More than I can hold in my hands

At a meeting of our spiritual formation group, we were asked to page, in our thoughts, through the past few days of lives, as if we were viewing a photo album, and to notice what stood out.

I saw the image of me driving up Third Avenue at ten that morning, after talking with women in the jail. The sky was intense blue between the buildings, the green of the trees luminescent. I felt in that moment the vibrant aliveness of everything, seated in a deep gratitude.

The talks with the women, the sharing of scriptures and stories of their lives, had been satisfying. My feeling was that no stratification of society, from homeless to penthouse executive, can put anyone closer to God. It also can’t put anyone further away. That closeness to Truth is right here for any one of us. It doesn’t need us to dig out of a hole, improve ourselves, earn it. Truth is Truth because that’s what it is. Truth is Love, so everyone has that perfect place – the true nature of themselves as loved and loving.

Paging back a day, I thought of the service we had done in the jail on Sunday. The feeling of love was palpable, comfortable, as we sang together, prayed together. I noticed how different it was from my earlier days of doing services, where I had just hoped to get through with out too much disruption. How before I doubted what our humble (and long) reading had to offer to those who came to hear, and now I knew we were sharing truth as if breaking bread, and it would nourish and sustain.

Going back to earlier that morning, I remembered the moment when the attendant had opened the door to my Sunday school class to tell us it was almost time to join the congregation upstairs. “They’re kneeling now” – Sacrament Sunday, where we kneel together in silent prayer, and then pray the Lord’s prayer again, together.

My two students, aged five and three, were standing on the table. It’s a heavy board table, so it wasn’t in danger, and though they had been jumping around quite a bit, my students weren’t, either. I felt a bit red-handed to have them both standing there, full of laughter and exhilaration. But I also knew it was good. In between their jumping around we’d been learning the First Commandment, talking about the words and what they mean, talking about their right to be governed by good alone, all the time. I felt that the love that was filling that room, the joy of their enjoyment of each other and their activity, was the main message of the class. Yes it was almost out of control. As I remembered the moment, I thought of the phrase, “more than I can hold in my hands.” I felt it was perhaps OK to be almost out of control just because there was so much life flowing there, so much goodness. It seemed right to me that I didn’t have to try to hold everything of life in my hands – because it there’s too much to it. Its order is not of my making, but of its own being – of God’s making. As a companion phrase, the Biblical “my cup runneth over” came to mind.

This was the image I shared with my group, though in my mind all the images contributed to the feeling. A member of the group offered a beautiful prayer for me – it mentioned increasing wonder at the presence of God’s glories, and at the miracles flowing through my hands. I desire to help my hands to remember not to grasp so much as to let the waterfall of life flow through them; not to control the flow but just to create a bubbler from which I and others may drink.