Fr.
Tony’s Midweek Message
One
Day at a Time
April
8, 2020
“If you are going
through hell, the only thing to do is keep going.”
--Winston Churchill
“If you can’t fly then
run. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving
forward.”
–The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
“What matters is not the
size of the dog in a fight,
but the amount of fight
in the dog.” --Mark Twain
Sometimes
when faced with an enormous problem that appears to have no end in sight, we
begin to obsess about what is going to happen next, soon, or
eventually. We start wondering about the
future, and often regret the lost past. But if we are fear-ridden about things to
come, and remorse-laden over what is lost, we are not living in the
present. And this makes us unable to
face anything. People in recovery from
drug or alcohol addiction know that this is a remedy for failure. One of their irreverent but memorable slogans
is “If you have one foot in the future and one in the past, all you can do is
piss on the present.”
Jesus
said again and again, “Fear not,” and “Trust God.” He said, "Do not worry about tomorrow, and what it may bring." Buddhism phrases this as “be mindful” and “be
fully present.” If you dwell in the present and focus your attention on it, you
have a chance of maintaining some serenity and calm, perhaps even some joy,
because you begin to focus on the next steps you must take rather than worrying
about big, horrible outcomes. This does
not mean covering your eyes, burying your head in the sand, or being
irresponsible about your future needs and duties. It does mean keeping all those concerns under
control by recognizing what you have some control over now, and what you have
little control over.
This
spirituality is summed up in the Twelve Step Program’s tag line “One Day at a
Time.” An addict, when faced with the
prospect of never ever returning to the drug of choice, is overwhelmed with
hopelessness—“how can I not relapse?” “Can you defy gravity?” “How can you breathe under water?” Attending to
today alone, what one needs to do today, is the key. Don’t worry about the road ahead writ large,
rather, focus on the next right thing, the step you must take now. As Jesus says, "Think about today: tomorrow has enough to worry about."
Physical
distancing, quarantine and isolation, fear about “what will happen to me, or my
loved ones?” is hard. It can beat us
into despair and a frenzy of panic. The
answer is simple, however: “Let go, and
let God.” That is, free yourself of the
responsibility of outcomes and allow your trust in a provident Deity to hold
you up so you can keep going. When you
are in hell, you can only get through it by keeping on. And one of the only ways to keep on going is
to worry just about what is before us, and what we are currently called to do.
Grace
and Peace.
Fr.
Tony+
NOTE
ON HOLY WEEK:
Trinity
Ashland will live-stream at www.facebook.com/trinityashland
services for Maundy Thursday (7 p.m.), Good Friday (Noon), and Easter Sunday
(10 a.m.). We will participate in the Diocesan
Great Vigil of Easter on Saturday at 7 pm, live-streamed at www.facebook.com/trinitycathpdx
and www.youtube.com/trinitycathpdx
. Trinity Ashland will email our bulletins before services and post them at www.trinitychurchashland.org
. The Cathedral will post its bulletins at
Service Leaflets - Trinity Episcopal Cathedral
. Our bulletins include directions for
commemorating these rites at home, including for Maundy Thursday a 6 p.m. agapé
meal as well as hand-washing and stripping of your home altar, and for Good
Friday adoration of the cross and walking the way of the cross after the
service. If the feeds should break off
at any time, we will quickly renew the stream (this takes usually less than 4
minutes), and resume where we left off.
Having the bulletins on hand (printed or on another screen) means you can
continue the rites at home even if you cannot get a broken feed back.
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