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Wisdom Saying
Your eyes dropped
tears of longing on me,
pouring down like oil they clothed me
with the sadness you feel when I say,
if not in word in act,
"My Love, I don't have time."
Once, you said to me,
"Brian, I have the sweetest lips
in the whole world!" I said, "My Lord,
I never knew." "I know, to taste this
sweetest you must learn better how to be
still and quiet."
*Brian K. Wilcox
Musing of a Modern Day Contemplative Mystic
I get this response to an email: "Hectic - Crazed - Typical life of many these days!" I, even in writing of this, can feel the suffering of lives lived in "hectic" and "crazed."
This leads me to some questions. Does the harried and hurried life no longer hurt many persons, so habituated are they to such a lifestyle? What are persons living harried lives running from? Running to? Am I so odd being convinced we are not created to live in such a harried and hurried way? Is there not another way that Christ Himself lived and wants us to live, to enjoy more whole lives, more deep lives, and lives with fuller intimacy with others and Nature? Do we not know that a crazed way of living is of our own creation, and we can choose a more healthy way of life?
So I wanted to look up those words "hectic" and "crazed." "Hectic" ... "designating or of the fever accompanying wasting diseases, esp. tuberculosis; of, affected with, or characteristic of a wasting disease, as tuberculosis; consumptive; red or flushed, as with fever; characterized by confusion, rush, excitement, etc." Interesting. Now, "crazed" ... "craze" ... "Obs. to break or shatter; to cause to become mentally ill; make insane; to produce a crackled surface or small cracks in the glaze of (pottery, porcelain, etc.)."
Okay, I think those definitions pretty well say enough. Do I want to live such a fevered, rushed life? Do I want to live insanely harried and hurried, driven by outer schedule or led gently by inner Wisdom?
My Lord of Love, how can I love you well if I love the pace of my life that skips and scurries me like sliding down an icy slope? Help me to live everything other than crazed and hectic, that I might live deeply in deepening intimacy with all Nature.
Suggested Reflection and Spiritual Exercise
Are you able regularly to relax, completely, enjoying the moment without feeling hurried to get on to "doing something" ~ and without having music or television ... entertaining you? If not, explore the real reason behind your struggle to be still and quiet. Do not let yourself get away with excuses: remember, if you are harried and hurried, you are the one choosing that, no one else.
See next page for Invitation to writer's contemplative village, purpose of OneLife, data on ordering author's book and upcoming devotionals 2008, and material on citations.
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