Love and Leisure
May 17, 2009
Fr. George Smiga
John 15:9-17
Our readings today are so filled with mention of love that it might surprise you that what I want to talk about this morning is leisure. But love and leisure are closely connected,and it is my purpose this morning to demonstrate how that is the case.
I don’t know if you can recall your earliest memory in life. I can. I think I was about three years old, perhaps younger. It’s hard to tell. But I certainly was old enough to be able to know my way around our house, to move from one room into another in the ordinary course of play in which three year olds routinely engage. I remember one day entering into my parent’s bedroom. I had done that hundreds of times before. But this day as I walked in through the door, I was stopped in my tracks. There was a beam of sunlight coming in through the window at a particular angle which allowed it to luminate all the dust particles that were within it. The effect was dazzling, a beam of light in which millions of luminous specks were slowly rotating. I stood looking at that apparition for the longest time. I had never seen anything like it. After a few minutes I was drawn to it and I passed my hand through the beam. The dust particles made way for my fingers, swirling like currents in a stream. I played with that sunbeam until it disappeared with the passing of the sun. It was my first experience of wonder.
Wonder is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes we use the word “awe” to name it. Awe takes place when beauty or peace or an unexpected freshness pulls us up and somehow elevates us in a moment of amazement. Awe moves us out of our ordinary lives into the eternal, if only for a few moments. But in those few moments we come about as close as we can to knowing—not with just our head but with our whole being—the presence of God. You see, awe and love are connected. They are connected because in those elevated moments of wonder, we know that the thing we behold and indeed ourselves, have been created by a God who loves us. In those moments we understand what it means to say God is love and why Jesus commands us to remain in the love of God always.
Now the practical outcome of this is we need wonder in our lives. We require it. Without it, life becomes simply a matter of duty and achievement. Without wonder, our needs and our requirements fill up every minute of our calendars. Without it God becomes a word, a concept and our lives become empty. Now all of us at certain moments face a wonder that is inescapable. When we hold a newly born child or grandchild in our arms for the first time, when we stand on the rim of the Grand Canyon, when the purples and yellows and oranges of a sunset rivet our eyes and refuse to let go. In circumstances such as these, only people with hearts of stone remain preoccupied with themselves. But we need wonder more frequently than these rare dramatic moments. We need wonder on a regular basis. So how do we find it?
We find wonder through leisure. It is very important to understand what leisure is. Leisure is not the same thing as entertainment. Entertainment consists of the things we can schedule, a concert, a ballgame, a party, a vacation. But leisure is the ability, a habit of the heart, that allows us to see in those things and in all things, the beauty of creation and the presence of God. Leisure is the attitude that tells us it is not a waste to stop and gaze on a daffodil or to sit quietly for a few minutes and listen to the music of soft falling rain. Leisure tells us that it is important to recognize the beauty of our spouse’s smile and to relish the smell of the garlic in our grandmother’s marinara. Leisure says that there is a high priority to finding a few idle moments in even the busiest of days in which we can simply notice the beauty that surrounds us. The time we take to take that beauty in is not a distraction from life but actually delving into the very heart of living. It is in that moment that we touch the God whose life invigorates all things.
Wonder is a gift of the Holy Spirit, a necessary gift if we are to appreciate the presence of God in all created things. That is why the gospel today calls us to an attitude of leisure, an attitude that allows us to value the importance of wonder and to create a space in which we can experience it. Doing so is not optional or incidental. It is essential because every time we stand in awe, we understand better who we are and to whom we belong. Every time we are caught up in wonder, we know in our deepest heart that God is love.
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