The Sauntering Pilgrim

Decades ago I stopped making new year’s resolutions. Now, rather than make resolutions, every year I renew just one intention, and I start with Jesus’ words to Martha. You remember Martha, the one who was worried and distracted by so many things. Jesus cut through all her worries and distractions and said to her – and these are the words that set the direction for my intention – “There is really only one thing worth being concerned about” (Luke 10:38-42 NLT).

His words remind me of something Thomas Merton wrote. “If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live or what I like to eat or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for” (My Argument with the Gestapo). In other words, what is that one thing in life worth being concerned about, and what worries and distractions seduce me away from it?

The best vocational advice I’ve ever read is about much more than choosing a job or career path. It’s about choosing to focus full intention on the one thing in life worth being concerned about, what Jesus called “more and better life than [we] ever dreamed of” (John 10:10 The Message) and St. Paul called “the life that really is life” (1 Tim. 6:19). Here’s that advice from Parker Palmer. “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent” (Let Your Life Speak).

For me, setting and renewing my new year’s intention each year, recalling the one thing in life worth being concerned about, begins with silence. “Be still, and know that I am God!” the psalmist sang. “I am exalted among the nations, I am exalted in the earth” (Ps. 46:10). Or as Eugene Peterson paraphrased it, “Step out of the traffic!” Step out of the worry and busyness of your life. “Take a long, loving look at me, your High God, above politics, above everything” (The Message).

During the evening rush hour a few days before Christmas long ago in Manhattan, I was walking down Fifth Avenue heading toward the Port Authority for the ride back home. To avoid the crowds, I decided to attend the 5:30 Mass at St. Patrick’s. As I headed up the street against the flood of what seemed millions of people headed in the opposite direction, I suddenly became aware of one fellow who stopped, turned as if to reorient himself, and said in a voice that rang clear above all the noise of Midtown rush hour, “God! Where’s everybody going?”

We all hurry on apace: going to work, going home; stopping for traffic, stopping for errands; our attention consumed by so many worries and distractions. And by grace we are suddenly aware of one voice ringing clear above it all: Where’s everybody going? Where are you going, or I? In the still moment at the turning of the year, I hear these lines from Rilke’s Book of Hours.

“The hour is striking so close above me,
so clear and sharp,
that all my senses ring with it.
I feel it now: there’s a power in me
to grasp and give shape to my world. . . .

“My looking ripens things
and they come toward me, to meet and be met.”

In the new year, as in every new day, our looking ripens things – how we see things brings them to their perfection – and they come toward us, to meet and be met in loving embrace. It’s a grace that doesn’t come easily or right away for us any more than it did for Jesus. It’s a way of looking in which intention distills, clarifies, renews, and we discern the one thing in life worth being concerned about. And it grows slowly for us as it did for Jesus.

Many Christians treat Jesus as though he were a divine being dressed up as a human being and pretending to be human. They believe Jesus arrived on the scene fully aware of his role, fully aware of what he intended to do with his life. So they picture him as a boy of twelve sharing divine wisdom with the teachers in the temple, amazing them with what he knew (Luke 2:41-52). But that’s not the story Luke tells. According to Luke, Jesus started by “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions” (v. 46).

Jesus began by listening, learning, opening himself to the Mystery beyond all mysteries, discovering what life intended to do with him. And even then, it wasn’t over. He continued to grow in wisdom as he grew in years, and in divine and human favor (v. 52). Rather than making resolutions and telling his life what he intended to do with it, he listened for what life intended to do with him, his intention being tested for as long as he lived.

The one intention I renew each year is to listen more deeply for the one thing in life worth being concerned about. For Jesus, I believe, that one thing turned out to be love – to value every  person and every element of creation as having an essential role to play in God’s unfolding will for it all, even if he didn’t know what that role was; to recognize that without that other person, especially the least, the last, and the lost, his own life would be essentially diminished and unfulfilled; and to build a true community of shalom in which everyone acted toward each other accordingly.

Here at Holy Trinity, the Church Council believes our one thing to be concerned about is something like this: to nurture relationships here, near, and far so everyone may live abundantly. In the coming weeks, you’ll be invited to help polish that statement of intention, that statement of why we’re here, so it better reflects what life intends to do with us as a congregation. But in the meantime, on the threshold of a new year, how would you answer the question. What is the one thing in your life that’s worth being concerned about, and what keeps you from living fully for it? ▪