Greetings!

For some as yet unexplained reason, I awoke this morning feeling rather low in spirit; my devotional time was…let’s just say perfunctory. Even now, I remember little of what I read or heard, except a passing allusion to transformation as part of the Spirit’s ongoing work in us. What I do recall, however, is an urgent need to return to a book I had started reading—one of several post-retirement reads that I am only halfway through. These days, I seem to have very little motivation for deep reading—anything beyond the mindless activity of Netflix and Hallmark. Lord, help me!

I picked up The Wisdom Years (A Spirituality of Aging, Reflection and Ripening, Harvest and Homecoming) by Margaret Silf, and leafing through pages I had already read, realised that although many lines were highlighted, much had faded from memory. I decided to reread the last highlighted chapter, but alas, I could not go beyond it; so poignant were the words. I found myself tearing up for reasons I cannot even bring to words. Silf quoted from William Blake’s poem Eternity, and as I read those lines, the floodgates opened.

He who binds himself to a joy

Does the winged life destroy;

He who kisses the joy as it flies;

Lives in eternity’s sun rise.

Reading those words felt like a call to open myself, to empty myself—but of what? I suddenly remembered the title of a book a friend had loaned me years ago, which I still have. The title, To Kiss the Joy, by Robert A. Raines, prompted me to look for it, and there it was among the old books I could not bring myself to discard in my recent move. Skimming through, I found that Chapter 8 was titled Kiss the Joy as it Flies. What is God trying to show me…to teach me? I began to read. Suddenly, these words leaped from the page into my consciousness:

I want to touch the tapestry of my life, melt its meaning, taste its fruit. I reach for permanence only to taste transience…

What tricks memory, time, change, play on us…The pull of the past feels stronger as we grow older, but it is the pull of death, for there is no permanence to be had, not even in the long run, for death and taxes.

Raines then quotes the same lines from Blake’s poem Eternity, and I suddenly realised that, as I approach my sixty-sixth birthday in exactly one week, my spirit is doing the kind of spring cleaning that my mind and body have yet to catch up with.

The euphoria of my present circumstances—especially in my still-new place of abode—can mask the deeper matters with which I must wrestle, in order to experience joy that is not determined only by means of external realities. It is there, in the wrestling (cf. Genesis 32:22–32), that I will learn not to cling to this temporal existence, but to kiss the joy of the moment, with its pains and blessings, while allowing space for the transition—the transformation—that must take place as I move closer toward the eternity that begins now.

The One who told Mary Magdalene (see John 20:17), is also telling me that while celebrating the past is entirely possible and permissible, I may not dwell there, lest I miss new and eternal joys to be experienced in letting go. I…we must learn to loosen our grip on temporal blessings, no matter how beautiful; we must learn to kiss the joy as it flies, and so experience eternity’s sun rise.

This morning’s reverie and the Spirit’s revelation[s] have, I hope, moved me further along the path—from the illusion of (temporal) certainty, and closer to the reality of eternal blessings…to the joy that is found only in and with God.

Continue to stay safe and well as you remain in God’s grip.

Grace+