Fun Friday: The Lighter Side of Encouragement
You have heard of Casual Fridays, right? Well, maybe we can have a slightly more casual kind of reflection sharing. If you hang on for a paragraph or three, we are going to loosen up before we are through here. So, first, we have a bit of the serious. One of the important voices in my own spiritual development right now is a Benedictine monk and priest who is Director of The World Community for Christian Meditation, Laurence Freeman, OSB.
In a piece called “Why Are We Here?” he invites consideration of that very question, pointing out it is a very simple question. It is a question we have to come back to every day if we are to live a life of conversion: “It is to open ourselves at the very center of our being, to the source of our being. Not only to open it partially but to open totally. Not only to open it some of the time but to open it permanently.” We all need to come to continuous prayer, to a state of undistracted attention. What would it take to find this state of unbroken openness to Christ within? Where is the way to a simple union of our prayer with the prayer of Christ? This condition of unbroken prayer is the purpose of our life. Meditation is an avenue for experiencing this work little by little over time. Practicing this, experiencing this, is the work of the children of God.
Look at the times for Christian Meditation and Contemplative study in our announcements, or simply get in touch with me for an appointment to learn more about it. Now, that I have said this, and also this would be “Fun Friday” and on the lighter side…Reading Fr. Laurence’s piece, hearing him ask “Why are we here?” reminded me of a poem I wrote for the fun of it. Remember the Tom Hanks, character, Jimmy Dugan, the coach in the movie, “A League of Their Own. The quotable line is “There’s no crying in baseball.” Well, my claim is there’s no levity-ban in poetry. Fun and whimsy cannot be regulated, it has to be free.
Life’s Big Questions
Sometimes we just have to
ask the big questions of life:
Why am I here?
Where am I going?
Do I have actual connection to other beings
Other people
Is there a personal power behind what we see
and what we cannot see, but know to exist?
Do I have any significance
that will not become instantly irrelevant
the moment I am gone?
Is there intelligent life out there?
Is turning yourself around right after
doing the hokey pokey really what it's all about?
—David Price, 2011
Blessings to you as you consider these, or the main question from above, “Why are we here?” Perhaps Fr. Laurence has the right idea: We are here to open ourselves to the center of our being, the Source of our being, and to find our way to unbroken prayer.