The art of marvel

The art of marvel

Our last catechesis ended with a seemingly simple advice, where I pointed out two basic characteristics of God – beauty and goodness and invited you to discover them. Because beauty and good can motivate a person. It is as simple as that and there may be difficulties and objections as it is impossible. Each of us would be able to name them a lot – but I long to have a beautifully tidy apartment, but when the children arrive … I would put flowers there, but … sit back and watch the sunset … Great idea! But when do you find the time? To go somewhere, relax, but the way home – constipation, nervous tiredness … I try to be good on people, I do it for a while, but then I don’t know what happens and … I want people to be on my behave to encourage, but often I am rather to offense … Yes, they are all objective obstacles that prevent us from experiencing something beautiful and good.

            But it is not surprising. It is these obstacles that prove that God can be found in beauty and truth. For the enemy of our salvation wants to do everything to make our way to God more difficult.

            But how to deal with these difficulties? Be disgusted? After a flash of hope, we are experiencing another failure … Let’s look at how the saints dealt with this situation. In his book Internal Freedom, Jacques Philippe describes his experience of visiting Carmel in Lisieux. He writes how, with emotion and joy, he recognized the places where St. Theresa lived. The infirmary, clause, laundry, garden, every place he knew from Terezin’s memories, which he mentioned in the Story of One Soul. But he was surprised by one thing. Those spaces were much smaller than he had imagined. He says: “This insignificant fact – the cramp of the space where the saint lived – made me think deeply. I realized that St. Theresa lived in a world that was very cramped from a human point of view: a small provincial Carmel with banal architecture, a minimal garden, a small community of religious women whose education, education and manners were often inadequate; And there was such a short life in that monastery: ten years! Yet this paradox stopped me when we read Teresa’s writings, and we have no impression that her life would take place in a cramped world, on the contrary. ”

            We know the familiar comparison. When we look at a glass that is half filled with water, we can say that the glass is half empty or that it is half full. We can start from the ideal as it should be and be angry that it is not, or start from reality and enjoy every moment that is better, more beautiful than the previous.

            Our expectations are very dangerous. That is, they are waiting for external change – circumstances, people have to change and will be well. We wait for the working hours to end, when they finally finish the highway, when they grow up children, when I find someone, when my husband / wife realizes that the behavior is getting on my nerves … We expect happiness from changed circumstances. But this is not how happiness can be found. It’s just a journey to despair or escape. Now I can hold it somehow, and then, on that holiday, over the weekend, on the ghosts … But the holiday is not as expected, children get sick over the weekend, on ghosts someone still chews in the hallway through the door …

            Thus, neither beauty nor goodness is sought in ideal, but in everyday reality. Sometimes you just stop and start to notice the little things around you. A person with open eyes who can stop and calm down can marvel. How does a hand actually work? Look at the person who controls the typescript, who plays the piano, who knows some skill. How does speech work? Tongue and mouth slightly change the flow of air in the mouth and it makes an infinite number of words, tongues … Someone smiles at me, notices me, prefers, speaks …

            In this respect, we have a lot to learn from children. They let the story interact. They repeatedly listen to the same thing and still find it charming to them because they become part of the storyline. This is the basis of meditation. Let yourself be drawn into the story, be addressed and remain in awe. We need to free ourselves from our excessive rationalism (thinking about whether it is normal, what they think of me, etc.) and functionalism (looking only at how things work or why they are good). Let us again listen to the words of Jacques Philipp: “Teresa lives with a wide horizon, in the horizon of the infinite mercy of God and in a boundless desire to love. She feels like a queen with the whole world at her feet, for she can achieve everything from God and through love she can go to all corners of the world where the missionary needs her prayer and sacrifices. ”

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