“At the end of forty days Noah opened the hatch he had made in the ark, and he sent out a raven, to see if the waters had lessened on the earth…
Then he sent out a dove, to see if the waters had lessened on the earth.
But the dove could find no place to alight and perch, and it returned to him in the ark…
He waited seven days more and again sent the dove out from the ark. In the evening the dove came back to him, and there in its bill was a plucked-off olive leaf! So Noah knew that the waters had lessened on the earth….
He waited still another seven days and then released the dove once more; and this time it did not come back.” (Gn 8:6-13, 20-22)
In our hurried Western life-style, our patience, if we have any at all, runs thin! We are in a hurry to get somewhere seemingly all the time. If something or someone gets in our way, our impatience can come out in, shall we say, less than appealing manners – think…the parking lot interstate, Walmart cashier lines, perhaps even Starbuck’s drive-through. We face the lure of instant “communication” and “information” every day on our phones and computers. And if these technologies fail us, even for a nanosecond, we can feel terribly put upon, and even completely lost. What was novel in technology 30 years ago, for those of us old enough to remember, now is commonplace and even a driving force in most if not all of our life experiences, so much so that we cannot conceive of doing without them.
Where do we find a balance, or even just a brief respite from the proverbial “rat race” that we find ourselves in on an everyday basis? Some of us look for practices that can help to teach us to “breathe” literally and figuratively in our world (yoga, centering prayer, meditation, daily mass, etc.). Many times, though, it takes something traumatic to bring us to a point where we can even become aware of how the busyness of our lives is so overwhelming. Perhaps it’s the loss of a job, or the illness or death of a loved one. It could be the loss of our home, or our belongings, or being totally displaced by an event like the terrible flooding that we experienced here in Louisiana this past year.
These types of experiences have the capacity to overwhelm us perhaps, but they also have a hidden “grace” that opens up the possibility of “seeing” things in a new way – perhaps realizing for the first time what the true value of people and things are in our lives. All the way along the spectrum between inconvenience and irritation through to loss, grief, and depression, there are “openings” that can occur that “catch us in our heart,” in such a powerful way that we can even become completely transformed.
Many times these “openings” do not occur all of the sudden. Most times, they occur over time, in steps, sometimes many small steps over long stretches of times. Like Noah sending out the raven and doves to find out if the flood waters have subsided, it takes time before the dove returns with an olive branch, or does not return at all, and we know that there is new “dry land,” that we can walk on, that we can find new hope in, and in this same way, receive the grace, many times unforeseen and unexpected that God is showing to us after the storm.
The Gospel today (MK 8: 22-26) complements this theme of patient waiting and gradual newness that can come into our lives, if we pay attention to the right things:
When Jesus and his disciples arrived at Bethsaida, people brought to him a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. Putting spittle on his eyes he laid his hands on the man and asked, “Do you see anything?” Looking up the man replied, “I see people looking like trees and walking.” Then he laid hands on the man’s eyes a second time and he saw clearly; his sight was restored and he could see everything distinctly.
How many times are we “blinded” by those things that keep us busy, or simply blinded by busyness itself? How many times do we miss opportunities for authentic interactions with the world and people because we hold too tightly onto our own agendas? As the Gospel points out, many times it takes something outside of us, an event or other people, to bring us to the “healing” that we need. And it is always the touch of another that “heals” our blindness. It doesn’t come all at once. Although we see “something” as the blind man did after Jesus’ touched his eyes, everything doesn’t come sharply into focus for us all of the sudden. Who’d have thought it would take Jesus two times to heal the blindness? But that really seems to be the point, doesn’t it? Healing in order to truly be transformative and empower us to “see” things in a NEW way takes patience, time, persistence, and the continued touching from others around us. No one is transformed or healed by themselves.
The Genesis story today specifies how God promises “never to doom the earth again,” as he had done so in the flood. It is almost as if God changed “His” mind. Or perhaps the story is again really pointing up the perspective of Noah and all of us and how we can receive the Goodness of God in creation by, like Noah, “offering up the burnt offering on the altar” of our hearts. When we can see our blindness, we can receive the newness of a sight into Goodness that will always prevail!
There is no flood that can drown out the Goodness of God. Despite our unavoidable suffering in the “deaths” we encounter every day in our jobs, families, expectations, etc., there is always the glowing possibility of Newness when we constantly reach out to give and receive the patient touch of our God in the Community of Creation!
Peace
Thomas
The soul is the delicate yet durable cloth woven and laced together in loving pattern by the merciful strokes of God’s Passings…
And the sheen of our soul is the ever-glowing awareness we have of this sacred-stitched fabric.