The Slow Way: Our Blessed Smallness
Jesus taught that it is in our small reality—our weakness, our limits, our longings, that we find our own wholeness. This is a mystery I’m still sorting out.
When we moved back to the east coast, one of our hopes was to spend more time in Mid-Coast Maine, where Chris’s great grandfather bought a cottage on the edge of the continent 80 years ago, and where Chris spent endless long and lazy days as a kid. The cottage is in his dad’s hands now and we’re grateful he always welcomes our whole crew when we want to make the seven hour drive. It’s not a winterized house, so our trips are almost always in the summer, where our boys have learned to ritualize the same small daily joys Chris has always held sacred—morning walks to the cove, tuna fish sandwiches on the flat boulder of the rocky shore, morning reading on the deck while watching the lobster boats making their rounds, a nighttime walk as a family around the point.
I’ve been coming to this house for half my life by now, and have my own rituals—my favorite hiking trail, my favorite shops, the best place for an outdoor lobster dinner, the best spot for an ice cream cone, the weeds I pull in the yard every July.
This past weekend we managed to make the most of our extra day off school and spend the weekend there, which was the first time the boys and I have ever spent fall days on the coast of Maine. We came in time for the nearby town’s pumpkin festival, including a parade in the rain. (Mainers are not swayed by a little weather.) The heavy rain on Saturday pushed us to spend the rest of the day inside, working puzzles, watching Survivor, eating a feast made by my father in law.
By Sunday morning, though, the sun was on its way to breaking through, though the swells from the storm were foamy and rough against the boulders below the house. I drank my morning coffee facing the water, while Ace watched Encanto on the couch nearby.
I’m still working my way through Every Moment Holy, and I opened the prayer book to “A Liturgy For Arriving at the Ocean”:
“We praise you, O Lord, for our limits!
limits you have given us for
our good and for your glory.”
The subtitle of Blessed Are the Rest of Us is “How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole.” I love that word “limits.” Limits speaks to more than weakness, more than failure, more than the ache in us for justice. Our limits in the presence of the divine is part of the core of who we are. Limits, as the prayer says, are for our good.
“We have traveled this day to the bounding sea, O Lord,
to the far edge of the habitable land,
as to the utter end of our own measure
and ability and strength,
to find here reminders of your limitless
Presence extended immeasurably beyond us.
In this place may we recall our blessed smallness.”
How does our smallness bless us? How does knowing that we are finite on this ancient earth also teach us to know the One the prophet Daniel called the Ancient of Days?
In Blessed Are the Rest of Us, I refer to Jonathan Pennington’s scholarship to define the word we translate as “blessed” in Jesus’s Beatitudes as better translated as “whole” or “flourishing.” Whole are the ones who know they are poor in spirit. Whole are the ones who choose meekness. Whole are the ones who mourn. Whole are the ones who long for justice and rightness on this earth.
While I read “A Liturgy For Arriving at the Ocean” with my coffee, looking out to the white foam swells as they crashed into the land, I thought about the smallnesses in my world: my body, particularly my recovering formerly-concussed brain—tender and capable of being broken, my daily life—ruled by tasks of caregiving, creative work, and tender moments of connection with my people, is all finite. I am not the Ancient of Days. I am a small one of limited days. I was reminded that though the land I sat on will slowly erode into something I wouldn’t recognize millions of years from now, it will still exist here in this space long after I am gone. The wild ocean has existed for as long as the earth has spun, renewing itself endlessly. What glory. Of course I should see myself as small here where the water is in control, and I am at its mercy.
Jesus taught that it is in our small reality—our weakness, our limits, our longings, that we find our own wholeness. This is a mystery I’m still sorting out. But I think the wisdom of wholeness is found in letting go of striving—that anxious insistence on making ourselves more worthy by our own performance: stronger, smarter, richer, less marked by age and time. The Ancient of Days is the one who breaks boulders down to sand, who holds the echoing symphony of whale songs in their own deep waters. We are wise to see ourselves at the mercy of the greater things. We are aging. We are breaking down. And we are only learning to love one another with our own limits and longings.
