What is my life about?

Searching on my iPad for a streamed Sunday service this morning I found myself again at St Muredach's Cathedral in Kilmoremoy, Ireland.

So many scriptural images, stories, phrases have passed into our language and thought patterns that I immediately resonated to the story of the two disciples walking on the road to Emmaus. Every time I hear it or the other parables of the Prodigal son, the Good Samaritan and even the incidents such as the woman caught in adultery I find a whole new take and dimension for reflection.

In the parable of the Prodigal Son I am ever brought up short by the phrase 'he came to himself'. A sudden realisation of his true state, his real purpose outside his own desires, fantasies and escapes, indeed his own imprisonment comes to his consciousness.

It is a phrase worthy of contemplation?

What is my life about?

Where do I best serve and how do I best live to become the true person I am?

It may take more than a lifetime to realise but it is a path on which we must tread.

A constant true self study helps this journey to integrity and fullness of life. Again, Plato's reminder that 'an unexamined life is not worth living.'

In the story of Emmaus the phrase which touched me today was something 'stopped them from recognising him' and almost its corollary; 'they recognised him in the breaking of bread', an intimate action witnessed before in their relationship.

Something stopped them from recognising him applies, I feel, to many of us. Too frequently I hear at a funeral of the life of the deceased and am aware that I did not know a particular trait or activity nor recognise aspects of his character. I realise that I knew him from my point of view, that our relationship was on my terms. I was bound up in my agenda. 

As a child of 14 my mother found an artist to come to help and guide me with my painting. I can recall the first session so well. She was a French lady living in a big old wooden Yali on the river Bosphorus in Istanbul. Her first question to me was 'what colour is that wall?' pointing at our drawing room wall. I answered that it was white. She then pointed out to me by mixing colours on her pallet and painting her canvas that I was seeing less than was there. "Look at it, look at the colour, really look". 

So often we do not realise the inner meaning, the reality or the truth of something..we take the superficial picture. It is as if there is a beam in our own eye. 

The two disciples on the road to Emmaus were cast down, saddened, disappointed for Jesus had died while they expected him to be the saviour of their people. That expectation, that focus, that concentration on his power to liberate, to save his people had, I surmise, blinded them to the true person and mission of the man they thought they knew.

It is as if, certainly in my case, my expectations are blinding me to the reality. I want what I expect and I expect what I want so that I interpret the words, gestures and actions to fit my bill.

Here it is that I realise the value of criticism, of examination, of a reality check.

Take off the rose tinted egotistical glasses and face what IS rather than what isn't.

A dose of truth.

May be that truth will, in the end, set us free so that we may not only see but perceive.

#life #contemplation #emmaus #prodigalson #plato #rosetinted