Patience: Treasuring the Ground on Which We Stand
Our ability to be both truly present to one another and aware of God’s presence in our lives is a gift unto itself. It is our calling. There’s nothing more important we can do today.
Our ability to be both truly present to one another and aware of God’s presence in our lives is a gift unto itself. It is our calling. There’s nothing more important we can do today.
Located between Sedona and the Village of Oak Creek is one of the region’s manmade (and woman-designed!) wonders: The Chapel of the Holy Cross.
Whether I have been healed by God through the power of prayer or through the natural reactions of my God-gifted body, I am – for now anyway – healed. Whatever the outcome, I have been healed, for I am at peace. So for me the question remains the one posed at the top of this reflection by the great New England naturalist poet Mary Oliver, as it is should for everyone, regardless of health or healing: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
For how sad it is that any of us might not do what we seem called to do, that we might live our lives never embracing the small voice inside us that says, “teach” or “sing” or “nurse” or “own a business” or “be of service…”
If we live our lives well (at least this is the way I define “well”) then we live not in numbness and lethargy and apathy, but fully alive and feeling, aware of the sacred around us, and with an ongoing commitment to living an examined life — one centered on the presence of God, the teachings of Christ, and the power of the individual to change the world in some way, however small.
Tollers’ eyes opened wide when he heard the words. He smiled a knowing smile for just an instant before lowering his head into his hands. His tears flowed freely and painfully and overwhelmingly like a cleansing, purifying flood, like a baptism of fire and rain, and for the first time in nearly a decade he knew he had found what he had been looking for.
Professor Arthur Tollers was walking along the gravel beach of Raccoon Cove when he heard a faint beep. He stopped in his tracks, backed up a step and waved his metal detector wand once again over the spot where he had heard the electronic tone. He stooped, with a groan, and poked around in the gravel until the tone became loud and consistent. He turned over two or three small stones and then he saw it. Treasure! He pocketed the quarter and resumed his Saturday morning walk along the beach.
The point is this: We don’t really own the land. We are given the blessing of calling bits and pieces of it “home” for a while, but it belongs to the creator and to the lives of all who have touched it and worked it and walked it over the years.
Here’s a truth we Christians need to hear: For many non-Christians, one of the biggest obstacles to becoming believers is not theological. The obstacle is not an inability to comprehend or believe the Christian salvation story. The biggest blockage in their path to faith is how they see the Christians around them acting. For we can be our own worst witnesses of faith.
We’re all here because we have been called to be. What we do with that one life is our vocation, our response to the call of God and the echo of generations of those on the road before us.