Back in my coaching days I learned to develop a particular kind of vision: I saw details of my athletes’ performance that others would miss. This one slouched a bit; that one overreached; and so on. The vision was the product of careful, attentive, even loving work. What others saw was just a boat full of rowers, either winning or losing.
I think that the Christian life involves a similar deepening of vision, of attentiveness. How else can we explain the ways we see the world and do what we do?
A few days ago I was walking from class, in a good mood on a beautiful day. Spring in Chestnut Hill is absolutely gorgeous, and I was just enjoying the walk. But I nearly stopped in my tracks when I saw something that moved me, almost to tears. A beautiful young woman had one arm around the back of a girl of maybe thirteen or fourteen, a student at the Campus School for children with severe disabilities. With her other arm she was holding the girl’s hand as she stepped up onto a curb after crossing the street. What struck me was how tender and intimate was this physical contact–in a word, how free. Christ was right there, in flesh.
Gerard Manley Hopkins once wrote about beauty that often goes unseen, “but the beholder wanting.” How I wish others could have seen what I saw that day! Such tenderness, such attentiveness to the need of the moment, to the opportunity to love.
Perhaps our prayer, our liturgy, our moral action, our practices of discernment–perhaps all these are simply the practices that make us ready to behold the opportunities to love. Perhaps the Christian life is about becoming better beholders, better able to see the lighting flashes of divine grace that erupt underneath the flesh of those around us.
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This is nice. Thanks for this. I just want to say that I hope the liturgy of the Mass although full of symbols and deep meaning often clutters. I just hope that Homilies be shortened and offer more quiet moments for People to ponder or bring with them a phrase or two to reflect upon. And I hope that Liturgies can also be spent outside the 4 walls of the church and more close to Nature. I grew up in a Catholic family though buts same I appreciate the values and good teachings of other beliefs such as the teachings of Zen and Yoga that I hope one day can be also integrated in the homilies….
First of all I love dotMagis that absolutely captured my soul’s yearning….. and my life’s work, really! It isn’t surprising perhaps that I have had St. Ignatius retreat experiences in my early formative years….. what has surfaced in my soul lately is the possibility that Since Jesus died on the Cross and Since He rose from the Dead, doesn’t that mean that Life Everlasting is Now Everywhere? We have yet to put on His eyes, His Heart, His mind? It has long troubled me that though we pray the Our Father as Christians across denominational lines, we have yet to realize, Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven; perhaps we have stopped expecting? I haven’t thrown the towel in yet, but I sure hope that we will begin to see His Excellence manifest collectively in this next decade…. friend told me about the 3 minute Retreat website and that is how I found you… I look forward to sharing your thoughts with my friends… Thank you