He walked gently through the woods around the hermitage using his camera as a contemplative instrument.
Esther De Waal on Thomas Merton
These last two months of being a bike courier I hope to carry around my digital camera and learn how to bike gently through the downtown streets of Calgary. I find it so easy to become caught up in the worries of work - am I making enough money? - or in the daily tiredness and defeats on the road, like the two flat tires I've had this past week. Or just plain ol' boredom - thinking nothing I'm doing matters.
Where is God in all this? In the bitterly cold winter weather, in the busy traffic, in the pressing deadlines, in the cement, glass, and steel that surrounds me at work everyday - where is God?
My friend Nick sent me these words by Merton about three years ago, but only now am I beginning to understand them: This sunlight, this warm air, the sounds of the kitchens, speak of God's goodness and His mercy. I can sit here all day now, and think of that, and ask God to show me everywhere more and more signs of his mercy, and his goodness, and help me to regain my liberty. Peace.
I know God largely remains unknown, mysterious, and hidden to us - but I see glimpses of God's beauty in the daily grind and seeming relentlessness of work. In the flight of birds between, in the smiling face of a baby going by in a stroller, in the encouraging words of an e-mail, and in the laughter of friends and strangers. I find I must go back again and again to the center that sustains all things, as written in the words of St. Anselm of Canterbury from England (1033-1109):
Searching For God
O Lord my God, teach my heart today where to see you, how to see you, where and how to find you. You have made me and remade me, and you have given me all the good things I have ever possessed - and still I do not know you.
Teach me to seek you, for I cannot seek you unless you teach me, or find you unless you reveal yourself to me.
Help me to seek you in desire, help me desire you in my seeking, help me to find you by loving you, help me to love you when I find you.
From Sacred Poems & Prayers Of Love
Mary Ford-Grabowsky
