St Andrew's Church
Your Community, Your Church
Are you there?
I mean are you really there?
Or are you in a thousand different places at once? Thoughts rushing from one thing to the next: What to do today? What’s for tea? What’s happening tomorrow? I wonder if I should call so and so?
We are assaulted by barrages of thoughts, in our half organised rush through each day, many of them to do with what’s happening in the next few days. Worries for the future, worry for family – plans and dreams of things to come. I wonder if you find it easy to switch all of that off, and just concentrate on being in one place and one time.
William Henry Davies wrote a famous poem called “Leisure”, which you might have come across in TV adverts for a certain brand of holiday resort. I won’t quote it all here, but closing lines are:
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
Davies catches hold of something terribly important – all of life flashes before us and past us and if we don’t stop – really stop, we miss it. Of course leisure time is important and we all like to unwind with music, a good book or watching the TV – but even these things distract us from simply being present in the moment, not simply the many, many chores that can fill a day.
It is the same in our relationships with friends, family and loved ones and also in our relationship with God. Unless we take the time to stop and still our minds to the many thought that come tumbling out, we miss simply being present to one another. St Augustine, a fifth century bishop wrote that “God speaks to us in the great silence of the Heart”. It is only in the stilling of ourselves that we can know God, and also that we can know ourselves and each other.
I know it’s not easy, life simply is busy – but I encourage you to try simply setting aside some this lent, when spring is (hopefully) beginning to blossom and sprout into leaf all around, where you try to just be in the moment – to take the time to “stand and stare” at the life that’s all around and perhaps God who longs to dwell in all our hearts.
May God bless you and keep you in busyness AND in stillness during lent this year.
Chris Ramsey
