Dear Friends,
My young friend, Mark, learned to drive a year ago. He was
so happy to have that license. It represented freedom of movement to him – a
milestone in the passage toward
adulthood. Remember that exhilaration? I do. It still shows up sometimes when I
get behind the wheel. Six months later, Mark told his mother: “There’s a lot of
repetition, isn’t there? Going back and forth over the same expressway or city
streets.”
Repetition is an undeniable factor of everyday life. Some
repeated and repeatable things become automatic, and they should not take much
of our conscious effort: peeling potatoes, washing our hair – routine stuff.
The danger is in letting important repeated and repeatable actions become
automatic.
Carl Schulz, the creator of the Peanuts cartoon series, looked back over 50 years of producing
daily cartoons. His personal challenge, in his own words, was “to do the same
thing, day after day, without repeating ourselves.”
The Carmelite Sisters on Jefferson Road in Henrietta, New York and the Trappists of
Piffard, New York are monastic communities, committed to a life of prayer in a stable
community. How easy it would seem to just get in the groove. But these
communities work at remaining vital and fresh, their members committed to seek
and find the newness offered by the Holy Spirit.
The dominant culture of our society seeks newness to
overcome boredom. Both teens and adults quickly take to new vocabulary, new
fads, only to abandon them for the newer new. You have already missed the debut
of the new Star Wars memorabilia!
It would seem that newness is better. After all, doesn’t the
One sitting on the throne in the Book of Revelation 21.5 tells us “Behold I
make all things new!”
Of course God says that to us. God means that all of creation
will be renewed and we, scarred human beings, will be renewed in ourselves and
in our relationships.
But the old and the daily and the valuable are part of the
treasure hidden in the field that Jesus speaks of in Matthew.
Our work, as we begin the new post-summer season of building
life is to sort out the “trite- new” from the “valuable- new”, the old and
repeatable from the useless and repeatable.
Here are questions worth considering in this new time of
year: What do I do daily that is a treasure and is in danger of being lost to
unconscious repetition? How do I make the continuity of purpose essential in my way of living?
~Sister Joan Sobala
