Universal Falling

Saturday of the 28^th Week in Ordinary Time

Luke 12:8-12

Do not worry about how or what your defense will be…

for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that moment

I had a professor once who straight up laughed at me…he laughed at how upset I was about the trouble I was having grasping what I was supposed to be learning in the course.  I was upset in week three.  What he saw and what I now see is that I wanted to be a master BEFORE I began my learning!  I wanted to know ahead of time that I would succeed…right out of the starting gate!  That worry speaks to my fear of failure or perhaps my desire to never be ill at ease.  I like being on the proficient side of the room.

I am thinking that today’s Gospel text urges the disciple to remember that whole ‘coming in the name of the one who sent me’ business.  I want to come in my own name.  And I want that name to be full of honor and praise.  The ego is so very powerful and it exerts its force…like gravity…without my notice!  

It takes a pretty sure faith and hope to relax into God.  To trust.  I am reminded of Fall*, a Rilke poem I scribbled with a Sharpie on my laundry room wall:

The leaves are falling

Falling as from far

As though above were withering farthest gardens

They fall with a denying attitude

And night by night down into solitude

The heavy earth falls from every star

We are all falling

This hand’s falling too

We all have this falling sickness

None withstanding

And yet

There’s One

Whose gently holding hands

This universal falling

Can’t fall through

*This poem has many various translations from the German.  I couldn’t find the translator of this version.  I scribbled it from an audio-listening many years ago…it is my favorite