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11.29.05  Tuesdays Reflection

Have you met Jesus yet? read the tattered sign on the window of the Light of

Christ, a meeting place where homeless people are served a liberal serving

of religion together with weak coffee and stale donuts.

Yes, I met Jesus this morning. I met him in the ESL students from all over

the world arriving for their classes in the building where I volunteer. I

met Jesus in the staff at Change for Children. They certainly aren't in it

for the money but because they believe they can make a difference. I met

Jesus in the very patient childminding staff who take their charges to the

bathroom in front of our office door. I met Jesus in the poor person selling

the street paper at the corner, in the driver who stopped at the crosswalk,

in the post office employee who served me as if he had all the time in the

world. I've never seen him without a smile! In the bus driver, the

passengers. . .

Sunday we started Advent - a time of "recognition." Simone Weil wrote that

"we do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by

waiting for them . . . This way of looking is, in the first place,

attentive. The soul empties itself of all its contents in order to receive

the human being it is looking at, just as he is, in all his truth. . ."

Just as one must give someone the space in which to show who they are, so we

must give God the space in which to grant that Word, attentive and in

silence . . . It comes, as Yann Martel writes in Life of Pi, with "no

thundering from a pulpit, no condemnation from bad churches, no peer

pressure, just a book of scriptures quietly waiting to say hello . . .

Cecily