Addressed

“There’s a holiness in the fact that people are living in the world in a way that makes them feel that the world is addressed to them”

Marilynne Robinson, New York Times Magazine 2/15/24

It is easy to spend so much time in our lives frustrated because we are trying to live in ways that are addressed to someone else. We try to squeeze ourselves into the spaces that other people insist are home to the Divine, and I imagine the people who do it probably are encountering God there. But when we mold and force ourselves into those spaces, only to feel hurt and confused when we don’t have a similar experience, we can end up feeling lost. On the contrary, I know when a moment, an experience is addressed to me. I zings through me with a sense of knowing and recognition. It is a shame that it is so easy to them rush past these moments, to move quickly towards the other spaces we are told we need to occupy, instead of removing our shoes because the very place where we stand is holy ground, full of the presence of God. 

There is such grace and kindness to Robinson’s response to a journalist who seems like he isn’t able to see in religion what others do, when he finds the box seems empty to him. He asks, “What am I missing?” And she simply answers “Maybe nothing. … So trust your experience.” What grace. She is able both to create generous space and curiosity towards his experiences, while also acknowledging that many others find such meaning and richness in those very spaces where it feels lacking to him. What if we could offer this same grace to ourselves? What if we aren’t missing something? What if we aren’t doing it all wrong? What if we can simply dwell in the gift of receiving what has been addressed to us? What if we simply allow ourselves to leave aside “the game that your expectations may create” for the Divine and instead open our eyes to noticing the things that find us, that speak to something more. For me, it is often children, and nature, and books, and small overlooked things. It is found in freedom, and simplicity, intuition and feeling. It is that sudden sense of the connectedness of all things that blazes into my awareness, when I feel the fellowship of the world around me, when I become aware of the goodness and beauty that simply refuses to be stamped out.

What has been addressed to you in the beauty and chaos of our world? What do you treasure that speaks to you of “the dearest freshness deep down things?” (Gerard Manley Hopkins) What would it look like to pause there, to linger in admiration, to take off your shoes and name it a holy place? 

(The article is well worth a read. You can find it here if you are interested.)