Awake and Watchful
The final paragraph in Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God tells the story of the person seeing a monk in prayer, being overcome by a sense that this monk was the most alive, most wise, most powerful person in the world. The person waits until the monk stirs, and tells him this sense of his vitality, wisdom, and power. The monk calmly said “you simply saw a person fully awake.”
Advent brings with it the suggestion that we remain awake and watchful. Do we see those around us, strangers on the street or companions in our homes? Evelyn Coffey, an enigmatic poet and neighbor, told me that once she had stayed awake all night watching a camellia bud open. It remains beyond my impatience. But I imagine often the wonder of it, watching…waiting…. She knew that the flower would open.
I am stunned to be that present to strangers, to companions. Do we sit, once in a wonderful while, watching in rapturous certainty that they will indeed open, become their fully bloomed self? Or do we just think, once in awhile, of how wonderful that would be?
John,
ReplyDeleteSometimes when Billie and I go to bed, I stay awake after she falls asleep, and hold her, and find myself being amazed and thankful for the gift of sharing life and love with this special human being, this incarnation of God's love for me. An Advent grace, no?
Also, one of the poems I recited to myself on my walk this morning enfleshes your reflection. Here it is. Evelyn-the-camellia-watcher, she, awake in her own "sweet unrest," would have liked it.
Bright Star
Bright star, would I were steadfast as
thou art --
Not in lone splendor hung aloft the
night
And watching with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless
Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike
task
Of pure ablution round earth's human
shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors --
No -- yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my true love's ripening
breast,
To feel forever its sweet fall and swell,
Awake forever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken
breath,
And so live ever -- or else swoon to
death.
John Keats