April 2020
Restlessness is the spirit of the age. To one degree or another, we all experience the dis-ease caused by the disease, the Covid-19 pandemic, with all its emotional and economic distress.
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Covid-19 is an interloper who has sucked us into its dreadful vortex. Its insidious ploy is to ruthlessly attack the body while leaving the mind confused, anxious, and restless.
Restlessness and dreadfulness are uninvited guests; nevertheless, they have claimed squatter’s rights in our lives.
Restlessness lives rent-free in the minds of the ones, especially, who lack a firm foundation and who are imprisoned by windowless walls. These metaphors may apply to some restless people you know.
From metaphor to reality – certain habituated thought patterns, such as feeling cut off, an internal hollowness, self-judgmentalism, self-medicating, and difficulty receiving the love of others, can bring one’s restlessness to wits’ end. Any daily newspaper or a google search or YouTube video has a quick fix on how to survive the distancing. For many of us, closeness is what we really want.
God is as close as our heartbeat. -or a 'long, loving look' at the Divine. What a beautiful thing it would be, to go to a space in our solitude, get ourselves out of the way, and cling to God by a wholly simple and loving movement of allowing God within.
My friend, Benedictine Sister Macrina Wiederkehr said it this way, in her prayer, “...Open my eyes to the moments of resurrection that surround me every day. There is always something rising, opening to new life, budding and blossoming, forgiving and transforming. Teach me to live awake that I may recognize the renaissance being celebrated in my midst at every moment. Make me a disciple of joy. Amen.”*
Macrina has touched my life and the lives of others in many transformative ways for many years. Macrina died April 24, 2020; we will join others in honoring her life in a future issue.
-by Jan
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I have been dreaming of travel. In one dream, it was a cabin set among evergreen trees. In another, it was a luxurious hotel with mountain views. The effects of weeks of pandemic-based isolation are beginning to appear. Cabin fever is setting in.
I am restless. When I check my thesaurus, I find that synonyms for “restless” include “uneasy” and “unsettled.” It then provides a list of similar words: “agitated, disturbed, perturbed, troubled, fidgety, jittery….” Can I check “all of the above”? Even for this introvert, our stay-at-home guidelines are getting to be a strain.
Each word in that list of similar terms has negative connotations. To be any one of them is unpleasant. “Restless” is not where I want to be.
Spirit, spirit of gentleness,
blow through the wilderness,
calling and free.
Spirit, spirit of restlessness,
stir me from placidness,
wind, wind on the sea.
“Spirt of restlessness, stir me from placidness.” While the coronavirus pandemic has clearly presented our society with challenges we never faced before, the pandemic has also
exposed challenges that already existed, but which many of us placidly ignored. Challenges such as income inequality, limited access to health care for millions of Americans, and squalid conditions in crowded refugee camps around the world. Will we continue to placidly accept such conditions when we return to “normal”?
As one San Antonio
civic leader puts it, when she hears people talk about how eager they are to get back to normal, “I say I hope we get back to better.”
“Spirit, spirt of restlessness, stir me from placidness.”
-- Bill
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Restless No More
Let us not forget that we are still in the Easter Season. We rejoice in salvation brought to us by the Risen Christ. We pray also for resurrection from the current pandemic while rejoicing with the
Taize
virtual Choir below.
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In resurrectione tua Christe coeli et terra laetentur!
(In your resurrection, Christ, heaven and earth rejoice!)
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Copyright (c) 2020 Soul Windows Ministries
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Sincerely,
Bill Howden and Jan Davis
Soul Windows Ministries
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