October 30, 2013 WBAS Cat Prayers & Reflections, WBAS Topics Virtues & Values, REL Topic- Virtues/Values
By: Kathy Hendricks
There is nothing like traveling to distort our sense of time. My current trip-in-progress brings this into greater perspective. On my way to the airport, my mind raced ahead to the possibility of a missed flight as I sat in gridlock on the interstate. Regrets about not taking an earlier turn-off, and thus avoiding the traffic mess had me backtracking, while the annoying reality of sitting helpless on the highway plagued me. Finally I surrendered to my fate. It is what it is, I told myself, and then popped in a CD of some jazzy music. The sky started to shimmer around me as the sun lit the horizon, and trees in full fall regalia waved their branches in greeting. Time took a new turn when I simply stayed present to the reality of God all around me.
If I can find such awareness on a crowded freeway, I wonder why I can’t do it the rest of the time. I’m working on it, to be sure, and in those moments when I do surrender, I discover some amazing things. A drive back from the western edge of Colorado over the weekend was a case in point. My husband, Ron, drove with me to Grand Junction where I spoke at a day-long gathering of catechists. On the way home, we pulled off the road in Glenwood Canyon. The vibrant color of the trees and backdrop of majestic canyon walls was breathtaking. In a space of ten minutes I had an epiphany of sorts, recognizing all around me what Saint Augustine described as “beauty ever ancient, ever new” – the wonder of God’s presence.
I hear a lot of lamenting as I travel around the country, mostly about parents who are disengaged from parish participation while, at the same time, wanting education or sacramental preparation for their children. We are still recovering from a national lament over the political gridlock that shut down the government, and are bracing for the next economic crisis. Young people shooting their teachers or bullying a classmate into suicide stun and stupefy us. It’s enough to make us lose faith in one another, let alone an ever-present God. We wait, as one writer put it, for the full flowering of God and yet end up feeling like we are in a perpetual desert. “[The] temptation is to believe that God is not in the sandy stretches but in the oases… a relief from the arid landscape of our lives…” (John Kirvan, Silent Hope). This makes God an over-the-rainbow illusion instead of one dwelling in all things. Keeping that kind of faith is a challenge, to be sure, but also intriguing. One never knows what might surface while stalled on the highway of life.
Bright Ideas
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Read about the life of Saint Peter the Apostle and talk about the various ways he kept faith in Jesus, even if it was in imperfect ways
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Download my Prayer for Faith, and use it in your parish or home.
