Daily Primer — July 28, North Carolina
Each day you will be given:
A Florilegium entry
A Daily Prayer
and a Night Prayer.
A Florilegium entry
A Daily Prayer
and a Night Prayer.
The Call to Pilgrimage as Absence
God has been calling and I interpreted it as ‘absence.’ I have been ignoring, denying, until the hurt was so great I dropped everything to find him.
Encounter lies at the heart of the discipline of pilgrimage. The discipline is predicated on the promise that if with all our heart we truly seek God — that God will surely be found. It is as if God is hiding in plain sight, and very few are even bothered to begin searching. To be a pilgrim is to adjust one’s perception and one’s focus in order to encounter the God who is present and who desires to be found. The finding of God happens both “out there” in the people and places around us, but also, importantly, God is found in the heart of the pilgrim.
Sorting out an encounter with the God who invites us on the journey is sometimes tricky. We wonder how we are to disentangle our personal desires and impulses from the movement of the Holy Spirit. We worry that to acknowledge a message from the metaphysical somehow points not so much to our spiritual health as to our psychological instability. We are looking for encounters as clear and punctiliar as a lightening bolt and find ourselves wandering through a life as misty and murky as the Cloud of Unknowing.
Sometimes encounter is experienced as absence. Oxymoronic as that seems, my mother (quoted above) was not the first and will not be the last to discover that her perception of “absence” was actually the presence of God’s calling. She knew that she was missing someone but only later understood who that person was. The yearning of her heart was speaking volumes about the love of God and God’s desire for relationship. “God has been calling,” she writes in 1999 at the age of sixty-nine, “but I interpreted it as ‘absence.’” Only when “the hurt was so great” did she finally “drop everything to find him.” Whether mom knew it or not, she was, of course, echoing the insights of St. Augustine, who wrote of God in the opening paragraph of his Confessions, “You have made us such that our hearts remain restless until they find their rest in you.”
Sometimes our pilgrimage begins with an encounter which authorizes our departure from a settled life. And sometimes we depart our settled life, as my mother did, aware only that we are desperate to be in a meaningful relationship with our Creator, Redeemer, and Friend. It is that painful absence of a deep relationship with our Lord which pulls us out of our old orbit and draws us into a new trajectory. It is a revolution of sorts which reorients our living around God who is the center of our universe.
God has been calling and I interpreted it as ‘absence.’ I have been ignoring, denying, until the hurt was so great I dropped everything to find him.
Encounter lies at the heart of the discipline of pilgrimage. The discipline is predicated on the promise that if with all our heart we truly seek God — that God will surely be found. It is as if God is hiding in plain sight, and very few are even bothered to begin searching. To be a pilgrim is to adjust one’s perception and one’s focus in order to encounter the God who is present and who desires to be found. The finding of God happens both “out there” in the people and places around us, but also, importantly, God is found in the heart of the pilgrim.
Sorting out an encounter with the God who invites us on the journey is sometimes tricky. We wonder how we are to disentangle our personal desires and impulses from the movement of the Holy Spirit. We worry that to acknowledge a message from the metaphysical somehow points not so much to our spiritual health as to our psychological instability. We are looking for encounters as clear and punctiliar as a lightening bolt and find ourselves wandering through a life as misty and murky as the Cloud of Unknowing.
Sometimes encounter is experienced as absence. Oxymoronic as that seems, my mother (quoted above) was not the first and will not be the last to discover that her perception of “absence” was actually the presence of God’s calling. She knew that she was missing someone but only later understood who that person was. The yearning of her heart was speaking volumes about the love of God and God’s desire for relationship. “God has been calling,” she writes in 1999 at the age of sixty-nine, “but I interpreted it as ‘absence.’” Only when “the hurt was so great” did she finally “drop everything to find him.” Whether mom knew it or not, she was, of course, echoing the insights of St. Augustine, who wrote of God in the opening paragraph of his Confessions, “You have made us such that our hearts remain restless until they find their rest in you.”
Sometimes our pilgrimage begins with an encounter which authorizes our departure from a settled life. And sometimes we depart our settled life, as my mother did, aware only that we are desperate to be in a meaningful relationship with our Creator, Redeemer, and Friend. It is that painful absence of a deep relationship with our Lord which pulls us out of our old orbit and draws us into a new trajectory. It is a revolution of sorts which reorients our living around God who is the center of our universe.
Edited from a blog entry of 2017 in Stillpoint. PHL.
Florilegium is the Medieval Latin word for bouquet, or more literally flowers (flos, flor-) which are gathered (legere). The word florilegium was used to refer to a compilation of writings, often religious or philosophical. These florilegium are literary flowers—beautiful words/prayers/thoughts I have gathered. During my sabbatical they will give me something to ponder each day. — PHL.
May I learn from you
how precarious are earthly things,
how great divine things,
how fleeting is time,
how lasting things eternal. Amen.
how precarious are earthly things,
how great divine things,
how fleeting is time,
how lasting things eternal. Amen.
prayer attributed to Pope Clement XI [1649 – 1721]. Pope from 1700-1720.
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, Have Mercy.
Lord, have Mercy.
Peaceful God, you say to me, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you . . . Do not let your heart be troubled and do not be afraid.” Instill in me this hour such peacefulness that with ease I can commit to your care everything which would make me troubled and afraid. As I rest, may I come into that deeper communion with you which heals my wounds and encourages my faith — that I might arise from my rest eager to serve you in faithfulness. I ask this in the name of my risen Lord, the Prince of Peace. Amen.
Christ, Have Mercy.
Lord, have Mercy.
Peaceful God, you say to me, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you . . . Do not let your heart be troubled and do not be afraid.” Instill in me this hour such peacefulness that with ease I can commit to your care everything which would make me troubled and afraid. As I rest, may I come into that deeper communion with you which heals my wounds and encourages my faith — that I might arise from my rest eager to serve you in faithfulness. I ask this in the name of my risen Lord, the Prince of Peace. Amen.
John 14:27. The Night Collect from Pocket Prayers - Monday - Compline. PHL.