a quote by Sue Bender, Everyday Sacred, p.125
"What I am learning is not 'light-bulb joy,'" Helen said that same day. "Nothing really dramatic, but the experiences add up to the beginning of wisdom." She thought again about the day of the fire. [in which they lost their home] "If I use the word 'searching,' someone might think I'm not content. My searching is more like that of a monk. I'm not driven in the search, but hope to keep learning things along the way."
"After my visits to the Amish," I told her, "I had expected to be transformed. I expected to see big changes. Instead. I found little changes, and a new appreciation of all the things I had taken for granted."
Helen smiled. "Maybe that's the beginning of wisdom. There are no answers, there are just experiences."
Nora Gallagher in, Things Seen and Unseen, wrote, "The road to the sacred is paved with the ordinary." and quotes from Esther de Waal, an English historian who has written extensively about Celtic Christianity. "It was a practice in which ordinary people in their daily lives took the tasks that lay to hand but treated them sacramentally, as pointing to a greater reality which lay beyond them. It is an approach to life which we have been in danger of losing, this sense of allowing the extraordinary to break in on the ordinary."
Further, Nora Gallagher writes... "This then, is a record of what it is like to live with the hand at my back, to live within a world that is mostly unknown outside its boundaries, to live in faith. It's a long journey into experience and away from idealism. One imagines religion as making one "good," and various ideal ways of behaving are often touted in pulpits. But the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith. And none of it works without the weight of experience, knowing something as an experience rather than as an event that passes over the skin. How this I experiences this event and folds it into flesh. How a soul, as Margaret Drabble said, weathers into identity."
what a cute little baby on your lawn,,, I really like that Sue Bender book too,
ReplyDeleteYes - he moves very quickly on all fours now - lots of experiences ahead of him!!
DeleteI like how Sue Bender pulls together scattered thoughts about everyday life into a cohesive whole ...
I tend to wait for the big revelation, often missing the small things until after they have well passed. You have encouraged me to remember to quietly observe, meditate on the blessings of my life and build the puzzle of wisdom one piece, brick or experience at a time.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the thoughts Jay - and what a fascinating puzzle it will be:)
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