human. And it is why the self-limiting, self-emptying, self-giving that we see in Jesus is so crucial. Here in his “paschal mystery” divine revelation becomes co-extensive with one actualised human life. Here is both the gift and the task, the invitation and the fulfilment of all human living.
The images in this post are of various interpretations of Moses before the burning bush and reflect the words of Fr Philip Carter that people in the Bible, when faced with mystery, exclaimed ‘Here I am’.
