A Quotidian Mystery

July 24, 2018

Beloved:
    I was just now washing dishes, watching steam rise through the sunshine that pours through my kitchen windows in the morning, and I thought what a miracle hot water is.  As much as I want, straight from the tap.  We have not one but TWO water heaters in our house so that my kitchen and laundry rooms can have their own, a shameful luxury my grandma would have thought absurd.  My parents too, for that matter.

    The struggle to enjoy my house without loving it too much is something of a quandary; a quotidian mystery, Kathleen Norris calls it.  The great privilege of having things and the great responsibility to have them rightly.  The ease with which we slip into assuming we have earned them, suggesting people with less haven’t worked as hard.  The terrible sin of complaining about their upkeep – the time, the money, the energy – as if we are somehow beset with trouble for having a roof that needs replacing.

    This world is our poorest teacher when it comes to what we need.  Prayer is our only hope.  Father Richard writes that the only person who prays well is the person who prays often.*   I’m trying and mostly failing to learn not to pray from my belly or my brain, from what my body and my feelings say I need.  Mostly they don’t know.  Mostly anxiety, fear and boredom are telling them what to say.  “You are fine,” the Spirit says, another voice to whom I can choose to listen . . . and believe, should I choose to live by the faith I claim I do.

    All that we possess is so much less than the spirit of God within and among us even now.  Knowing so and living so are nothing like the same.  Only living so brings about the greater graces of our faith, namely peace.  Peace with our place in the world.  Peace in our relationship with others.  Peace with our possessions.  So easily said, while the practice takes a lifetime.  I wish you much courage on this day of our journey. 

~ peace & prayers,
pastor annette

*Richard Rohr, Simplicity; The Freedom of Letting Go,  (Crossroads Publishing: New York, 1991), p. 100.