Happy New Year

What follows is the January 1 reading from Frederick Buechner’s Listening to Your Life … may it set the pace for the year ahead …

I discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled to it and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it, even such a limited and limiting life as the one I was living on Rupert Mountain opened up onto extraordinary vistas. Taking your children to school and kissing your wife goodbye. Eating lunch with a friend. Trying to do a decent day’s work. Hearing the rain patter against the window. There is no event so commonplace but that God is present within it, always hiddenly, always leaving you room to recognize him or not to recognize him, but all the more fascinatingly because of that, all the more compellingly and hauntingly…. If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher, it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

Happy New Year to all of you … life itself is grace!

The Place Within

At the center of every life is a place pure and beautiful, untouched by sin or sorrow, yet shaped and conditioned by both, a place wherein God dwells, found in every human being, a portal to heaven, and a passageway to every other human being.

Every prayer nurtures this place – every act of kindness enlarges it – every intention to do good, every vow of faith made, every piece of Scripture read, every pilgrimage to worship, every moment of sacrifice, and every sigh yearning for God sustains this remarkable place.

Created by God, this place is the center of our life. Here is where our humanity is made, the high mountains from whence flows pure love. Every time we enter this place, but for a moment, we enter into the presence of God.

Be of good cheer in your journey … this place of beauty and purity is established and defended by Christ your LORD. No enemy enters therein; no hatred, no fear; no guilt, no anger. Only peace and goodness; your real and eternal self.

It’s your place, given to you by God … trust it, and every time you look upon a human being with charity, every time you forgive, every time you say the name, Jesus, you visit the sacred place within.