Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - June 11, 2024
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
Emotional overload some weeks. Graduation one year, for instance, followed a week with the death of two first-year students in accidents, the suicide of the father of a senior, and the backdrop of a student's struggle with cancer.
Graduation itself, for teachers, is a time of mixed emotions. One is often exhausted by the relentless routine of classes, class preparation, grading papers. To have the students leave is a relief. On the other hand, many of them have given us great joy, stimulation and inspiration. For the graduates it is usually a moment of great exhilaration -- combined with some sorrow at parting from many dear friends -- and of looking forward to the “commencement” of a new life.
Most of life might be such a mixture of conflicting emotions and experiences. To simplify things and make them more manageable, do we sometimes just choose to ignore some elements? T. S. Eliot said that we can't really take too much reality at one time. Should we be more sensitive to all of it? Or should we concentrate on chosen elements and make the most of them?
Is it true that at any one moment, too much is always going on around us for us to absorb? Are we inevitably going to miss something important? Are we just too limited for the richness of reality? In view of that possibility, what do we make of our complaints about boredom? Where does boredom originate, outside us or from within? Do we perhaps not give enough of ourselves to the life around us? -- Enough questions here for any of us.
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!”
