UNFINISHED BUSINESS?

 

The original St. Mary's building

This week we "downtown monks" spent four days on retreat with our Benedictine brothers at Saint Mary's Abbey in the beautiful, quiet hills of Morris County, about 24 miles west of Newark. For me, the best part was the opportunity to just sit and reflect and write in my prayer journal.

I reflected a lot on my experience of being unfinished, and of my temptation to fill in the emptiness when it seems that God is not enough for me. I wrote that I dislike being unfinished but want to be complete -- in other words, I want to be God.

Here are two passages to reflect on:

The first is something I wrote many years ago, but which I tend to forget.

We humans are perpetually unfinished. We have all experienced the sense that there is always something more to learn, to accomplish, to become. It is this “incurable unfinished in this,“ as one philosopher, calls it, that sets us apart from other living things, because in trying to “finish“ ourselves, we become creators. Our incurable unfinishedness keeps us childlike, capable of learning, and growing. We may be trying to head toward perfection, but none of us will ever arrive there.

The second is a poem from "Surprised by Light," a book of beautiful photographs and poems

by Ulrich Schaffer:

He creates the yearning in you.

That at times seems too much to bear.

He allows you to think paradise

Even though you cannot enter it yet.

He lets you become restless

So that you will start again 

Through the thousand thoughts of the world.

He shows you the incompleteness of everything.Because only one image and one presence will still your yearning.

He gives out waiting and yearning

Like a gift and a heaviness,

Because he alone

Can satisfy our hunger.

Just about every line in this poem poses a  useful challenge to me.

I hope you will find something in this post to challenge you!