An appeal to my better nature
My dear wife sent me a note in response to my last post. Trudy reminded me of something important: when strangers speak to us, we have an opportunity to brighten their day. And while she was too gracious to say it, we have an obligation to interact with them, to love them.
The flip side to the problem of uncensored self-exposure discussed earlier is unreflective withdrawal. I forget that we are all wounded (me included), and that grace received must become grace extended. Too often I retreat, preferring to escape the situation than to engage in it.
While he probably wasn't thinking of all this (though maybe a variation of it), Wordsworth comments on the source of both sides of the problem, and their solution, in the fourth book of his long autobiographical poem The Prelude:
When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude;
How potent a mere image of her sway;
Most potent when impressed upon the mind
With an appropriate human centre--hermit,
Deep in the bosom of the wilderness;
Votary (in vast cathedral, where no foot
Is treading, where no other face is seen)
Kneeling at prayers; or watchman on the top
Of lighthouse, beaten by Atlantic waves;
Or as the soul of that great Power is met
Sometimes embodied on a public road,
When, for the night deserted, it assumes
A character of quiet more profound
Than pathless wastes.
Time away from the world is important in getting perspective, as is time spent with God (note the reference to the Emmaus road). From that renewal comes the ability to speak wisely and appropriately, and to treat people with the grace and dignity they deserve.
As usual, it is my better half who stirs my better nature.
The flip side to the problem of uncensored self-exposure discussed earlier is unreflective withdrawal. I forget that we are all wounded (me included), and that grace received must become grace extended. Too often I retreat, preferring to escape the situation than to engage in it.
While he probably wasn't thinking of all this (though maybe a variation of it), Wordsworth comments on the source of both sides of the problem, and their solution, in the fourth book of his long autobiographical poem The Prelude:
When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude;
How potent a mere image of her sway;
Most potent when impressed upon the mind
With an appropriate human centre--hermit,
Deep in the bosom of the wilderness;
Votary (in vast cathedral, where no foot
Is treading, where no other face is seen)
Kneeling at prayers; or watchman on the top
Of lighthouse, beaten by Atlantic waves;
Or as the soul of that great Power is met
Sometimes embodied on a public road,
When, for the night deserted, it assumes
A character of quiet more profound
Than pathless wastes.
Time away from the world is important in getting perspective, as is time spent with God (note the reference to the Emmaus road). From that renewal comes the ability to speak wisely and appropriately, and to treat people with the grace and dignity they deserve.
As usual, it is my better half who stirs my better nature.
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