from William Wordsworth's "Resolution and Independence"

My former thoughts returned: the fear that kills;
And hope that is unwilling to be fed;
Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills;
And mighty Poets in their misery dead.
--Perplexed, and longing to be comforted,
My question eagerly did I renew,
"How is it that you live, and what is it you do?"

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Living and Being

How to come to terms with the daily, the ordinary, the things that get in the way of real faith?  Ah, that's the problem isn't it?  Or is it?

From Into Your Hands Father
Fr. Wilfrid Stinessen

I can speculate with Teilhard de Chardin about God's will for the world and humanity, about development toward the omega point, but I live much more in God's will when I do the little, ordinary work he gives me to do right now. Yes, the more consciously I live and the more concentrated I am in the moment, the more I am one with God's will. It is in the very smallest things that I meet the very greatest. . . . 
If only we could understand that we can only realize our dream by being totally present to the little and insignificant things we have to do at each moment. We encounter the infinity of God only in the present moment. The more we are recollected in the moment, the more clearly does the eternal now of God reveal itself.
The infinity of God comes to us through a funnel. It becomes so little and so narrow that it is difficult for us to recognize it.  It comes only drop by drop through the small opening.  The funnel is the present moment.  When I put my mouth to the funnel, I am nourished by inifinity. . . . The present moment is the incarnation of God's eternity.  Thos who live in the present moment drink unceasingly of eternity.

When we live--really live--in time then we live in the timeless.  When we can know and experience and be in the present moment--when we are aware, all boundaries fall away.  This happens sometimes in prayer--for me it often happens when I am deeply focused on the words as they trickle into my head.  The moment is reified by our service to it, by living in and through it, consciously--not merely walking through life, half-oblivious to everything around us, looking to move from one sensation to the next--but rather when we are aware of what is put before us second by second for us to attend to.  That is the work God has for us at that moment--and that work is always a work of compassion and loving-kindness.

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