Zanygram blog, part 2

Lawrence Kushner, one of my great teachers in seminary, often said that the deepest truths sound banal when you say them. Also that no words can truly capture a spiritual experience -- that the best we can do is write ourselves a postcard that isn't nearly the same as being there but might help us remember, a little.

Today at the gym I was thinking about my grandson, wondering how he is doing in his new world, wondering how my son and daughter-in-law are settling into their new reality. Some lines by Rilke came into my mind, from "Letters to a Young Poet:"

"Don't you see how everything that happens is again and again a beginning, and couldn't it be His beginning, since, in itself, starting is always so beautiful?"

Rilke here is talking about Christ, and I think of it as the Christ within, the potential within every one of us to redeem the world. And here is this perfect new being, my grandson, one more redeemer.

Perhaps, Rilke tells his young poet, everything we are doing now -- every action including whatever pain and stress we may be enduring at the moment -- everything is serving to bring into being the One who is coming (and translating that I think, "bring into being Heaven on Earth"). Jewish mystics believe something like this too, without the Christ language of course -- that every action we take on Earth, every act for good or ill, serves to bring the body of God into or out of balance.

This is why there were tears in my eyes when I gave the benediction at worship yesterday, and asked, "Will we build the world we dream about, for our children, and our grandchildren?" Suddenly, that question, with all that it implies, is personal again.