STILLNESS AND QUIET
Robert Trabold
Hardly anything moves – no wind
neither bushes nor trees swaying
– surprising
for a winter’s day at the
seashore.
Everything is in suspended
animation
blinding sunshine gives same
impression
even its gentle warmth is
motionless.
Vast blue sky does not move
no clouds to break it up
all is still!
Not even vastness of the sky
disturbs silence.
Is this why I came to the sea?
I leave behind my hectic life
house cleaning – garden pruning –
e-mails
anti-war demonstrations –
neighborhood meetings.
Am I looking for something else?
Is someone pulling me to the
seashore?
Stillness - emptiness
start fires burning within me.
I am waiting – catch my breath
my eyes are straining – Absolute
overwhelms me.
My Beloved is knocking at my
inner most door
a door He can only knock at.
No one else can enter so deeply
within me.
Fire burns – my heart beats
faster
my breathing speeds up
my whole body trembles.
My Beloved is touching me –
wooing me
to love
I lay back my head - rest in
ecstasy.
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DIVINE LOVE IN
EASTERTIME
Robert Trabold
We have just passed the six weeks of
Lent where with our prayer and sacrifices, we tried to orientate ourselves to
the events of Holy Week and Easter. In
the former, we remembered the great voyage of Jesus to Jerusalem where He had
His triumphal entry but also the sad reality of His rejection and death on the
cross. He was a good man who preached
the Good News that God our Father loves us and wants a relationship of love
with us. The Father then gave to Jesus
His victory of the Resurrection and invited all men and women to participate in
it. These were certainly momentous times
in our Christian faith and the past six or seven weeks of Lent and Holy Week
gave us time to grow in this faith. In
this Eastertime where we celebrate and remember the Resurrection of Jesus, His
victory might give us an opportunity to reflect on the enormous love of God for
us and how it transforms our life and the life of the world.
The love of God for us is very
different from the one which we experience in the world with other human
beings. In our human relationships, we
develop friendships and love and affection can grow between ourselves and
others. This can be a long process depending on the relationship. It can be a
casual love between friends or a deeper one between a married people. We work on this love, change ourselves and in
one sense, the love between two people has to be earned and then it
flowers. It is a challenge and hard
work.
In our relationship with God, the
dynamic is quite different. If we recall
the parable of the Prodigal Son, the father waited and watched each day for his
son to return. When he saw him in the
distance, he ran out to greet him and welcomed the lost son back home. In a
very real sense, this is a scenario of the love of God for us. In our human existence, the Lord does not
wait for our conversion and then love us.
God the Father loves us in our sinfulness and unworthiness and uses this
love to work for our change into better people. So in one sense, we do not have
to earn the love of the Father for us but it is available to us. God the Father loves us so that this
generosity can help us be better sons and daughters. He does not wait for our conversion but in
His love for us, encourages us to grow into true sons and daughters of Him.
This is too good to be true. It is not
what we experience in human life where we have to earn the love of the other
person for us but it is there each day and the Father offers it to us.
In this Eastertime, we might take
time to realize the wonderful gift that the Father gives us each day. It
should rouse us up to realize this gift
and use it for our transformation into His faithful children. There is no more beautiful time to grow in
this realization than Eastertime.
Through Lent and Holy Week, we have experienced the great mysteries of
our faith and these will help us grow into and appreciate the unearned love of
the Father for us. During Eastertime, He
is looking down the road as He did in the parable and welcomes us back. We are given a beautiful gift and this is the
time to grow in an appreciation of it.
