2022-09-17 A Meditation on Stillness and Vibrancy

“Lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the Lord!” (Ps 134:2 ESV)

Be still my soul, says the mind to the heart, that is experiencing a crazy sense, of what I read of Him, I know this Jesus. I fight for Him. I know the feeling His disciples must have felt. It all gives me waves of warmth, yet: be still my soul.

So the heavenward glance, the ecstasy, the aliveness, is muffled somewhat, yet not always nor for all time. We lance forth as those inspired and entitled to Love, to Relate, to make this the day of small things, things untold and mysteries unspoken, but for a season. In due season we will Rise. In due season we will feel the karma, the spell, the major coming together, and its silly sensations will no longer offend nor cause us to shrink in notions of self control and “don’t go being silly”.

Thus our dance and our outlay is one of habitual acting out, controlled chaos, imbued perfection of the soul, a soul now in ecstatic ferment, hallelujah being sung, muttered words of “Here I am, use me”, and silent contemplation with tether let out, with wild romps and cavalcades through the eons of time, the majesties of space, the delight in knowing God. For we are weaned, weaned from any lust for revenge or manifest obsessive thoughts. Instead, we are the healed and calmed, quieted, in order that it cause no offense when we Rise Up, when our morning bible study leaves us shaking our head in wonder and awe, when a strange thing alights upon us and gives us the vision from a distance and from a remove, the step back in order to see what service we have conscripted ourselves unto; we see it now objectively, from a remove, so that we may humor our better angels and dive right in again.

Yet, be still my soul. Wait, my soul, while these my peers spend their day in fasting and prayer, catching up, braver then myself to ride out of the gates boldly even if green behind the ears, crazy for Love and crazy for Jesus, taking no frightful hideout but intrepid for the Lord. Who are these, who know no longer themselves as sinners, as residents of the sinful hotel, but as New Creations whose eyes lift to the hills, whose hearts stir to the praise, whose feet race to the Cross?

Each of us is formed and reformed and readjusted in the News that we are just like Jesus, created, formed, servant, God’s image, daughters and sons, humble, helpful to the wider world. So each of us defers to these our neighbors: can I sit at your feet and listen? Can I magnify you while I am lessened? Or can I grow up and take responsibility as it comes my way, rising to the occasion of sonship, of daughterhood, to race to a no nonsense dire need in the world as we this day do, inspired (secretly so), see it.

The soldier wins a future war simply with a certain kind of color guard of the soul, a pomp and circumstance, a willingness to be in that worship service or delightedly to testify or show oneself aligned with the Cause. Such duty is noted. Such willingness, such lack of confusion, addiction, ennui, is inspiring a bit of fear in the enemy just maybe; maybe someone “out there” was listening. Such is the prayer that society at large would find itself, no warring mentality, but yes a war within each and every community to be the People mentioned in our Constitution’s first words, facing faceless enemies and corporate malfeasance, would-be saviors polluting, in the end, the waters; better angels invoked, yet crucial decisions still to be made: it can all be from wretched estate, or it can be the ones whom the Lord has anointed, who we do hear, through the chaos and through the fussiness. We no longer fuss; we are sent forth; we are Busy; we are making, somehow, this thing called our newfound faith, into a Cause and an antebellum talking point. This is who we are. Oh, this is our ride just pulling up to the curb.