We recall a scene in Our Town, that iconic American play of the 1930’s. Near
the end a young wife named Emily dies in childbirth. And from the grave she
asks the Stage Manager, the godlike narrator who presides over the action of
the play, if she may go back in time, back into her life for just one day. He
discourages her; she insists. And she is allowed to return to an ordinary
morning when she was a teenager. She views it from afar and relishes its quiet,
ordinary beauty. But very soon she is overwhelmed by it all. It’s too much
for her, and she cries out to the Stage Manager: I can't. I can't go on. It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at
one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on, and we never noticed.
Oh, earth, you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human
beings ever realize life while they live it--every, every minute? The Stage
Manager replies: No. The saints
and poets, maybe they do some.
Our earth is wonderful, indeed, for
Jesus has come to stay with us. His mercy finds us here over and over again.
Eternity is always interrupting, if we dare notice. The amazing yet ordinary
things- the beauty, the sorrow in human experience and in all of creation-
beckon to us and draw us to him, who is constantly seeking opportunities to
engage us. And the more needy we are; the more impossible our impediments, the
greater the opportunity for Jesus’ graced entrée.
Day after day atrocities beyond
imagining all over the world. And so again every
morning, we bring each other, we bring the world in its suffering and
despondency and seeming hopelessness to Christ, longing for the intrusion of
his grace. Not knowing how to speak our need and longing, and perhaps deafened
by too much tragedy, still we bravely pray with hope in our hearts. Christ Jesus assures us that he hears, he
understands; that he is with us, he himself praying, articulating our desire in
words beyond words. This is what our prayer is best of all: our desire groaned
by Jesus for us, within us.
Photograph by Brother Brian.
