We thought we would be getting ready for the “Meet and Greets” with the candidates for the Eleventh Bishop of the Diocese of Kansas the first week of May, followed by the Election Convention in June. The process is being extended. As the chaplain for the Search Committee, I can attest to the validity of the process and the depth of spiritual discernment that has brought us to this point. When God’s timetable does not match our own, an array of thoughts and emotions tug at us. It can be challenging to find peace, especially when the national and world news of the day are distressing.
We thought we would be getting ready for the “Meet and Greets” with the candidates for the Eleventh Bishop of the Diocese of Kansas the first week of May, followed by the Election Convention in June. The process is being extended. As the chaplain for the Search Committee, I can attest to the validity of the process and the depth of spiritual discernment that has brought us to this point. When God’s timetable does not match our own, an array of thoughts and emotions tug at us. It can be challenging to find peace, especially when the national and world news of the day are distressing.
The 16th century Spanish mystic and reformer Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) lived in a difficult time. Her family’s heritage was Judaism, and it was the Spanish Inquisition. Her paternal grandfather and her father were forced to either convert or emigrate. Teresa was raised Christian. When she was fourteen, her mother died. At the age of twenty she joined the Convent of the Incarnation, located on land that had been a burial ground for Jews.
Near the end of her life, Saint Teresa wrote The Interior Castle, a spiritual guide for her Carmelite sisters. She uses the imagery of seven mansions to describe the soul’s journey. In the fourth mansion, she talks about The Quiet where she says, “The time has come to think less and love more.”
In uncertain and turbulent times, Saint Teresa invites us to open ourselves to God’s love continually flowing into us. How? Thomas Merton describes an example of The Quiet. As novice master at Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky, he would celebrate mass each day in a small chapel. His habit after mass was to sit and gaze at the altar in prayer. On February 4, 1958, he writes in his journal these words, which would later find their way into Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander.
Beauty of the sunlight falling on a tall vase of red and white carnations and green leaves on the altar in the novitiate chapel…. This flower, this light, this moment, this silence, God is!
Merton was in a state of wordless communion, resting in the presence of God. In the intimacy of the flower, God was amazingly present.
We know what this is like. We turn off the light in our child’s room and gaze at them sleeping, we are mesmerized. We stop the car or our walk, staring at the sunset, watching the clouds change color second by second, paralyzed in quiet fascination. We smell a hyacinth in the breeze and are intoxicated by the fragrance of heaven.This is the season of resurrection. “The time has come to think less and love more.” Amid the turbulence of life, I invite you to experience peace and resurrection in The Quiet. It is all around us, every day, every hour. Open your eyes and allow yourself to be absorbed in quiet fascination; experience the intimate immediacy of the presence of God. The Quiet invites you. The Risen One is waiting for you.
by the Rev. David Jenkins
835 SW Polk St.
The Harvest is the diocese’s triennial news magazine