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June 9, 2008
You are sad. Why? — Because you are living in yourself and not in God.
Remember that God is present. You are not alone for a single moment.
He surrounds you. He sees you. He bears everything with you. He wants
to help you. Always live in the assurance that God is present. The
awareness of His presence will transform everything for you, and your
sadness will disappear.
Mother Basilea Schlink,
Daily Meditations
Be Still
Unplugging…it
speaks of stopping…even of taking steps back, but the very word
itself…unplugging…is a word of modern times, of action, of being
electrified, charged up and holding voltage…even as the end of the
cord lies on the floor…out of the source of juice…unplugged.
I have absorbed
the static electricity of our times, not knowing that the very first
step of unplugging was just that…the very first step.
Modern life has
taken on a visceral quality. We are propelled forward with our first
breath in the morning, a schedule sounded by the alarm, children and
school bells, snarls of traffic and a push on the gas at the first
open stretch, having mastered the one fluid motion of
bumping-wheels-to-the-curb-turning-pulling-key-opening-door-feet-out-and-down-closing-a-click-of-the-key-as-it-drops-into-purse-door-locked-almost-early-again-one-minute-late.
But it’s not
just the activity of the day. It’s the activity of the mind…of the
spirit…of the soul.
The more I
unplug, the more I find I need to unplug. I exchange my radio and
television for music. I exchange my music for melody…lines of quiet
musical poetry that aren’t improved by bass.
No longer
needing to respond to the latest Fox News Alert, confident that
next week will be soon enough to know who won the primary, silence
beckons with her promise of a door that opens into a different
world…and I turn the dial to fade the last diminishing flute tone down
and out of sound.
Silence makes me
aware of a different noise, the noise of the self, the mind turned
inward, feeding on worries, questions, and habits that have pressed
out the Source of life. I am plugged in still, plugged into myself.
I have been
struggling to set myself on a more inspired path for the coming
years. I have strained to hear and see God’s vision. I thought that
unplugging would reveal the Word.
It hasn’t. And
I fear it is because I am still plugged into the barrier that
separates me from my Master. I still grasp for control.
Unplugging my
desires, my plans, my goals, my pride, my vision of what I think I
need to do…I have been led by the challenge laid out by modern
motivational speakers, “Make a difference, think big, ask for the sky
and lay it all out, like Jabez, before our Father.”
From a quieter
perspective, I think I have been trying to build a bridge to heaven.
Not His bridge, but my bridge. His bridge was given on the cross.
It’s already here.
Laying down
plans, unplugging from myself, I set myself down…quiet…chided…
chastened…and
loved. The only thing left to do is pray that my every desire and
every action will be created and activated from the Source above.
I am still.
Waiting. He is God.
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February 25, 2008
Unplugged
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