Allow for Now

According to the text of Matthew, when Jesus went to John the Baptist to be baptized, John reluctantly replied, "I need to be baptized by you..."  However, Jesus simply stated,  "Allow it for now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness."  

 

I think of this passage every time I see the sister sitting quietly in the congregation.  I would not even know she is a nun, except the executive director happened to mention it.  The sister now resides in a home dedicated to the care of those with dementia.  She has yet to speak to me, but she will join me for the Lord's prayer, and she smiles when she accepts communion.  Sometimes she even shakily takes my hand.   It is all I can do to not kneel and ask for a blessing from her, although I think she has already given it.  The director,new to this home, says that she does not know how the nun came to live at this particular community, but often the staff is very reluctant to give details of people's lives.   So, I make allowances for the now that we find ourselves in.  I am reminded that we are not simply a laundry cycle of remembering and forgetting - that we journey in and to God. There is more.         

          

I discovered the following prayer in an intriguing  book entitled, Leading from within, Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Lead.  This poem has some formatting that is impossible for me to duplicate in email.  My apologies, and my gratitude, to the author, Winston O. Abbott, and to all of you.  With you, I find fulfillment in this strange time of now.  

    

 

Let me remember 

 

Let me remember 

beyond forgetting -

let me remember -

 

let me remember always 

for my spirit is often shrouded in the mists -

let me remember beyond forgetting

that my life is not a solitary thing - 

it is a bit of the rushing tide 

a leaf of the bending tree - 

a kernel of grain in the golden wheat fields -

a whisper of wind about the mountaintop - 

a reflection of sunlight upon the 

shining waters - 

it is fleeting - 

it is of the moment 

it is timeless - 

it is of eternity.