Trust

Road to Healing – Lenten Journey 2014
Day 39:
Play Now: 

No doubt many of you have passed by an art gallery with a quick glance in and then continued to walk.

Art either talks to you or it doesn’t. When I walk past a gallery, curiosity is the first lure that gets me to glance at the work in the window. And then, there’s a quick assessment. Do I like what I see or not? I’m a sucker for the surrealists, so even a small Salvador Dali in the corner will get me to walk through the door. But once I’m in I’m pretty quick on deciding whether I’m going to spend some time looking at the pieces or not. My attention span is pretty short in general and even shorter when I don’t get the artwork. I know this is an age issue. When you’re younger you can find more time to look, evaluate and even pretend you understand some of the stuff. But at this point in my life, I know what I like and if I don’t, I don’t mean any disrespect but I just walk away. I’m usually not critical of the artwork, realizing that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but on a few occasions I have mumbled under my breath a question or two about the validity of the work as “art.”

There is one gallery, though, that I have never been able to pass without stopping by for a look. I’d venture to say that many of you share my same experience. It happens every time I look out that large window that extends to the edge of my peripheral vision and captures the sunset. And though I’ve seen hundreds, perhaps thousands of sunsets, I never tire of casting a look and letting my imagination be pulled down the horizon as it marks the end of the day.

Sometimes I’m lucky, especially at the beach. Clouds will cover parts of the Sun, making for streamers that rise to the heavens. Other times it combines with the atmosphere to produce colors so unique and subtly different from the standard chart of colors. Have you ever noticed, you can never capture a sunset exactly on film or on canvas? You can come close to mimicking the colors, but never an exact copy. Each sunset is a beautiful combination of fire, clouds, atmosphere and the hand of God. Different shapes and diffusions decorate this artwork from the master of all eternity.

Each sunset points to the inevitable truth of our life, namely that time moves forward and we are called to value each moment in that movement. As the sun moves on its path below the horizon, we realize that the moment and the day will never come back. Enjoy the moment for what it is. And as your mind goes for the ride below the horizon your imagination is called upon to dream of tomorrow.

From the sunset we understand that the past is completely guaranteed. No question about it: it happened. The present is happening; you are given a chance to enjoy as brief as it may be. And the future? It’s completely and totally unknown. You can plan, work, sweat, toil and struggle for a bright future, but at some point you have to take it on faith that tomorrow will arrive and trust that you will be a part of it.

A healthy lifestyle has this basic trust component built into it. Without this trust, there is no life.

There is no guarantee that the Sun will rise tomorrow morning, but if each night you went to bed with the fear that it would not, you’d cease to function. Your time and energy would be consumed with unnecessary worry. Because the Sun has a strong track record, that is, every day of your life it has risen, and you have on good authority that it has done so for last several million years; you therefore assign a high level of trust to it. Not so with your illness though. Health – physical, emotional, mental – has let you down, so you’ve assigned a lower level of trustworthiness to it.

Today is the day to move trust in your health up a few notches. We trust that there will be new sunrise tomorrow morning and with that we put our head on the pillow. What does it take to believe the same about life? Part of the healing process is to believe and trust in yourself and the life that has been created around you. All around you is the fingerprint – the artwork – of God. Your only response to it is to trust that your life is adorned and decorated by God.

These past few weeks we have been on the Road to Healing and have tossed around many ideas. The lessons of each day are all predicated on trust. Just as a new sunrise tomorrow morning is unquestionable, so too the healthiness of your life must be trusted.

Here is a prayer of healing from the Armenian Church,
Lord our God, take away the pain and heal the sickness of your people. Grant them all complete health by the sign of your all-triumphant cross, by which you took away the frailty of the human race and condemned the adversary of our life and salvation. You are our life and salvation, O Merciful God. You alone are able to forgive sins and to drive pain and sickness out of us. And you know how to cure our afflictions. O Giver of good gifts, give your creatures the gift of your abundant mercy, each according to their needs. Let us always glorify and praise the all holy Trinity, Father, Son & Holy Spirit.

