Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - May 29, 2024
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
The young men and women I've spent much of my life with have generally come from loving families and been protected from realities such as abject poverty, even insecurity. Again and again I hear of how life after graduation from college and as they enter a wider world of employment, brings first-hand knowledge of what they've been protected from earlier. Their trust and optimism about human nature is severely tested; their naiveté brought up short.
They left their dorm rooms unlocked, and in the rural setting of the college also often left their cars unlocked, were used to greeting great numbers of peers whom they knew often only by appearance. It was largely a world of great trust and freedom from fear. (It was certainly not free of assaults, unpaid loans, theft, and fights, but it was bucolic compared to many an urban ambiance.)
Traveling across the country to graduate school their U-Haul is burglarized. Settled in a new position they find themselves falsely accused of a career-destroying crime. Alone and away from familiar surroundings they must spend weeks in stress awaiting a resolution. A charming would-be friend fleeces them.
The test is to learn from all this but not, you hope, to become hardened and cynical. To learn, rather, what? To be more circumspect? Less spontaneous? More cautious? To test others' intentions and good will more?
How do we do all this without becoming a machine or a slick operator? Isn't much of our life spent in balancing our awareness of the pitfalls of human association with hope and trust about our fellow human beings? Over against the seeming treacheries and ill will we run into we somehow must believe in goodness and trust. We do, in fact, most often bring out the good by expecting the good.
Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”
