Let Evening Come (written on a Sunday Night after a good sermon from Pastor Dave)

Dark nights and confusing signs abound in the twilight at day’s end. Tonight as I listen to the news on my radio the strains in our political world mix with the growing shadows which come so early in standard time. I am at loose ends. When I am lost and foundering I usually find my way back to reading Merton and to attending the Sunday evening service at my church.

Every other Sunday the evening service at the church of which I am a part is a vespers presentation. Sung with soft hymns about the day drawing to its end the service seems very organic. Organic in this context means very connected with life at its essence stripped of the artifice of modern humankind’s struggle to push living toward a twenty four hour nonstop affair. Vespers takes us collectively back to a moment when the presence or absence of the sun and its warmth dictated not only animal behavior but human behavior as well.

Vespers marks the end of day, the moment when candles are to be extinguished, the hour when we end our shuffling back to our hovels or monastic cells and pull up a scratchy wool blanket to await the full measure of night's stillness. Vespers is a moment of giving thanks for our meager possessions and life itself and it is a moment of prayer for safety in the unknown. Vespers is lying down in hope awaiting the sun at dawn’s light.

Last night at vespers the reading was from Thessalonians. It was the passage where the apostle exhorted the early church members not to grieve as those without hope for theirs was the promise of reuniting with those who had gone on in faith before. When I read Merton this morning it was complimentary to this. Merton assertion was that fearing death impedes us living life. He implied that with the promise of something sacred we should not be afraid to live taking on all the risks a full commitment to justice, honesty, love, kindness and compassion entails.

A good sermon, a good reading and I am refreshed for the moment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5p_U8J0iRQ