Reflection
I sat down to begin this reflection and found myself writing the banal platitude that “life is busy,” but then it occurred to me that reflecting on the ways in which contemporary American life is busy, chaotic, and often devoid of sanity feels like a gross understatement of the problem. We all walk around with high-power computers in our pockets, and these computers bring us constantly-updating news of domestic and international tragedies. In our own lives, we are pressured to keep chaotic schedules so as to not “fall behind,” though what we might be falling behind in is never quite defined.
But it doesn’t need to be this way, and participating in life–what the great prophet and poet Mary Oliver calls our “one wild and precious life”--in this way is a choice, which means that so, too, can be its opposite. In today’s Gospel, Jesus turns to his disciples “in private”--away from those who don’t understand–and reminds them how blessed they are “to hear what [they] hear,” and “to see what [they] see.” The message is one of salvation, a salvation brought about by the simple actions available to us all of seeing and hearing.
My mind immediately goes to the great mystery that exists all around us, in every moment, at every time, in every place. Some people might call that mystery itself God. The idea that no matter how seemingly mundane or miserable it might appear on the surface, each moment of our human lives is charged with wonder and divine meaning, if we choose to see it as such. And so it is our job to pay attention, in every moment, in every day. We can rush through our lives, stare at our phones, doomscroll, dread our calendars and participate in the so-called rat race of contemporary life, or, alternatively, in countless little and quiet ways we can wake ourselves up to the wondrous and miraculous fact of our existences, individually and collectively, and “see” and “hear” what those disciples saw and heard. The choice, in every moment, is mine, and yours. We need only be awake to it.
Brad Melekian
Associate Professor, Chair, Department of English