Leah Sookoo’s Reviews > Gratefulness, The Heart Of Prayer: An Approach To Life In Fullness > Status Update

If God’s glory is really all that matters, then the totally useless is not to be relegated to moments of spare time once in a month of Sundays. We may have to learn that the useless deserves a prime time. The superfluous comes first in the order of importance. The necessary will claim attention anyway. […] might mean a far more drastic transformation by divine glory than we were prepared to undergo.

Beauty is useless, superfluous, like all great things in life. Is not the universe itself totally superfluous, fireworks of divine glory, and therefore, so priceless? Useful things have a price. But who can assess the value of a poem in dollars and cents? Who can put a price tag on a kiss?

Christmas happens again, here and now, the moment we mother the princely child within us. Mother and child—there is the image that challenges greed, fearfulness, and indifference. Everywhere in the world, mothers nourish; they have courage, they care. The mothers of the world challenge us to give birth to the “glorious freedom of the children of God” (Rom 8:21) through hope.

From every corner of the world rises the cry: time is running out! Everywhere it is the same: our wasteful greed lays this world waste; our fearfulness stockpiles threats that threaten to bring about what we most fear; our indifference fails to act when we ought to care, and so we cripple our own power to make a difference when at last we do care.

Hope is not merely a feeling. Hope is a virtue, a firmly established attitude of the heart, a basic bearing of the whole person. And yet we need only realize that feelings play an outstanding role in this area. Intellect, will, and emotions are all engaged in every virtue.

The process of purgation is at the core of every spiritual discipline. Patience holds still in the blast furnace of experience. Discipline is not so much a matter of doing this, or that, but holding still. Not as if this would cost no effort. But the effort is all applied to the crucial task, the task of making no effort.

Hope happens when the bottom drops out of our pessimism. We have nowhere to fall but into the ultimate reality of God’s motherly caring. That is why St Paul tells us that “tribulation leads to patience; and patience to experience; and experience to hope.

As we learn to give thanks for all of life and death, for all of this given world of ours, we find a deep joy. It is the joy of courageous trust, the joy of faith in the faithfulness at the heart of all things. It is the joy of gratefulness in touch with the fulness of life.

Seeking, losing myself, and allowing myself to be found—it’s all child’s play. Why then don’t I do it? The answer is: I am afraid—afraid of seeking, and maybe not finding; afraid of losing myself maybe, maybe for good; afraid of being found and maybe found wanting. Maybe I’m afraid, most of all, that there must be something wrong with so childlike an approach. I’m afraid it can’t be that simple.

Death […] is the point where I so completely lose myself in the seeking that a breakthrough occurs: I find. But what I find is not what I was looking for. I find that what I was, after, without knowing it, wasn’t finding at all, but being found. And at that moment I am found. Yes, now I even found myself, but that seems no longer of much importance in the midst of these glorious mysteries.