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lunch tray.

Lord God, before the fire of your consuming holiness, in the light of your shining glory, at the mystery of your threefold being, I fall to the floor and cry out: Woe am I! I am small before you, O Lord, I am unworthy in your presence, my lips are unclean and my heart impure; have mercy on me, O Lord, have mercy.

[a prayer for Trinity Sunday from  Living the Christian Year]

Compartmentalize: To separate into isolated compartments or categories.


I currently have my life down to a schedule, a science, and it leaves no room for beauty or spontaneity or deep connections. 

Everything in my life is its own separate entity, out of touch with everything else.  The books I read.  My work as a nanny.  My appetite.  The music I listen to.  Art. Relationships.  Faith.  In my mind, in my way of living, they all stand alone.  When really they're all crashing about, colliding with each other, flowing in and out of each other, changing, strengthening, becoming one another.  The art I like and the art I make, the work I do, my various appetites - food, books, music, community - they're all connected.  And over all of it, the mantle that is my relationship with my Father. 

As I'm writing, I just keep imagining my life as a school lunch tray: applesauce here, green beans there, raviolis in the big section.  Obviously, if I mixed my applesauce, green beans, and raviolis all together  the result would be disgusting, a disgrace to three delicious foods.  I'm just going for the mental picture here though.  Or, another food analogy: it's like I'm constantly eating cake ingredients by themselves - flour, sugar, egg, vanilla, baking soda, salt, cocoa, and so on.  Appealing, right?  I'm hungry so the food analogies just keep coming, but I'll stop here.

Synthesis: The composition or combination of parts or elements so as to form a whole.

I've made this realization about myself on several occasions and then, of course, I always vow to start living my life like it's one big melting pot and get really good at making connections across all the lines that separate the different aspects of my world.  I read once, somewhere, that people tend to compartmentalize their lives because they can't handle everything all at once.  If everything is separate then we can wrap our minds around it; it's comprehensible, it's safe.  If we get rid of the lines, destroy the walls we've put between everything, we'll have to encounter it all at once and figure out how it fits together.

At first it feels a bit like taking fragile, delicate things and smashing them together.  Like cherished knick-knacks in the grubby hands of a five year old.  Sometimes it feels contrived, like you're trying too hard to make it all fit together.   You wonder if there's even a single person out there who has figured out how to live this way.  But then there are moments of light and connection, and you can see just below the surface where the thousand planes of your life meet and shake hands, coalesce, transcend into something much more beautiful and mysterious and fulfilling.  Something whole.

meditations II

I.

Grow us slowly, persistently, and deeply, Lord, to be people who watch without distraction, listen without interruption, and stay put without inclination to flee. Amen.

-from Morning Prayer for June 1, Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals

II.

"This is a fitting time to open ourselves anew to the indwelling presence of God.  Ask the Father to fill you.  Ask Jesus to breathe on you.  Ask the Spirit to intoxicate you.  This week be still and receptive.  Freely seek the benefits and gifts that Jesus promises and Paul describes.  Above all, ask for love to increase in you."

-Living the Christian Year

III.

"As we pour ourselves out for God and others, God graciously pours himself into us."

-Living the Christian Year

IV.

"In the work we have to do it does not matter how small and humble it may be, make it Christ's love in action... What matters is the gift of yourself, the degree of love that you put into each one of your actions."

-Mother Teresa