W. H. Auden
Monday in the Second Week of Easter
We are into the Fifty Days of Easter season, and the Octave of Easter (Easter Day to Easter 2) has run out. This could be ordinary time, but will time ever be ordinary again? 1 Peter 1:23b-25 tells us
You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. For
‘All flesh is like grass
and all its glory like the flower of grass.
The grass withers,
and the flower falls,
but the word of the Lord endures for ever.’
That word is the good news that was announced to you.
Nothing will ever be the same, not simply because of Jesus' resurrection, but because of the new life he has engendered in us. And this through the holy Spirit, the Breath of God breathed upon us....
One of the first verses of the Bible I ever knew was one that I memorized for the Good News Club (which rewarded memorization):
In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. (John 14:2-3)
Honestly I only remember the first part of this; and together the two verses are not enough. Jesus goes on to say the controversial puzzling amazing thing, that he is the way, the truth, and the life, and that we come to God the Father through him.
This has been taken as exclusionary but perhaps it is more cautionary. Remember the hymn # 463, 464 in The Hymnal 1982, with its words from the Christmas Oratorio, For the Time Being, (and that time being, immediately but not only, 1941-1942) by W. H. Auden:
Seek him in the Kingdom of Anxiety...
Perhaps that Kingdom is seeking us sometimes.
But no, what I would say, falling back on words I have said before, is in response to the question, what do all the great religions of the world have in common?
"We are all seeking the same thing - and the same thing is seeking all of us."
Now as much as ever. As always, and as always we are found, not least by our seeking.
Inshallah.
https://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/22/us/beliefs-729090.html
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