Vocatus atque non vocatus deusadent

"Vocatus atque non vocatus deusadent".  Bidden or unbidden God is always present"  Words that Carl Jung had inscribed over his doorway.   Words for every portal.... favorite words of a friend of mine who's wife had them made into a plaque for his study.   He recently reminded me of those words when sharing that his wife's mother had died and they themselves were needing these words more than ever. 

Two days of rain and more to come, so the forecast reads; but, I will walk.  Need to walk, refresh, restore.  This is a kind of walking for me--past bare bayberry branches, the stark slate  sea washed tossed stone.  "There is no earth smell, nor smell of living thing..." The midwinter spring of my day.  It's part of the spiritual rhythm of my day--neither circadean nor chronikos.  It's the forgetting time--that--" bidden or unbidden, God is always present".  

I read that monastics acknowledge this time as "Sext" --"the hour of fervor and commitment; but, also the hour of temptation to laziness and despair; the hour of the noonday devil as well as the angel of intensity.  It comes right in the middle of the day, in the middle of everything.  It is the middle of our life each day, the time of opportunity and crisis"... 

And, so, for me, it needs to be the remembering moment that "bidden or unbidden, God is always present. 

"...It is a summons to courage to stay the course, to remain true to our ideals through the rest of the day...." 

The way this defining moment feels to me starts with a restlessness, followed by the temptation to "do" something other than "the next right thing"  or consume something or to shift my focus to someone else's behavior.  From this diminishing perspective, I feel a hole inside of me and I become obsessed with filling it. I feel abandoned and lost.  The hole is the lie. 

The Whole is the Truth...Bidden or unbidden..."

In his book, The Music of Silence, Brother David Stendl-Rast describes the onset of my 'hole'  so, nearly all of the quotes here are from this little book. ...

"Sext" is associated with the stillness and peace of noon; but, it also evokes crisis and danger."   Crisis is always a purification if we understand it correctly.  The very word 'crisis' comes from a root that means asifting out.  Crisis is a separation of that which is viable and can go on from that which is dead and has to be left behind."  

No wonder it feels like a hole!  But, it's not.  It's just clearing the channel. 

He says, too, it's a time to be more fervent in prayer and to seek guidance.  "We need guidance; otherwise, we do not know what to slough off....If  we open ourselves and pray 'what can guide me now?  I am helpless, but I trust that there is some guidance'; we will alway receive an answer.  Sometimes it will come to us unexpectedly; We read something that seems to speak directly to our situation, or we meet a person who says just the right thing.  But sometimes the realignment will be completely internal:  a dream, an unbidden insight, a serendipitous event.  And all of a sudden the guidance we need is there.  What we have to bring to the crisis is trust. And trustful waiting is a truly fervent way of praying....The noonday devil is the voice of negativity, and despair and sadness.  Do we renew our fervor and commitment, or do we let the forces of entropy drain our resolve?"

"The Angelus bells are also connected with noon "Sext"...at that point we pray the Angelus prayer whose name comes from the opening word of the Annunciation story "The angel announced unto Mary... which celebrates the breaking of eternity into time.  And that is really what every angel announces:  the eternal now breaking into our time. But, the Angelus bells were really instituted in the first place to announce a prayer for peace.  They were the bells for Sext in the monastery, but they invited everyone in the village to pray for peace.  Wherever people were-- in the fields, or at their labors, in their shops or at home, when they heard the Angelus bells they would stop work and pray.  That was also true with the morning bells and with the evening bells, but the noon bells were especially an invitation to pray for peace and to commit oneself to treat others with love.   It's the time of transition, passing into the second part of the day.  The hour, as we may waver, lose our resolve at midday, shouts to us the message of God's unstinting love.  To our worrying, midday questions--'Am I alone?'  Is the universe arbitrary and uncaring?  'What's the point?' --we recieve the forceful answer that the ultimate reality in which we are immersed--the answer to the existential question, "Who am I? " is quintessentially, 'I am loved'."

"Prayer is attuning myself  to the life of the world, to love, the force that moves the sun and the moon and the stars.  I can close my heart to that Tao of the universe, and because I so often do, aleination and lack of peace tear the world apart.  But to the extent that I attune myself  to the flow of life, to our life breath, my life can become peaceful even in an alienated and torn world.  To that extent, the world also becomes more peaceful.  God works with me and in me...the power that God wields is the power of love...Praying for peace begins with me and aligning myself with peacefulness..."

When I know that I am loved, I can love.  There is no hole.  Let my restlessness be what prompts me to pause and pray for peace instead of the signal to unravel. And in being restored to peace may I participate fully in a greater peace.