Dear St. John's Community,
A preschool director friend of mine once observed to me that for little children, the way they see the world revolves around their bellybuttons. Developmentally, that's all they really know. They don't yet have an awareness of what's beyond the immediate part of their life, nor of others.
In a Zoom call on which Bishop Mariann was present recently, she mentioned how life-giving it is to take opportunities to "look up," which I take to mean, lifting our gaze above whatever immediate concerns we've got. (Even for adults, it sometimes means to lift our gaze above our bellybuttons!)
What do you do to make sure that you are regularly lifting your gaze to see a wider perspective?
I spoke with a person who was dying of pancreatic cancer a few weeks ago, and he shared with me about his prayer life, saying that one of the things that helped him greatly was to regularly pray for others. This is a breathtaking example of what looking up can be like.
I find that doing the daily office (which is our daily prayer service out of the Book of Common Prayer) helps me look up. It addition to the prayers and canticles, it keeps me reading a steady diet of scripture, and I love knowing that others are reading the very same readings each day across the world. It also helps me to feel connected across the centuries that span between our time and Jesus' time, and the centuries before, and to realize how we share a lot with those who have gone before us. Thinking about the past puts today into perspective.
And often, th
e words of the text jump out at me, like in today's reading from Matthew, which is in fact all about how critical it is to keep our spiritual vision and hearing keen, which likewise expands our hearts:
For this people’s heart has grown dull,
and their ears are hard of hearing,
and they have shut their eyes;
so that they might not look with their eyes,
and listen with their ears,
and understand with their heart and turn—
and I would heal them.”
But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.
—Matthew 13:15-16
May you be blessed, especially at this time, with eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts to love.
God's peace,
Rob+
