On Stillness and Reflection

Tuesdays in the Chapel Readings and Talk from March 13, 2012

Reading One:

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream. Not that I question the reality of my vocation, or of my monastic life: but the conception of “separation from the world” that we have in the monastery too easily presents itself as a complete illusion .... [W]e are in the same world as everybody else, the world of the bomb, the world of race hatred, the world of technology, the world of mass media, big business, revolution, and all the rest .... This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud .... I have the immense joy of being [human], a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966) pp. 140-41

“If I could change one thing about this place.” It feels somewhat presumptuous for me to get to play with this question aloud, since I’ve only been serving as a chaplain on this campus since about the middle of November.

But with the boldness of one who doesn’t yet know better, here goes:

If I could change one thing about this campus, I would gather together architects and environmentalists and chaplains and engineers and people from disciplines I haven’t even heard about, to create Stillness Pods throughout the campus.

I have no idea what they would look like, but they would be places on the actual MIT map, not just within our mental or virtual maps, that you could step into and inhabit for a time.

Spaces where you get to Just. Be. Still.

The stillness these pods would cultivate is the opposite of absence. It is not lack. It isn’t wasted time, or the silence of loneliness or despair. It’s not being left alone with the cacophony of internal voices and judgments: rehearsal of our shortcomings, or those of  colleagues, teachers, students; conversations or situations where we didn’t say the right thing, or said it badly.

Rather it’s the stillness born of the freedom that you don’t have to do or be anything to be numbered among those whose shiny belovedness Thomas Merton was blinded by at some random corner in Louisville in the heat of the Cold War.

Merton was a Trappist monk who arrives at this moment in that excerpt Bob read, on the heels of prayer and meditation. He’s someone who tended to silence and yet understood its deep connection to life in the world; to the connections between contemplation and social action.

I’d like to think I could perceive the belovedness, the God-infused shininess of everyone I pass while bustling across this campus, or while rushing my daughter out of the house to get her to school on time, or my fellow travelers on Memorial Drive this morning. But more often than not, they look like people in my way, or people I feel worlds apart from.

It is stillness, midwifed by literal and spiritual places to plant myself within for a time, that softens the defenses, that reorders myself so that the desire to be extraordinary, to matter, loosens its grip, so that I can behold the world around me, behold you, behold even myself, from that holy stance that nearly knocks Merton off of his feet.

This stillness isn’t escape; it isn’t reprieve from the world. It is about slowing down enough so that our senses come back to life—so that we can perceive the wondrous in the everyday.
I’m guessing my vision of Stillness Pods cropping up across campus won’t happen anytime soon. (Thankfully we have this Chapel here already, as a concrete space to enter into.) So perhaps, instead, we can work to become embodied forms of stillness for others—places in which others can experience themselves as whole, holy, lacking nothing; beloved, shining like the son, so they can and we can re-emerge and engage the reality of life at MIT with greater honesty, less fear; a reality fraught with loss and potential, with sorrow and with joy. The mixed, ambivalent, complex reality of life in a body, in this body that is MIT.

Reading Two: Miracle Fair by Wislawa Szymborska translated by Joanna Trzeciak
Commonplace miracle: that so many commonplace miracles happen. An ordinary miracle: in the dead of night the barking of invisible dogs. One miracle out of many: a small, airy cloud yet it can block a large and heavy moon. Several miracles in one: an alder tree reflected in the water, and that it's backwards left to right and that it grows there, crown down and never reaches the bottom, even though the water is shallow. An everyday miracle: winds weak to moderate turning gusty in storms. First among equal miracles: cows are cows. Second to none: just this orchard from just that seed. A miracle without a cape and top hat: scattering white doves. A miracle, for what else could you call it: today the sun rose at three-fourteen and will set at eight-o-one. A miracle, less surprising than it should be: even though the hand has fewer than six fingers, it still has more than four. A miracle, just take a look around: the world is everywhere. An additional miracle, as everything is additional: the unthinkable is thinkable. Rev. Kari Jo Verhulst Lutheran Chaplain to MIT

Two Cups of Coffee

 “Friendship is an unpretentious relationship, for ‘friend’ is not an official term, not a title of honour, nor a function. It is a personal designation. Friendship unites affection with respect. There is no need to bow down before a friend. We can look him in the eye. We  neither look up to him nor down on him.”

Jurgen Moltmann
German Lutheran pastor and theologian

If I could change one thing…

A wistful line that makes me think of the old genie in the bottle granting wishes…. If I could change one thing…..I would change our perception of what is truly important in our lives and the preciousness of time.  In my early twenties, my mother, who was my only parent and my best friend, was diagnosed with cancer, a terminal prognosis.  Time immediately became my enemy because I knew her time was limited.  Through the treatments, the trauma and all of life’s everyday dramas, I would become lost in the chaos that engulfs one’s life. Yet through it all, when I would become overwhelmed and would lose perspective of what was truly important, my mother would always say to me, mayonnaise and coffee, honey, mayonnaise and coffee.    

You see, my mother, like every mother, had an arsenal of monologues, analogies and even fairy tales to bestow maternal wisdom on her children. Her wisdom for the important things in life and the preciousness of time oddly enough is the story of the Mayonnaise Jar and Two Cups of Coffee. I would like to share the story with you so when things in your life seem too much to handle, when 24hrs in a day are not enough, you too can remember the mayonnaise jar and the two cups of coffee:

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous "yes".

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things--your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions--and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full”.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.

The sand is everything else--the small stuff. "If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you”.

"Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first--the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked”.

"It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."

 “Christianity has taught us to care. Caring is the greatest thing. Caring matters most.”

Friedrich von Hugel
English Roman Catholic philosopher

Victoria Davenport, 

Senior Administrative Assistant