Meeting 3. - Everyday life and passion - two pillars of one dwelling ******************************************************************** .. tags:: content|eucharist|Eucharist, content|spirituality|Spirituality, content|time|Time, content|maturity|Maturity, method|text-work|Text work, method|discussion|Discussion, type|formative|Formative Meeting Goal ============ To show harmony between everyday life and extraordinariness, that these two realities interpenetrate, and are not next to each other, to find a place for wonder in everyday life, to show that to a large extent we decide how our life will look. Prayer ====== Adapted to the group's possibilities. Introduction ============ On Friday we searched for extraordinary things, places in our life, what shapes our identity, distinguishes us. Yesterday we wondered whether routine and everyday life are really needed. We came to the conclusion that everyday life is also needed and is also a gift. But do these two realities have to be next to each other? Do I now have separate time for extraordinary things, passions, celebration, and in a moment will I return to these ordinary, everyday gray activities? We want to reflect on how to connect these realities. Acceptance of everyday life, sanctification through everyday life ================================================================= We gave God what is extraordinary and what is everyday. For Him we don't need to separate some better, nobler spheres of life, but give Him everything, because He wants to be present in our everyday life. He has been present in it from the very beginning. Let's read: | O Lord, you have searched me and known me! | You know when I sit down and when I rise up; | you discern my thoughts from afar. | You search out my path and my lying down | and are acquainted with all my ways. | Even before a word is on my tongue, | behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. | You hem me in, behind and before, | and lay your hand upon me. | Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; | it is high; I cannot attain it. -- Ps 139,1-6 God knows when I sit down and rise up, sees my action and rest; in this definition one can see the Semitic way (called "polarism") of encompassing the whole reality and life contained between two extreme poles. * Does God choose some part of my life and act in it and not in others? * What does it mean that God lays His hand on me? * When God gives us graces daily, are they despite this everyday life or perhaps are they in it? Such grace, God's gift, is contained in the most ordinary events of gray life, which lasts as long as their ordinariness and grayness last. * How can God act through everyday life? Does He put in this everyday life some things that are unusual, such wonderful ones and therefore move us, or does He act precisely using this everyday life? God directs us with extraordinary precision through the ordinary day -- Karl Rahner * Have you ever washed dishes, peeled potatoes, etc? I think yes... * How does it seem to you, does this activity belong to the sphere of the sacred or the profane? * Is it not so that every activity should bring us closer to God? * Can everyday life be a means of sanctification? But in such a sense that during performing some activity we pray or offer for someone, or can this activity itself sanctify? For a Christian living in a state of grace, everything can become an event of this grace. The ordinariness of everyday things is the seat of the silent mystery of God and His grace -- Karl Rahner When I do something with love, even the smallest thing sanctifies me. * Can such things develop me as a person? * If I escape from this everyday life, am I only not fulfilling God's will? Escaping from everyday life is escaping from oneself, from one's own humanity, which is inseparably filled also with elements of ordinary routine, boredom, repetition. We cannot escape everyday life, because we take it with us wherever we go, for it is us - our everyday heart, sluggish spirit, small love, which makes even what is great paltry and ordinary -- Karl Rahner Where is the place for wonder? ============================== If everyday life is so super, what is wonder for anyway? Where is its place? Wonder is the beginning of fully Christian experiencing of everyday life -- Zbigniew Nosowski Jesus says that we should become like children. * What made us happy when we were children? "Only a child can take a stick, stick it in the ground and call it their friend" * Do you agree with this? Is this how our life should look? Life can be lived in only two ways: either as if nothing were a miracle, or as if everything were a miracle. -- Albert Einstein To see mountains as mountains and water as water. There is nothing extraordinary in this and therefore it is so extraordinary. To say that something is ordinary is blasphemy against the Absolute -- John Ching-Hsiung Wu * Do you experience in your life such places that are simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary? Those where wonder and everyday life are reconciled with each other? * Or do you have it that there are some two spheres completely unrelated to each other, but there is harmony between them? (e.g. you have a passion, but you don't constantly fight battles with your parents about it, but you have unified family life with what you are passionate about) * Or maybe it's like this, that it cannot be reconciled in you and that's it? Eucharist as sacrament of everyday life ======================================= * What reality is such a perfect union of everyday life and extraordinariness? Every day in every church the Eucharist is celebrated. Karl Rahner calls the Eucharist the sacrament of everyday life. * Every day the same, the same words, but can one say that this is routine, that this is ordinary? Probably one cannot call ordinary the fact that God descends to earth and comes to us in a piece of bread. But Jesus did not say: do this in remembrance of me, but differently every day. No, every day this happens the same way and this is salvific. In the smallest moments the taste of life is hidden =================================================== * What do you think, can such extraordinary things - as every Eucharist is - and ordinary - as the fact that it is daily - be combined? * Is it easy to live so that other extreme realities are combined, e.g. our passion and routine daily schedule? .. centered:: "Passion requires sacrifices" We must make the effort of asking questions, searching. Our passions will not develop themselves, life will not build itself. * Do I fight to give flavor to my life? * What choices do I make daily (because these choices also influence the shape of my life)? Do I choose things at a level that will develop me or such "lower culture"? (A valuable film or some stupid one, or maybe theater or philharmonic?) .. note:: This is not about pushing that theater is better than cinema, if someone is fascinated by cinema, it will be better for them. Going to a stupid film is also not bad These simplest, smallest and most everyday matters and choices matter the most. At every moment of our life we can choose good, beauty and truth. Summary ======= I think that the most beautiful way of knowing oneself and places around is arousing wonder in oneself. Wonder at a person - what a difficult art, at sunset, at the soaring of a tower, at sleep, at winter, at birth and perhaps it was given to us at death - this wonder is our chance to survive in the world. And this is a world of arrogance, nonchalance, furious roar of advertisements, cheap and quick meals, murderous haste. I trust that this characterizes a person precisely, that they can succumb to wonder. -- Jacek Kurek Application =========== The application of this meeting should be prayer for each other. It is so that we don't have this everyday life reconciled with extraordinariness to the end. Let everyone reflect on what specific thing, sphere they most care about at this moment to reconcile, and in this intention we will pray for them for the next week. (the animator must discern whether the group is open enough to say this in the forum, or each person tells only one person) In prayer: thanksgiving to God that He gave us the ability to wonder, that in everyday life we can realize what amazes us, request for strength that we may be able to make the effort and make good choices.