Meditation - September 23, 2007
Those who seek to live a spiritual life have always been forced to grapple with who they are and how they are called to be in relationship with those around them. We each have a uniqueness to us. Even the babies who are about to be baptized this morning already exhibit distinctive personalities. But there are times when our distinctiveness disappears and we discover that we are part of a wider being. Our awareness of this wider connection grounds our sense of responsibility to the world.
We have been offered spiritual tools to help us see and get to the place of our interconnectedness. Baptism is such a tool, Some look to the tools as the way to get in right relation with life. But others say: they’re just tools; it’s the object that matters – getting into right relation.
We knead one another
We have a long tradition of gathering in communal meals, and a staple of these meals is bread. Amazing how ordinary ingredients can be mixed together to make the staff of life. Often in today’s world, our food preparation is tainted by a hint of violence. But we can put love into the food that we put on our table. There are practices of bread-making that are directed as holy undertakings - spiritual. What is spiritual? Often we treat the spiritual as personal, and the religious as communal. But (thinking about the spiritual the same way that we think about bread-making) the things which are spiritual in our lives happen in community. We knead one another.
What will become of us?
Check out Breath, a short (very short) play by Samuel Beckett. Do you understand it? Does it conform to your understanding of what should happen in theatre? Sometimes we need to be shaken from our complacency. Gretta goes on to talk about evolution. We have become so adept at controlling our environment that we have eliminated from our lives the factors that drive evolution. Have we allowed ourselves to become complacent? Are there ways we can challenge ourselves so that we can continue to grow?