24 May
Dear friends,
About two weeks ago, I had a rather sobering moment while exchanging my South African driver’s license for a Dutch one. Standing at the Gemeente desk, I handed over my documents, only to be met with a concerned look from the clerk. “This is not a recent photo,” he said, eyeing my passport pictures with quiet judgment. I assured him they were recent. How could they not be, given the endless photo-taking required for visa applications these past months? But he wasn’t convinced. Pointing to the solemn expression on my face in the picture, he said, “You are much older now than in this photo... even your hair was browner back then.”
With that small blow to my pride, I admitted defeat, turned around, and made my way to the photo booth for another round of snapshots.
So, how’s this year treating you?
We are moving into the season of the Spirit. Last Sunday, we reflected on the story of Cornelius. This coming Sunday, we’ll turn to Lydia’s story, and soon we’ll mark Ascension and Pentecost. In his book Being Disciples, Rowan Williams explores what it means to live life in the Spirit. He reminds us that, for Paul, this wasn’t about living a life filled with what we often label as “spiritual” activities. It was something far more grounded: the kind of humanity we live out day to day. Joy, peace, patience, and the rest. Or, as Williams puts it, it’s about “coming alive in Jesus Christ.”
He describes four dimensions of this aliveness: self-knowledge, stillness, growth, and joy. It was the second – stillness – that stayed with me as I reflected on that moment at the Stadsloket, and as I looked back over the past few months. Williams writes:
“To hear what God is saying we need a degree of stillness – stillness of body as well as of mind or heart. ‘Be still, and know,’ says the psalmist (Psalm 46.10). Be still, and know – because I begin to know who God is, who I am, what the world is, when what one poet called ‘the storms of self’ have calmed down a little bit. And I would stress that the stillness of the body is a part of this.”
He goes on to quote Francis de Sales’s gentle reply to someone eager to live a more “spiritual” life:
“I’ll start giving you spiritual direction when you have begun to walk more slowly, talk more slowly, and eat more slowly.”
May this be your weekly reminder to do just that. Not to let the year rush ahead of you, but to be led by the Spirit into the quietness of the everyday. May you find rest in the mundane.
Marius Louw