Finding Lost Things

As quarantine time lengthens, I am realizing the number of things that had fallen out of my immediate consciousness are reappearing.  Things, places, people who hadn’t made it into my daily thoughts are beginning to resurface. I wonder if that is true for you too.

The picture above is a sunrise on the Sea of Galilee.  I was standing in Tiberius, facing the Golan Heights.  It was beautiful and powerful.  It gives me chills now looking at it.  But I hadn’t thought about it in a while.

About a year and a half ago, I began teaching myself French through an 8 part course I purchased on Audible.  It was fun–and at the time–I had the time. But life got in the way.  I lost track of it in other things.  This week I moved it from my Audible Library… to download to my device.  I hadn’t thought about it in a while.

For some reason, Holy Spirit Monastery in Rostrevor Northern Ireland popped up in my Facebook feed this weekend.  I visited with them for several days on a trip to Ireland in 2010.  On and off for a while after, I’d check in electronically to see what they were up to. But this week I joined them for Compline on Sunday and Sam and I participated in the sacrament with them this morning. [They have been live-streaming their sanctuary 24/7 for at least a decade.]  It was something I “used to do” regularly…but I hadn’t thought about it in a while.

I could go on about the things that have popped back up in my life in the past 30 days. But I’m already wondering about the things that will come in the next 30.  And I’m wondering also if after the imminent threat passes I’ll just let these things sink back into oblivion, or…  Or if I’ll take the time, now and then, to listen to these things that busy-ness took away.  If I’ll take the time, now and then, to mine what and why these things stay with me and strike a chord in me.  If I’ll listen for the holy in them.

What are those things that are rising in you in these long days, my friend?  Who are the people?  Where are the places? What is the experience that may still have something to speak into your life?  Is there some unfinished wisdom trying to get a hearing?

I left the most surprising one for last.  Jesus.  I’ve had a long and checkered experience with Jesus and the traditions through which I received him.  I’ve always been a Gospel of John, Jesus admirer… rather than the version of Jesus in the synoptics.  I’ve always been more interested in the Mystical Jesus than the dogmatic one.  So imagine my surprise as over the past week I’ve been drawn back to the fullness of this One.  In an Ignatian-like manner, I’m engaged in reading myself into his stories, to see what he saw, smell what he smelled, taste what he tasted, feel what he felt. And though I’m sticking pretty close to John’s telling… I can describe the experience as finding something that I lost.  No one is more surprised than me.

I don’t know where this will take me.  But that’s not the point.  When we human beings stop allowing in the incessant noise, new input, old news, reports, statistics, and images, etc. we may just find as someone more wise than me said:  We already possess all we need.

We already possess all we need.  In things that have already been given to us.  In things we forgot we knew.  In things we didn’t know how to remember. You can decide if you want to give credit for that little piece of wisdom to 2 Peter chapter 1 or to Pema Chodron.  But at this time for me… it’s just one more of the things that I lost, and that is now found.

May you find all you need in the storehouse of what you have already received. And in it find joy and true peace.

xo, the celtic monk

Kathleen