The One Thing Necessary

 Sometimes Lent can be quite noisy: daylight savings time clicks in, summer sports teams get active, needs on the news continue to be overwhelming, the president puts out his budget, and I keep trying to keep true to my Lenten practices. But, what’s it all for? Why am I doing all these things?

 Thomas Merton wrote some time ago:

At the center of my being is a point of pure nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, New York: Doubleday, 1966:142)

 Maybe, just maybe, I should begin each of the remaining days of Lent just going there, just sitting there. “…the pure glory of God in us.” This means deeper than all the sin I find…this means going to the spot where God and I are joined.  This is the place of the promise. This is where my own resurrection comes from. It is growing already in me, and just waiting for me to help it along, or at least get out of its way. The one thing necessary is the truth…of who I am, and who God is. Jesus is this God-joined-to-me eastering in me…

 I so often forget.

I need a daily reminder.

Teach me again and yet again…

Today in the midst of the human struggle

You are eastering in me.