Dearly Beloved,
I cannot remember the last time I felt this rested. Honestly, the last time I didn't feel simply exhausted. There is an expansiveness to rest. I can feel my imagination alive. Creativity flowing. The Holy Spirit, here and now, the dance of creation and death, beginning and ending all wrapped up in one flow. In Lectio Divine today, someone asked, wondered, offered the idea that perhaps time is not linear for God. Perhaps, if God truly is the mystery we proclaim, God is not only in all places at once but in all time.
What a paradox to live in the not-yet/already, to embrace unraveling and becoming, to be here in this precious, beautiful, complex, wondrous moment. The gift, perhaps, is simply to be alive and to be together and to be in this place in this moment. This does not negate what is painful and daunting in our world, but lives alongside it.
I wanted to share something someone else in Lectio shared with me this morning from Father Richard Rohr and the Center for Action and Contemplation:
"'[E]ven if we lose hope for a good outcome, we need not lose hope of being good people, as we are able: courageous, wise, kind, loving, “in defiance of all that is bad around us' (Howard Zinn).
"We feel arising within us this sustained declaration: We will live as beautifully, bravely, and kindly as we can as long as we can, no matter how ugly, scary, and mean the world becomes, even if failure and death seem inevitable. In fact, it is only in the context of failure and death that this virtue develops. That’s why Richard Rohr describes this kind of hope as 'the fruit of a learned capacity to suffer wisely and generously. You come out much larger and that largeness becomes your hope.'
"Hope is complicated. But … even if hope fails, something bigger can replace it, and that is love.
"Choctaw elder Steven Charleston places love at the center of our hope.
"The key to stopping the environmental apocalypse is not science but love. For decades now we have been staring at the scientific reports. They have not sufficiently inspired us to change our apocalyptic reality. But where science has failed, faith can succeed. We must help humanity rediscover [Mother Earth], their loving parent, the living world that sustains them. We must help them feel her love just as we show them how that love can be returned. And it can begin by gathering people around two simple questions: Where were you in nature when you experienced a vision of such beauty that it took your breath away? And how did that make you feel? If you can answer those two questions, you are on your way to meeting the Mother you may never have known before."
As we gather to celebrate Pentecost, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, and graduates and those making transitions in school this coming Sunday, let us hold love at our center. Let us live love. Let us be love.
With love,
Thandiwe
