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What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Know it for what it is.

“You would be very ashamed if you knew what the experiences you call setbacks, upheavals, pointless disturbances, and tedious annoyances really are.  

You would realize that your complaints about them are nothing more nor less than blasphemies - though that never occurs to you.  

Nothing happens to you except by the will of God, and yet God’s beloved children curse it because they do not know it for what it is.”  

Jean-Pierre de Caussade, A Guide to Prayer for All God’s People

…nothing more nor less than blasphemies.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to know it for what it is.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

Tasting for myself.


“Not far away from them rose a grove of trees, thickly leaved, but under every leaf there peeped out of fruits such as no one has seen in our world.
The fruits made Tirian feel that it must be autumn: but there was something in the air that told him it could not be later than June.  They all moved towards the trees.

Everyone raised his hand to pick the fruit he best liked the look of, and then everyone paused for a second.  The fruit was so beautiful that each felt, “It can’t be meant for me… surely we’re not allowed to pluck it.”

“It’s all right,” said Peter.  ”I know what we’re all thinking.  But I’m sure we’ve got to the country where everything is allowed.”

“Here goes, then!” said Eustace.  And they all began to eat.


What was the fruit like?

Unfortunately, no one can describe a taste.


All I can say is that, compared with those fruits, the freshest grapefruit you’ve ever eaten was dull, and the juiciest orange was dry, and the most melting pear was hard and woody, and the sweetest wild strawberry was sour.  And there were no seeds or stones, and no wasps.  

If you had once eaten that fruit, all the nicest things in this world would taste like medicines after it.  


But I can’t describe it.


You can’t find out what it is like unless you can get to that country and taste for yourself.”  C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle




Can’t describe it?







…yet.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to tasting for myself.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

 The thirsting for this.


“They had found a trickle of water coming down the rock and all had drunk eagerly - Jill and Poggin and the King in their hands, while the four-footed ones lapped from the little pool which it had made at the foot of the stone.  

Such was their thirst that it seemed the most delicious drink they had ever had in their lives, and while they were drinking they were perfectly happy and could not think of anything else.”  C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

 


..why we want water.

I have a GIVENNESS NOW to the thirsting for this.

What do I have a GIVENNESS NOW to?

For whom the bell tolls.



“Time is a gift.

When T.S. Eliot says, “Time, not our time,” he is pointing out that there needs to be a certain detachment from time, a certain monasticism in our lives.”


In monasteries, life is regulated by a bell.  Monks and nuns know that time is not their own, that when the bell rings they must drop what they are doing and move on to what is being asked of them next.

When the bell rings, St. Benedict said, the monk must put down his pen without crossing his “t” or dotting his “i.”

He must move on, not necessarily because he feels like doing something else, not necessarily because he feels like doing something else, but because it is time - time to eat, or pray, or work, or study, or sleep.  Monks’s lives are regulated by a bell, not because they do not have watches or alarm clocks, but to remind them, always, that time is not their own and that there is a proper time to do things.  Monks do not get to sleep, eat, pray, work or relax when they feel like it, but when it is time to do those things.


There is an astonishing parallel between that and what happens in our own lives and we can be helped by understanding it.  There is an inbuilt monasticism to our lives.  We too, at least for the more active years, are called to practice a certain asceticism regarding time - to have our lives regulated by “the bell.”

In our case “the bell” takes a different form, though its demands are the same as those of the bell in a monastery.  In our case the bell is an alarm clock and dictates of our daily lives:  a quick breakfast, a commute to work (carrying sandwiches for lunch), staying home with small children, demands at work or at home, driving kids for lessons, dealing with them with their demands, household chores, cooking, laundry, taking out garbage, calling in a plumber, church on Sundays.  Like monks, we sleep, rise, eat, pray and work, not necessarily when we would like to but when it is time.


During all of the most active years of our lives we are reminded daily, sometimes hourly, that time is not our own; we are monks practicing a demanding asceticism.

There will not always be time to smell the flowers and we are not always poorer for that fact.

Most important of all, recognizing in our duties and pressures the sound of the monastic bell actually helps us to smell the flowers, to give to each instant of our lives the time it deserves - and not necessarily the time I feel like giving it.  We are better for the demands that the duties of state put on us, despite the constant fatigue.  Conversely, the privileged who have all the time in the world are worse off for that, despite their constant opportunity to smell the flowers.

Monks have secrets worth knowing - and the pedagogy of a monastic bell is one of them.”  Richard Rolheiser, Forgotten Among the Lilies

The pedagogy of a monastic bell?


…time, not my time.




For whom does the bell toll?


…it tolls for me.








I put down my pen without crossing my “t” or dotting my “i.”

I have a GIVENNESS NOW for whom the bell tolls.