It is only mid-August, and yet hints of autumn have teased us this last week, here in the Bay Area. Temperatures have dropped a bit, school has started, and the rituals and rhythms of summer’s end are dancing through our days.
A few spectacular sunsets in a week when the sun is setting earlier have renewed the soul, reminded me of God’s grandeur in the minute and the vast, in the embryo and the aged. The changing seasons alone are enough to inspire one to believe in a loving Creator. We take the skies for granted, I fear, and do not look up enough. The details of life – the shimmering light that silvers the olive tree; my cat’s remarkable fur coat, her giant green eyes, and her thundering purr; the breeze that teases the trees to wave their branches in happiness – surround us, often unnoticed.
I have found that Christ opens my eyes to these delights, at least when I allow him to. It is Christ who says, pay attention, trust me, let me show you where and what to do in the hours ahead of you, so you do not waste your time on Earth.
With my first cup of coffee each morning, I say to our Heavenly Father, “Good morning, Father. What do we have on the agenda this day? What will you show me? What do you wish me to do? To say? To think? To feel? Lead me through this day, a day that I think I own but don’t, a day of presumption that I have control, a day I give to you. Lead me every minute and hour with your love, lighten my load and enlighten my mind, let me see the world and your children as you do, with your love.”
And so this morning, we (my husband, myself, and the Holy Spirit within us) headed for St. Joseph’s Chapel in Berkeley, a precious space of prayer, a special gathering of God’s children, for an hour of penitence and repentance and salvation. It was a sacred time, set apart from the bustle of the world, a family time of sharing the Eucharistic feast, Our Lord himself. We prayed the Decalogue (the Ten Commandments), beseeching God to incline our hearts to keep these laws and even to write these laws on our hearts. It is a good reminder, a simple reminder, of what is required of the faithful, and we as infirm irresolute human beings need reminders. For surely we desire to incline our hearts toward obedience, for then we will be happy. We need these laws written on our hearts too, so that we do not forget, so that we leave this hour of sacred space in our mortal time, stronger, with a more informed conscience.
Life is a time of molding the soul into what we are meant to be. We begin as early as possible, to sculpt our consciences and feed our minds with God’s word, chapter and verse, committed to memory, written on our souls, knitted into our flesh. We slowly grow into the person we truly are; we slowly recognize and can separate good from evil; we slowly open our hearts to the fire of God’s love that will soon burn warmly within us. This is done through ritual and habit, doing what must be done, singing what must be sung, creating what must be created. And when we find ourselves in the place where we are supposed to be, which happens more often as we are molded in time, we experience more than happiness, more than the good life. We experience joy.
The irony is that only by looking out of ourselves can we become ourselves. Only by looking up to the Heavens and forgetting for a moment our immediate desires, can we know our place on Earth. Only by seeing each person as precious, a divine creation, can we know that we too are precious and a divine creation.
In these simple ways, through ritual and habit, through repentance, obedience, and love, we are full-filled with the Holy Spirit. So that in this seasonal time, these glorious moments between summer and autumn, we give thanks for God’s grace, as he leads us by the hand to learn to fly. We soar with him to the Heavens, our mortal selves partaking of the immortal in a small chapel in Berkeley.
Christine Sunderland
Christine Sunderland 