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Meditation: "Thou in Me Dwelling", by Debbie Celsie

 

     Many years ago, I read Viktor Frankl’s books ‘Mans Search for Meaning’ and ‘Prisoner of our Thoughts. These books explore his own firsthand experiences during his years spent in the Nazi death camps during World War 2. It details how he and a few other
prisoners found a way to transcend their suffering in the face of terrible loss and darkness, how they refused to yield ultimate power to their captives and circumstances, even in such extreme conditions of psychic and physical stress. Frankl believed this is what attributed to their survival. Though the world they lived in was beyond horrible, they identified with another world, a world within themselves, the result of an inner decision to preserve a semblance of spiritual freedom and believe in God despite all the evidence to the contrary. By directing their energies inward and paying attention to what was happening in their souls they were able to tap into how much more there is to life than the external world around them however wonderful or horrible it was and this is what kept them going and gave them the strength to not only cope and survive but triumph.

     Is that not what we do here at the church and why we come here each Sunday morning? To nourish our souls and align ourselves with a different perspective than the secular world tends to offer, to get the tools we need to build a foundation of faith, a spiritual taproot so to speak, that will uphold and sustain us no matter what life throws our way. Similar to the taproot you see when you pull up a plant in the garden, dig out a dandelion in the lawn, or find a shrub uprooted by a strong wind, a good foundation in faith works as the central support system from which other smaller roots develop. Even the tallest and most magnificent trees start life with this kind of anchoring. In his letter to the Ephesians Paul encourages the early Christians to be strengthened in their inner beings through Christ’s spirit that they may be rooted and grounded in love and faith. 

      Being rooted in God is so important especially when things in life can sometimes knock the wind out of us. We need this grounding, this rooting, because though the experience of adversity and loss is unique to each person, it is also universal, sooner or later we all
encounter some sort of crisis, which results in suffering and loss. More than not, when we experience this suffering and loss whether through death, divorce, the diagnosis of a terminal illness, financial deficiencies, it can be so overwhelming that it becomes the
dominant emotion, the only emotion we feel. The motion picture of our life stops, and everything freezes. Our Life in a sense, becomes a snapshot of that moment or incident. A great analogy for this focus and reaction to loss comes from the book, ‘A Grace Disguised.’ It’s like having a beautiful mature tree out in your yard that has had to be cut down. Now, instead of looking out the window at that beautiful view, you are staring at the stump of a tree that once was but is no longer. The stump is all you see and therefore you can’t think of anything but what is missing. So, if that is the case, you need to do something about it. You must landscape the backyard reclaiming it once
again as more than just the reminder of the void and what is missing. But… you don’t get rid of that stump, for it is far to too big and too precious to remove. You work around it and with it. You plant scrubs, trees, flowers, and grass, maybe you lay out a brick pathway and build two benches. Then you watch everything grow, and as time goes on and years pass, you know that the stump is still there, it remains, still reminding you of the beloved tree you lost, but… the stump is now surrounded by a beautiful garden of blooming flowers and growing trees and lush grass. Likewise, the sorrow we feel remains, but we can create a landscape around the loss so that once was ugly and
barren is now an integral part of a larger, lovelier whole.

     Embodying our faith does not just happen from coming to church but by internalizing our faith and beliefs in a way that transforms own hearts, own minds, and our living. The more we experience difficult times the more we learn where God belongs and allow him to assume that place, at the centre of life rather than at the sides or outskirts. And whether we put it in context of a horrific circumstance as Frankl and the other prisoners of war had to endure or any other tragic unthinkable event or loss that can and does strike at any time, we need this taproot, this foundation that will not just get us through the moment when we feel the whole world has stopped but the following days, weeks, months and years when the grass does keeps growing, bills continue to mount, houses get dirty, children need
raising, jobs must be done and life needs to be lived. Our goal should be transformation not recovery or mere survival. In the best-case scenario as long as we remain alive, we want to live as joyfully, serenely, and productively as we can. The supreme challenge
involves facing the darkness of the loss on one hand and learning to live with renewed vitality and gratitude on the other. The most important thing we need to cultivate and navigate through any loss is the delicate tension, of sorrow and joy, of mourning and
living that becomes our new normal and what many of us right here are living, because the truth is in substantial losses, we don’t get through them, we don’t finish grieving or get over it as people may suggest we should, there are not stages we need to cross off
in some type of time schedule, sorrow is a sigh of a healthy loving caring soul, remember it was Jesus who said ‘Blessed are those that mourn.’
     This week, I thought about Frankl’s words, how the prisoners of war in the worst extreme environment finding a way to transcend their suffering; how they identified with a world within themselves; how they developed a mark of spiritual freedom directing their energies inward and paying attention to what was happening in their souls. I thought about all the resources we could build on or use as a tool to help us do the same. And what I came up with was the mere words of a hymn we all have heard and sang countless times. ‘Be thou my Vision.’ In that one song, it tells us what needs to be at the forefront of our minds, hearts, and souls in all we do, wherever we find ourselves, as we make our way through this life in all that comes our way. In this hymn we are asking for God to Be our vision, to be our best thought, by day or by night. To be our wisdom, and our true word. For God to be in our dwelling, whatever befalls us. Waking
or sleeping. This hymn is stating the importance of taking Gods thoughts, wisdom, vision, and word and making them our own. If that is what we aspire to, can you see how our view of harsh reality could be softened and supported.

     Once again, whether its Frankl as prisoner of war or whatever prison or nightmare we may find ourselves in …we are not to run from the darkness; we are not to go into some artificial place that doesn’t acknowledge or realize our grief but we ate to open our
hearts to the divine goodness that lies within us all, that lies within everything, we are to enter into our faith. Not to ignore our grief, but to built around it, just like the stump illustration. Isn’t that the purpose of our faith, to not let death have the last word. To not
let those who have hurt us keep us in hate. To be able to be the one who grows and learns from their own loss, how to help lighten the burdens of others who experience it also.
     For our reflective time of music today I chose to play for us, the hymn we have spoke of, Be Thou my Vision. And while there are many beautiful versions of this song, which I played over and over this week, I choose a very simple one without a lot of pictures to
distract and that didn’t put up the words for whole verses all at once but one line at a time so you could really take it in and focus on what it is saying and what it could mean for all of us.
All Glory be to God.

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