Today's Reality
The picture is yesterday’s reality: cloudy and snowy all day. Today’s reality is, of course, different (everywhere is I ever lived, the saying has always been, “if you don’t like the weather, wait.”). Anyway, there is still about six inches of snow on the ground; the North Platte River is still frozen; it was minus 3 when I woke up this morning. However, the sky is blue and the mountain to the south is glistening in the sun. And there is no wind—yet. If the wind does come up, I’ll try to get a picture for you of a ground blizzard.
I am in the coffee shop, thinking about what my bar mates have posted. I am also drinking a double non fat wet cappuccino, having just broken my Lenten fast. I had given up the expensive coffee drinks for forty days with the $4/day going into my fish bank for One Great Hour of Sharing. By coming into the coffee shop, I led myself into temptation. My name is Lynn and I’m a sinner in need of God’s grace. Hi, Lynn, glad you’re here.
Have any of you ever been to a 12-step meeting? Every one I have ever attended ends with everyone holding hands in a circle and praying together the Lord’s Prayer, even though AA and Al-Anon welcome people of all religious affiliations or of none. If a person is struggling with his or her powerlessness over a substance or the effect of said substance on a loved one or friend, then “lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil” is a real and heart felt prayer. And it is the very admission of the “temptation” and the “evil” that becomes the invitation to growth in a relationship with one’s Higher Power.
I led myself into this temptation (and while I’m here, I think I’ll have another.) And here in the wilderness of the coffee shop on a cold and sunny Monday morning with a posting due (check out Doonesbury today[http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/]—maybe I should have gone to Daylight Donuts—they don’t have a cappuccino machine), I hear an invitation once again to turn my life and my will over to God.
It is the invitation in the koan contained in the text Rick mentioned: Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? (Mark 8:334-37)
I had heard that “Lead Kindly Light,” words by John Henry Newman, was Gandhi’s favorite Christian hymn. I looked up the words. There appropriate to my journey today. Here they are:
Lead, kindly Light, amid th'encircling gloom, lead thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home; lead thou me on!
Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor prayed that thou shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path; but now lead thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, pride ruled my will: remember not past years!
So long thy power hath blessed me, sure it still will lead me on.
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till the night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile, which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!
Lynn
posted by Rick at 9:08 AM
4 Comments:
Dear Lynn,
Thanks for today’s meditation; that’s what it turned out to be for me. Especially, I sat and read and re-read the verse of Newman’s hymn that begins “I was not ever thus,” praying that “thou shouldst lead me on”:
I loved to choose and see my path . . .
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years!
Unfortunately, Newman’s past is not yet mine. I continue to want to see my path, at the least. If I’m honest, I continue to want to choose it. I continue to love “the garish day”; I continue to be both fearful and proud. And I’m not about to give up, or in. “Lead, Kindly Light”? To heck with that; my anthem is “My Way.”
Maybe it’s not quite that bad—less Frank Sinatra than the young Augustine: “Give me humility [in this case]. Only not yet.”
Please advise.
Stuck
Dear Stuck:
Thanks for your honesty, for you speak for me also. I, too, want to see my path and I want to choose it. Refer to my post from a week ago when I wrote about walking the labyrinth in the wind. It was the lesson of the hymn's first verse that I began to comprehend that day: "Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me."
It is in the hymn's second verse, the one you have been pondering, that I hear echoes of Jesus' words in yesterday's Gospel koan--the words about losing and saving my life. I have never liked those words. Unfortunately or fortunately, I have found them to be true. And it is much easier in a way to say to God, "whatever" (my translation of "not my will but thine alone") then it is to choose my path and the garish day. Of course, saying "whatever" is how I ended up in Wyoming.
Doubt in the ramblings help your stuckness. However, thanks for caring enough to comment.
I've thought from time to time this week about your walking the labyrinth in the wind, especially how you tried to stick to the right path, meaning the one the exercise directed you into; but the wind seemed to want to blow you out of it.
I've tried walking labyrinths from time to time, though I probably wouldn't have if Julie hadn't provided the opportunities for me to so. I'll have to say that while I enjoyed the peace—I was always walking alone—I never quite got the exercise. It seemed . . . well, artificial.
So, when I read about the wind blowing you off the track, my thought turned to something like the wild Spirit trying to disrupt the tame.
No doubt I've got all this wrong. But that hasn't prevented my saying something on previous occasions.
Rick
Lynn,
What I meant to say was that you should treat yourself gently for breaking your Lenten fast. What I did say, I fear, treated far too flippantly your decision to give up your double non fat wet cappoccino (referred by me as "latte" I was too lazy to re-open your piece). I meant no disrespect; I apologize for the unartful trivialization of something serious,and for my overbearing tone. Do I sound like a preacher or what?
I also realize that 1), you do treat yourself gently with or without any encouragement from one such as me, and 2),why am I doing taking even one step in this direction, given that I have the spiritual discipline of a warthog, and 3),as much as I am left cold by the machine-driven, electronic-centered nature of this medium (what would Wendell say?), I am glad that we are doing this blog thing together.
You have just the right feel for this work. Cozy, personal context from which you touch expansive issues. The humor is exquisite. I did not know that the Atlantic Coast Conference could produce such a fine writer.
Oops. There I go again. Flippancy, flippancy, flippancy. Thy name is
Dee
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