I look forward to meeting with you tomorrow as we continue on the Road to Healing.

Produced by Suzie Shatarevyan for epostle.net
Photo: Sunset over San Francisco (c)2005 Fr. Vazken Movsesian
Get A Lenten Journey with Fr. Vazken delivered by email
View in iTunes
Now Playing on BluBrry

Time-Dash

Road to Healing – Lenten Journey 2014
Day 34:
Play Now: 

Walk through a cemetery and you’re sure to see a variety of headstones.

Different epitaphs describe the departed individual and/or a philosophy of life. On most headstones you’ll find the name of the deceased person followed by two dates – the year of birth and the year of death. Between the two dates is what I call the “time dash.” This is a small line that denotes the time between birth and death. The dash is usually the same size, whether it points to a life measured by months or one measured by decades.

Illness and disease remind us of our mortality, that is they remind us that the dash has to have some meaning. Conversely, when the dash is meaningful, illness and disease do not seem to matter.

Academy Award winner Sidney Poitier opens his spiritual autobiography with a scene that is all too

familiar. He writes:

It’s late at night as I lie in bed in the blue glow of the television set. I have the clicker in my hand, the remote control, and I go from 1 to 97, scrolling through the channels. I find nothing that warrants my attention, nothing that amuses me, so I scroll up again, channel by channel, from bottom to top. But already I’ve given it the honor of going from 1 to 97, and already I’ve found nothing. The vast, sophisticated technology and … nothing. It’s given me not one smidgeon of pleasure. It’s informed me of nothing beyond my own ignorance and my own frailties.

But then I have the audacity to go up again! And what do I find? Nothing, of course. So at last, filled with loathing and self-disgust, I punch the damn TV off and throw the clicker across the room, muttering to myself, “What am I doing with my time?”*

This is the question that becomes more pronounced when illness and disease hit us. Surely, the scenario in which Poitier finds himself is another type of disease.

When things are going well, we forgot that our time on this planet and in this life is limited. Time is the most precious of all commodities. We know this. We say it enough, with witty words like, “Life is too short…” But when it comes down to it, we take our time for granted.

As we move on our own spiritual journey and on the Road to healing, the question “What am I doing with my time?” is central to our wellbeing. There are many ways to answer this question. It could be descriptive of time-spent, such as, “I am scanning through 97 channels,” or it can be as profoundly simple as “I am living.”

Interestingly enough, you don’t have to give an accounting of this question to anyone but yourself. To who else does it matter? You know if you’re wasting, squandering, exploiting, enjoying or living the life you have. And no one else can place a value or make a judgment call on your use of time. Ultimately, you are responsible for the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years of your life. They will make up the content of the time-dash one day.

You are on the Road to Healing. You, if anyone, know the value of time. Part of the 40-day Lenten Journey is to find the strength and courage to implement the discoveries you’ve made during this time, throughout the rest of the year. That is, the 40 days of Lent are to strengthen the 325 other days in the year, and ultimately to make the life changes you need to be and live the healthy life you were intended to live.

Today’s prayer is an adaption that I have made to St. Nersess Shnorhali’s prayer of the 9th hour. It’s about being. Let us pray,
Lord, bless me with the holiness to open my eyes to the beauty in the world, my ears to hear the songs in the air, my mouth so that I may speak out for righteousness, my heart so that it may think of peace, my hands so that I may work for justice, my feet so that I may walk in the paths of healing, and direct me in your commandments. Have mercy on all your creation. Amen.

This is Fr. Vazken, looking forward to continuing the Road to Healing with you tomorrow.

* From “The Meaure of a Man: A spiritual autobiography” by Sidney Poitier, 2000, Harper San Francisco

Produced by Suzie Shatarevyan for http://epostle.net
Photo – Guitar Magic (c) 2002 Fr. Vazken Movsesian
Get A Lenten Journey with Fr. Vazken delivered by email
View in iTunes
Now Playing on BluBrry