There’s a certain Slant of light
Hello, dear reader! Thank you for being here. I hope the spring is glorious where you are. I was tempted to skip this week’s post because we finished Romans last week, and it’s almost Memorial Day weekend (what’s a weekend anymore?), but then I remembered what a wise rabbi said: this life is all about discipline. If you don’t have it, you don’t get very far. This is true for one’s work life, and for health and fitness of the body, and maybe it’s especially true for the spiritual life. Only through a regular practice—worship, prayer, and reading scripture—can we achieve the heights and depths, the full development of our innermost lives. It’s not with an “achievement” mentality, though. It’s through humility. We put ourselves back into the hands of God again and again to shape us and remake us, every day a little closer to his image. In this way we give daily attention, with discipline and focus, to the divine spark within.
I was listening to a recorded talk by Dallas Willard the other day, and he made the point that many of us think of God as if he’s merely on the sidelines of our lives. In other words, we do our best on our own steam from day to day and occasionally, maybe once a week, we pray or sit in a church service or flip through the Psalms. I know because I’ve done it too. But if we really want to be spiritually fit, it takes time, commitment, and practice. The rewards are great! The open channel of communication with God will deepen and grow. Prayer becomes second nature when you do it daily, and instead of closeness to God being just an occasional shallow flowering, we will find ourselves rooted more and more in the eternal. There’s no end to it.
If you’re like me, you have ten minutes a day to sit in silent meditation, to practice listening, to cultivate the inner life, and to make room for a regular discipline of seeking and humility. Another easy practice to get into the habit of is praying The Daily Office. The rhythm of morning and evening prayer gives structure to the day and allows us to meet the Psalms, confess our sins, and receive a blessing, every day.
I always think of this beloved Dickinson poem when I see light in an especially striking way. Her poem of course is more wounded and tragic and wintery than what I often see. But I think this poem (her poems in general) contain their opposites too. And there is no disputing this “heavenly hurt” we’re given, which makes all the internal difference. It’s where the meanings are.
