The Swinging Pendulum
The Swinging Pendulum
Monday after the Resurrection – April 13, 2020
During these days of physical distancing in public and separating ourselves from others in the run of daily life, we can feel out of balance.
I know there are mental health concerns related to being socially apart from others over an extended period of time. But also as I hear more and more about how uncomfortable people are over the upset of routines and the forced aloneness of staying at home, I wonder if these days of enforced-slowing-down are not a corrective to our overly busy, frantic lives.
I’ve often thought that when our lives are out of balance, when the pendulum has swung too far in one direction or another for us, the corrective sometimes comes in an exaggerated swing back in the other direction. An exaggerated swing that seems excessive may serve only to bring us back to the center.
Evelyn Underhill quotes the 14th century Flemish mystic, Jan van Ruysbroeck:
Ministering to the world without in love and mercy;
inwardly abiding in simplicity, stillness, and utter peace.
During these days as we deal with the coronavirus and the threat of COVID-19, we are challenged to be creative in our love and mercy as we minister to the world.
At the same time, we are given a different opportunity to stretch our capacity to “inwardly abide in simplicity, stillness, and utter peace.”
If we have become too attached to our active lives . . . our desires for a favorite restaurant . . . our freedom to go shopping because we are bored . . . our need to be distracted from the more mundane aspects of our lives . . . then perhaps these days are an invitation back to “inwardly abiding in simplicity, stillness, and utter peace.”
If you elect for this self-surrender and service, if you join up with the divine activities of the universe, and if you choose God, you are at once plunged into this atmosphere, and it begins to act not only on you but through you. Your contact with other selves is changed because it is no longer self-interested. Your spirit will now touch and modify theirs, perhaps unconsciously. God is now acting through you; you are serving. It is true that the majority of us are only raw inbetweeners; the saints alone are fully trained; but the method and its Master are the same.
If we ask what that method is, its right balance seems to be given in Ruysbroeck’s prayer:
Ministering to the world without in love and mercy;
inwardly abiding in simplicity, stillness, and utter peace.
That is to say that action and effort go all the way. They are the means, substance, and expression of our life and creative quality; but all this hangs on an inward abiding in peace.
As for our growth, we depend on the given food and God. Still more do we and must we look beyond ourselves to Him in service, “inwardly abiding in simplicity and stillness.” Those qualities permeate right through daily, homely, and professional life, carrying the Eternal through all these because of our daily recourse to and concentration on it. To do this is more and more to transfigure and deify the substance of our temporal life. It is more and more to do the special work of the human soul, linking the worlds of spirit and sense.
[Evelyn Underhill, The Ways of the Spirit, edited by Grace Adolphsen Brame, (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2001).]
For Reflection:
o Teresa of Avila wrote that Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands and no feet on earth but yours. I pray about what it means for me to be the hands and feet of Christ when I cannot leave my home.
o During these days, what invitations do I sense to move into “simplicity, stillness, and peace”?
o Action and service flow outwardly from our inner core, where we are nurtured in “simplicity, stillness and peace.”
Monday after the Resurrection – April 13, 2020
During these days of physical distancing in public and separating ourselves from others in the run of daily life, we can feel out of balance.
I know there are mental health concerns related to being socially apart from others over an extended period of time. But also as I hear more and more about how uncomfortable people are over the upset of routines and the forced aloneness of staying at home, I wonder if these days of enforced-slowing-down are not a corrective to our overly busy, frantic lives.
I’ve often thought that when our lives are out of balance, when the pendulum has swung too far in one direction or another for us, the corrective sometimes comes in an exaggerated swing back in the other direction. An exaggerated swing that seems excessive may serve only to bring us back to the center.
Evelyn Underhill quotes the 14th century Flemish mystic, Jan van Ruysbroeck:
Ministering to the world without in love and mercy;
inwardly abiding in simplicity, stillness, and utter peace.
During these days as we deal with the coronavirus and the threat of COVID-19, we are challenged to be creative in our love and mercy as we minister to the world.
At the same time, we are given a different opportunity to stretch our capacity to “inwardly abide in simplicity, stillness, and utter peace.”
If we have become too attached to our active lives . . . our desires for a favorite restaurant . . . our freedom to go shopping because we are bored . . . our need to be distracted from the more mundane aspects of our lives . . . then perhaps these days are an invitation back to “inwardly abiding in simplicity, stillness, and utter peace.”
If you elect for this self-surrender and service, if you join up with the divine activities of the universe, and if you choose God, you are at once plunged into this atmosphere, and it begins to act not only on you but through you. Your contact with other selves is changed because it is no longer self-interested. Your spirit will now touch and modify theirs, perhaps unconsciously. God is now acting through you; you are serving. It is true that the majority of us are only raw inbetweeners; the saints alone are fully trained; but the method and its Master are the same.
If we ask what that method is, its right balance seems to be given in Ruysbroeck’s prayer:
Ministering to the world without in love and mercy;
inwardly abiding in simplicity, stillness, and utter peace.
That is to say that action and effort go all the way. They are the means, substance, and expression of our life and creative quality; but all this hangs on an inward abiding in peace.
As for our growth, we depend on the given food and God. Still more do we and must we look beyond ourselves to Him in service, “inwardly abiding in simplicity and stillness.” Those qualities permeate right through daily, homely, and professional life, carrying the Eternal through all these because of our daily recourse to and concentration on it. To do this is more and more to transfigure and deify the substance of our temporal life. It is more and more to do the special work of the human soul, linking the worlds of spirit and sense.
[Evelyn Underhill, The Ways of the Spirit, edited by Grace Adolphsen Brame, (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2001).]
For Reflection:
o Teresa of Avila wrote that Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands and no feet on earth but yours. I pray about what it means for me to be the hands and feet of Christ when I cannot leave my home.
o During these days, what invitations do I sense to move into “simplicity, stillness, and peace”?
o Action and service flow outwardly from our inner core, where we are nurtured in “simplicity, stillness and peace.”
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