Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - July 2, 2024
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
Deferred gratification might be a term for the way I regard letters. Finding a personal letter, one hand-written (!) or at least printed is a great delight. I'm caught between tearing it open and reading it as I walk or saving it until I can sit down and enjoy it undistracted by anything else. Even a postcard from a friend in Bangkok or Calgary qualifies.
So often, too often, everything we do is done with something else as background: we write or study with music or even the TV; we drive a car while talking on the phone; we lunch while discussing the fate of the world or, more likely, our business. We are not used to giving what is before us our undivided attention. This seems heightened now with acquaintances passing you by absorbed in something else on their smartphone. (We exchange a greeting in church while looking over the shoulder of this stranger to see if there's someone there we know.) All this is a pretty shabby way of treating what is supposedly our prime concern at the moment.
Taking a letter and sitting down comfortably to read it (a good cup of coffee might go well) is a great pleasure. I think there's a lot to be said for making this experience available to our friends by writing them real letters, what devotees of high tech call “snail mail.” If we can never “find time” to do this, could it be that we are letting human matters, human relations, others' need for us, take the back seat to a lot of less-than-human preoccupations? The people we love deserve the attention we can give them.
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!”
