Ways of life that enlarge our capacity to give, forgive, and receive are all around us. Sometimes custodians of these treasures are so dazzled by the beauty of one place or thing, that they refuse to believe they can be found in any other expression. Sometimes teachers forget it is not the complexity of things that create value.
I am a custodian of faith. I am a teacher of spiritual practices. This means of course that I too can be forgetful and dazzled. That’s the kind way of saying I can make things more complex than they need to be. I can also be blind to the beauty of traditions and ways of life I haven’t practiced.
Sharing experiences of ways of life that have helped me grow in my capacity to give, forgive, and receive is one of the ways I try to maintain conscious contact with God…sharing these encounters also helps me to keep growing so that I don’t get stuck in places that may be comfortable but aren’t helping me continue to expand my capacity to encounter and share Grace and Peace.
My two year old son is teaching me a still more excellent way. He is learning the alphabet. As part of the learning process he sometimes carries with him puzzle pieces in the shape of letters. More often than not they aren’t placed on the board where they’re meant to go. Instead they’re scattered randomly throughout out house—or so I thought.
One day I recognized that an M was on a stack of magazines and an S was next to his shoes. My son, intentionally or not, seemed to be labeling objects with their first letter as he learned what they were called.
There’s definitely some kind of Church sermon in this about the First Earth Creature, Adam, naming things. Perhaps there’s also more universal message given by neighbors (and sung by Julie Andrews, or Ariana Grande) about our favorite things.
Favorite thing can be as serious as Spiritual Practice that lead to the presence of God. They can also be as simple as moments that channel Grace, and Peace like going for a walk or sharing a meal.
This is my place to share favorite things in the form of reflections. It’s also an opportunity to place my version of alphabet letters on people, places, and things that I have learned from.
May these be a map for that which leads us closer to God and one another.
When I heard the learn’d astronomer, When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me, When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them, When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick, Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
Walt Whitman, The Learn’d Astronomer