We are flesh and bone and imagination at the edge of the land. We cannot live in the ocean, as much as we strive to overcome our need for oxygen and a solid place to stand. What if the life that fills us to contentment, the life that satisfies, is the one where we look out at the Ancient Power and know our place in it? What if we release our control and let ourselves be filled, all the way to wholeness?
Knowing that we have traveled to, “The utter end of our own measure / and ability and strength, / to find here reminders of your limitless / Presence extended immeasurably beyond us.”
Recalling “our blessed smallness.” And may that blessing be our own wholeness.
A Slow Practice
If our wholeness if found in the midst of our limits and longings, let’s begin there today. We only know the places we love by what they are in this moment. But the practice of imagining their past and their future is also a way of making peace with our small and limited lives.
Let’s practice a prayer of imagination. Take a deep breath with me. You may want to pray as you breathe in and out: Something like, “Spirit of God, give me eyes to see your loving vastness, and eyes to see my beloved smallness.”
Let’s start by imagining a place we love, whether it’s the land we live on or a place we spend time, like the cottage I love in Maine. In your imagination, spend time picturing that land’s past.
Begin with the land as it is now, with the houses you know, the roads that exist, the gardens and electrical wiring. Now use your imagination to venture back in time fifty years. What did the land look like? What was the same? What was different? Who lived there? What were they dressed like? What did they do with their time? How did they live? What did it smell like? What vegetation grew? What animals roamed the space?
Take another deep breath and allow yourself to imagine the same space 100 years ago. Ask yourself the same questions: What did the land look like? What was the same? What was different? Who lived there? What were they dressed like? What did people do with their time? How did they live? What did it smell like there? What vegetation grew? What animals roamed the space?
Let’s go further back in time. Imagine this space 1000 years ago. What did the land look like? What was the same? What was different? Who lived there? What were they dressed like? What did people do with their time? How did they live? What did it smell like there? What vegetation grew? What animals roamed the space?
And even further, 1 million years ago. What did the land look like? What was the same? What was different? Who lived there? What were they dressed like? What did the people do with their time? How did they live? What did it smell like there? What vegetation grew? What animals roamed the space?
And now, allow your imagination to jump forward 100 years. What do think the land will look like? How will humans live here? How will they dress? What will people do with their time? How will they live in this space? How will it smell there? What vegetation will grow? What animals will roam there? And take this thought practice further: Who will remember you? What, if anything, will your ancestors know about you?
Now, move forward 1000 years. What do think the land will look like? How will humans live here? How will they dress? What will people do with their time? How will they live in this space? How will it smell there? What vegetation will grow? What animals will roam there? Can you accept that no one will remember your life? What does this do to your spirit?
Finally, let’s imagine this space in one million years. What will the land will look like? How will humans live here? How will they dress? What will people do with their time? How will they live in this space? How will it smell there? What vegetation will grow? What animals will roam there? What will be the state of the land, and what will it say about God, the Ancient of Days?
As you come to the end of this practice, use your imagination to picture yourself on this land—your life as valuable as any creature that ever has or will roam there. Can you imagine the presence of God coming to you, maybe in the form of Jesus, or maybe as Spirit or voice or some other form that stirs your heart. What does the Ancient of Days want you to know about your own smallness in this world, in this universe? What does God want you to carry from this practice?
End with your own prayer of commitment, that you might honor your smallness today and the days to come.
A List of Things:
The Slow Way Letter is almost always available in podcast form every Tuesday morning. We ran into some technical problems and my editor and I are both away for the weekend. This means we' will have to push back this letter’s corresponding episode until later next week. Look for it Thursday or Friday! And thanks for your patience. :) As always, find it wherever you get your podcasts, and take a moment to share it with someone who might benefit from a short, weekly prayer practice and reflection.
Blessed Are the Rest of Us: How Limits and Longing Make Us Whole is available for preorder at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and everywhere books are sold. Preorders are a huge gift to authors like me, who are hoping to get their books into more book sellers hands. Please consider preordering!
Thank you, Micha, for this illuminating reflection.