Journal of Sacred Work

5 responses to “Days 246-249 – Our Choice to Awaken”

1. 

   Anonymous

   September 4, 2009

   Other than reading a few remarkable quotes from Frederick Buechner I was not familiar with his work. So, I am enjoying getting acquainted through reading, “The Alphabet of Grace.” What I find enthralling about Buechner’s writing is his ability to experience God in the routine, seemingly mundane aspects of life. I also appreciate his encouragement (as well as yours) to awaken so not as to miss the extraordinary in the midst of our days. I share excerpt that touches on the matter, “I’ve thought since that if somebody had taken a photograph of me at the wheel of that car as I drove through Wallingford, they would have taken the photograph of a person who was not at that moment present in his life. I think that is true of all of us to a degree. We get through life somehow on automatic pilot, on cruise control, not really listening, not really seeing even those who are closest, nearest and dearest to us, but just getting through our lives.”
   Buechner explained in an interview that if he were to sum up his life work and teaching in one sentence it would be this, “Listen to your life.” When asked how to do this he offered, “Pay attention to any of those moments in your life when unexpected tears come in your eyes. You never know when that may happen, what may trigger them. Very often I think if you pay attention to those moments, you realize that something deep beneath the surface of who you are, something deep beneath the surface of the world, is trying to speak to you about who you are.”
   He is not necessarily referring to tears of sadness. It can be at the sight of beauty, tears of joy, tears of laughter…I find myself feeling deeply when I authentically speak from my heart, or witness an act of compassion.
   This morning I awoke while it was still dark and a full yellow moon was ready to slip behind the horizon, the sun a magnificent red and the sky blushed pink all over. What a way to say good morning!

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2. 

   Anonymous

   September 4, 2009

   Above post by, me ~liz Wessel

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3. 

   Victoria Facey

   September 4, 2009

   What a great Friday sharing story – “To wake up to be given your life again”…
   After my nightly self-guilt of not making the most of the past day (or week), I often think of the gift of “waking up”. How lucky we are when we know that this is a new day ~ another gift? Another opportunity to start over, make up for slacker days left behind. Being able to right perhaps a “wrong”, or an “overlooked” – how I appreciate the time. This is new time, me time, “do-over” time. So enough of my relish ~ I’ll be looking forward to my gift tomorrow…

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4. 

   ~liz Wessel

   September 6, 2009

   Buechner says of tears,”They are not only telling you something about the secret of who you are. More often than not, God is speaking to you through them of the mystery of where you have come from and to summoning you to where, if your soul is to be saved, you should go to next.”
   Excerpt from ~M.F.K.Fishers book, “Sister Age”
   “He asked if I would like to buy a bible. I said no, we had many of them. His hands were too shaky and weak to open his satchel , but when I asked him again to come in, and started to open the door to go out and help him, he told me in such a firm way to leave him alone that I did. I did not reason about it, for it seemed to be an apparent agreement between us.
   He picked up his dusty sachel, said goodbye in a very gentle voice, and walked back down the long driveway to the country road and then south, thinking God knows what hopeless thoughts. A little past our gate, he stopped to pick up one of the dusty roses. I leaned my head against the screening of our porch and was astounded and mystified to feel slow fat quiet tears roll from my unblinking eyes and down my cheeks. I could not believe it was happening. Where did they spring from, so fully formed, so unexpectedly? Where had they been waiting, all my long life as a child? What had happened to me, to make me cry without volition, without a sound or a sob?
   In a kind of justification of what I thought was a weakness, for I had been schooled to consider all tears as such, I thought, if I could have given him something of mine…If I were rich, I would buy him a new black suit…If I had next weeks allowance and had not spent this week’s on three Cherry Flips …If I could give him some cool water or my love…”

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5. 

   ~liz Wessel

   September 6, 2009

   More on listening to your life by Buechner…”You have to be quiet to hear. Those great trees (speaking of redwoods) almost enforce you to be quiet. Anything you would say in their presence becomes the chatter of a cricket. How hard it is to be quiet, especially verbal people like me, to stop not only the outward talking but also the internal talking. We are always in some sort of endless, haggard dialogue with ourselves. This makes me think of the greatest class I ever taught – a class at a boys prep school in New Hampshire. It was a late afternoon class and I remember driving to it from the beach, where I had been to whiff the sea air for a minute. As I drove towards town, to the west, away from the ocean, I noticed that the sun was just beginning to show signs of setting, sort of lemony color in the sky. Then I went up to the classroom. There were the fifteen or so boys gathered around the table waiting for whatever was going to happen. We waited and I could see yellow beginning to deepen a little bit — the sun sinking a little bit. Then the bell rang and, normally speaking, I would have gotten up and started off with the lesson for the day. With this marvelously happy impulse never thought out, instead of starting out the class, I flipped the light switch off, which meant that we were suddenly sitting in deep dusk with the sun setting through the window. The room faced west.
   It was a magnificent sunset. I can still gee it. It was very orange, sort of a pumpkin-colored sunset, with the branches of the trees and corners of the buildings black as soot against it. It turned from orange to crimson. We sat there in absolute silence. That is the curious thing. You would have thought that in a room full of fifteen boys, somebody would have horse laughed or poked the other in the ribs or giggled or something like that but not at all. We sat there for as long as it took the sun to set without a word, without any sound at all, until finally the sun did set and we were sitting there in darkness.
   I’ve thought since about what made that such a marvelous class and the sunset was almost the least of it. I am not saying something sentimental about sunsets. The sunset was marvelous. A lot of it was the silence, which we usually find so awkward. We’re embarrassed; we’re afraid of silence because we use words so often not to reveal who we are but to conceal who we are. We hide behind our chatter. In silence a kind of sense of being stripped naked. Perhaps because we couldn’t see our faces, perhaps because it was a kind of silence, we were all contributing to in a way. It was not an awkward silence. It was a sort of blessed silence. Silence was part of it; a sense of each other’s presence was part of it; we were all there together, all participating in this silence. There was a wonderful sense that nothing had to be done about it. No test was going to be given; no questions were going to be asked; nothing like that. Just to be there and see what there was to be seen, made it a deeply moving thing. The sense also that we were seeing not just the sun set gorgeously, but we were seeing a day of our lives come to an end without sadness, with a kind of lovely gentleness, made it special. We only have so many days and here was one of them. It was beautifully ending.
   It got dark. The sunset was over and I thought to myself, “This is a religion class and I’m a religious teacher. Perhaps I should make some edifying remark about the sunset and draw some religious conclusion from it.” By an impulse as happy as the one which led me to turn off the light, I said not a word, thank heavens, except “Go home.” And, home they went. For that reason, it was a very good class. That is another illustration of what I am talking about, the listening to your life.”

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