Gold's Gym and Franz Kafka

I went to the gym this rainy Friday afternoon. Felt good--good workout. While on the treadmill, I saw some Super Bowl hype shows. Judge Joe Brown was dispensing justice more or less on the other TV. While working on various pieces of equipment, the music videos didn't divert me.

Earlier today, I had been writing about my experiences 40 years ago in the civil rights movement in Mississippi. Tough times. Firebombings. Jailings. Deaths. I thought to myself what a strange contrasting day moving from the struggle for basic justice in Mississippi to MTV, hundreds of millions spent on the Superbowl and $25000for Britney Spears ride to the hospital with a 20 vehicle police escort. This is indeed a strange, strange trip we are on.

Somehow, we are each called to hold together the contradictory images and exerpienes of our life. Don't loose your soul, whatever is going on around you. Hermann Hesse writes in his novel Siddhartha, that his hero decides to seek in himself the secret of his own life. But when we find that secret or part of it, what do we do with it. Or rather how can we hold onto each piece of the secret of our life and carry that with us througout our life. Somehow, the world often distract us and we lose at least for a time some of those deep truths about ourselves that we had once found. We almost forget who we are.

I believe in the great power of remembering and reflecting on our own stories to find again and again the pieces of the secret of our life. At the Watchung Ave.Presbyterian Chruch we called it spiritual journaling and a group of us with joyful, fear and trembling would share precious, secret pieces of our story with one another.

That strange saint Franz Kafka wrote: "The early church fathers could go out alone into the emptiness of the dessert because they had richness in their hearts. We with richness all around us are afraid of the dessert, becasue we have emptiness in our hearts." But that is only parlty true. Yes, the richness and dazzle and distraction of the world around tends to drain our lives and hearts. But we each have soul richness--in abundance. Seek and ye shall find. Remember your story. Savor it. Mourn for that which calls for mourning and rejoice in the grace filled moments. Let us find richness in our hearts.