If you're anything like me, you probably spend a good part of your time wishing away the routine of everyday and waiting for the special times. How often do we sit at work, longing for the hours to pass until we're free for the evening? How many weeks do we cast aside, waiting for that one magical vacation week?
I think it's the same for the spiritual seekers among us. It is, we think, impossible to find the Divine in that relentless routine of our lives. We wait for those holy moments, those incredible retreats. those events that waft us away from the everyday, and then we begin our seeking.
Welcome to Brothers and Sisters, the weekly meetup for prayer* and community at Daily Kos. We put an asterisk on pray* to acknowledge that not everyone uses conventional religious language, but may want to share joys and concerns, or simply take solace in a meditative atmosphere. Anyone who comes in the spirit of mutual respect, warmth and healing is welcome.
It is not, of course,that there is anything wrong with those wonderful magical mountaintop moments, but it might be wrong to assume that daily routine is a spiritual desert. Of course, when we're feeling jaded by our daily routine, it's natural that we want to know how we can get more of that mountaintop feeling into our dull lives. It's not that we long always to be on the mountaintop, but rather that it feels like all those hours of work, the shopping, the commuting, the cooking, the cleaning--all those things pull us away from the Divine, and if we could just get away from them, we could come to know our God more deeply.
But is this the truth? Asking "how can I redeem this wretched humdrum?", Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner ponders this question of how to escape the routine and find the Divine. He comes to the conclusion that it is we who make our lives dull, and so we are capable of making all events in our lives boring, even those special times. He comes to realize that, to a large extent, we make our lives spiritual, or non-spiritual, and we are capable of doing this no matter what events fill our lives. He prays:
That's why I now see clearly that, if there is any path at all on which I can approach You, it must lead through the very middle of my ordinary daily life. If I should try to flee to You by any other way, I'd actually be leaving myself behind, and that, aside from being quite impossible, would accomplish nothing at all...It's evident that routine is not just a part of my life, not even just the greatest part,, but the whole. Every day is "everyday."
Sounds rather grim, doesn't it? But essentially, Rahner is a hopeful kind of guy, who believes deeply in a God who sustains us always with love. And so Rahner concludes:
...if it's true that I can lose You in everything, it must also be true that I can find You in everything...thus I must seek You in all things. If every day is "everyday," then everyday is Your day, and every hour is the hour of Your grace...in Your Love all the diffusion of the day's chores comes home again to the evening of Your unity. This Love, which can allow my daily routine to remain routine and still transform it into a home-coming to You, this Love only you can give.
So it is not the routine which jades us, but the lack of awareness that, every day, always, the One we seek is seeking us in Love. And so, as you live your everyday life this summer, I wish you luck in finding the One you seek, and the joy of experiencing that One's love.
All quotes taken from Karl Rahner, Prayers of a Lifetime, Crossroad Publishing 1986.