C-19 Reflection #19: Battle for the New Normal

C-19 Reflection (#19)

 Theme: Battle for the New Normal

 Scripture: Psalm 23:1- 3

 1.     The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

2.     He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters, 

3.     he restores my soul.

Reflection:

 Some days we are struggling with the world situation and some days we are struggling with ourselves.

 Our questions seem to go like this, constantly flipping back and forth between the personal and the profound. This dynamic is to be expected, especially when the world’s loss of normal affects our everyday normal patterns so directly. The world is closed down and we are shut down.

The Psalms are characteristically committed to integrating these two realities in our thinking and in our prayer, and they don’t usually shy away from the complicated and the complex.

In the reflection below, spiritual writer Henri Nouwen works to connect our reflection on these two realities of personal and world in a somewhat unexpected way:

“What keeps us from opening to the reality of the world? Could it be that we cannot accept our powerlessness and are only willing to see those wounds that we can heal? Could it be that we do not want to give up our illusion that we are masters over our world and, therefore, create our own Disneyland where we can make ourselves believe that all events of life are safely under control? Could it be that our blindness and deafness are signs of our own resistance to acknowledging that we are not the Lord of the Universe? It is hard to allow these questions to go beyond the level of rhetoric and to really sense in our innermost self how much we resent our powerlessness. . . .

The astonishing thing is that the battle for survival has become so “normal” that few people really believe that it can be different. . . . Oh, how important is discipline, community, prayer, silence, caring presence, simple listening, adoration, and deep, lasting faithful friendship. We all want it so much, and still the powers suggesting that all of that is fantasy are enormous. But we have to replace the battle for power with the battle to create space for the spirit.”