Awestruck. Part 4

Awestruck

Part 4: Whole

And so now, at the reflective end of my life (I mean, as opposed to the setting out, beginning, and striving, and lots to do end of my life) I am wondering what it would mean – and is it even possible – to stitch together these two aspects of my life into a coherent whole. On the one hand, I have the practicalities of my everyday living, and on the other hand I have my reflective wonder, just at being here. I feel that there is something broken, or torn, in the way these two things are separate in my mind. I am not berating myself: I may just be mistaken, and it may be an inevitable part of the mystery of life that this is just so. Yet I do feel that perhaps I could have done better. So, perhaps like an expert embroiderer fitting together different pieces of cloth into one extravagant whole, or maybe like a surgeon stitching together two sides of a wound that will not otherwise heal, I want to see if it is possible to fit the two sides together into one whole.

What would this mean? Again, I don’t really know. Not even sure what it is I’m trying to do – so how will I ever do it? Maybe, it’s like this:-

We must live with an awareness of the wonder of life. Of the sense of giftedness. Of the exultant joy and unplumbable depth of being here. We must look up regularly to give thanks, and allow deep gratitude to sink into the reservoirs of our souls, till, full to the brim, we overflow in springs of reverence for life.

And now the difficult bit. When we turn our attention from the wonder of the horizon to the intimate work of our hands and minds, this must not be a wrenching away of our attention from wonder, but a conscious pouring into this moment of the creative joy of being here. It is our particular expression of what it means to live. Our contribution to the whole. It is the unity of the finite with the infinite, of the temporary with the everlasting, of the particular with the universal. It is the creative task of choosing from the infinite possibilities of what I might do in this moment of time and place the particular thing that I want to do, and then committing myself to that, to produce something ourselves that is beautiful and good. Something that is ordinary and wonderful. It is the way that our everyday living produces something wonderful – something that cannot be seen when we are up too close to it, but it can only be viewed by looking back from a distance, and then we understand what this wonderful thing is that we are doing. The two things do belong together; each one creates the other. We do not have to be afraid that whenever we look at one we are losing the other. But I think, perhaps, it just is impossible to look at both at the same time, just as it’s impossible to look at the sun, and even when it’s setting, it’s still too bright until there is just the tiniest fragment left, for the last moment before it slips down out of sight. Such are the two aspects of our lives. Never seen together, yet utterly reliant on each other, we can understand their unity, even if we cannot see it. And, if not being torn in confusion, but gently resting in this understanding, though we cannot see their unity side by side, yet we can experience oneness.