PHOTO: Mary van Balen
My thoughts are not your thoughts,
my ways not your ways it is the Lord who speaks.
Yes, the heavens are as high above earth
as my ways are above your ways,
my thoughts above your thoughts.
Noon reading Isaiah 55:8-9
I look over the ancient city bounded by sea and mountains, and think of the eternity of God. The Mystery. The One Who Is. The Holy One has known peoples from all times and places. Those of us who live on this planet in 2011, those who first walked upright and reflected on their own existence, and everyone in between.
I have walked archaeological sites in Europe and wondered at Stonehenge, touching the huge monoliths before ropes and restrictions made their appearance. I have walked into caves dripping stalactites and growing stalagmites from their floors. I have prayed in great cathedrals of Western Europe, and like the character, Lionel Louge, from “The King’s Speech,” have walked over great poets and authors in Westminster Abbey.
Those sites and experiences moved me to prayer and wonder, but walking in the midst of a culture so ancient and so different than my own provides a fleeting sense of the infinitesimal place I hold in the expanse of space and time that are but a moment in the eye of God.
Like Black Elk, the Oglala holy man, I realize that we are each but grass that withers on the hill. Yet, to the Divine Presence, we are each a treasure. How can this be?
“My ways are not your ways,” the Lord says. Each life, each age, each culture, every heart is precious. In a political climate that seems to relegate less importance to the welfare of the poor and vulnerable among us than it does to maintaining lifestyles of the rich and powerful, this truth is indispensable.
When I see Buddhist monks and people at prayer, remembering that God treasures each one of us, no matter our path to holiness, is important. Where we see “other,” God see’s beloved. As today’s afternoon reading reminds us: “God does not see as man sees; man looks at appearances but the Lord looks at the heart.”1 Samuel 16:7
© 2011 Mary van Balen
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