by Melissa Borgmann-Kiemde, Visitation Companion
What kind of space (between and among things) do you seek or crave?
My cell phone is broken. Technically, the keypad is broken, as I have a non-functioning space bar on my pda. Whenever I go to send a text, or compose a post to update my facebook status, or try to respond to an email via my droid, I am stymied. Allthewords andlettersandthoughts runtogetherlikethis. It’s maddening, I tell you. The experience has me contemplating space, and the way space between words and thoughts, moments and feelings functions in my heart and mind. Without space between each letter on my keyboard, it’s hard to communicate clearly. I think the same thing might be said for my spirit: without space between experiences, between thoughts, questions, and prayers, I’m not sure that I am fully entering into my life, and the present moment, and “getting” the fullness of God’s presence.
For seven of the last ten days, I have been in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico; this is a wholly different “space” on numerous levels from life in Minnesota. Traveling south of the US border to spend time in the Baja Peninsula, where the deep blue of the Pacific Ocean and Sea of Cortez mingles with the white beach sand and our pink adobe resort, is a stark contrast especially to the spaces that the Visitation Sisters of north Minneapolis inhabit. The summer and winter landscapes alone inspire a radically different mindset; add the economic disparities between the Pueblo Bonito guests and the residents of Old Highland surrounding the Visitation Monastery, and you have a wider gap between life experiences and perhaps more dissonance in your brain.
These are some of my thoughts as I reflect and pray this day, focusing especially on space, and the space between things.
On one hand, I crave and must insist upon these pockets of air and the widened proximity between thoughts, feelings, questions, and experiences. When everything runs together, I too feel like a jumbled mess on the inside and outside. On the other hand, when I consider increasing gulfs between people and resources, I likewise get anxious.
It is in traveling, however, in getting away from the familiar, that I find myself even closer to issues and emotions of home.
Mother and Child painting by Gabbi Patrick
I was standing outside a fine-Mexican-dining establishment in Cabo, with my daughter in front of me, awaiting our taxi, when a local woman, black hair pulled back from her face, with a small child strapped to her body, approached me with her hand outstretched. The brown of her skin and darkened pink palms with black under her nails struck me. Instinctively, I turned my body from her; somewhere in my mind, I couldn’t get far enough away from her — her need, want, her request for something from me. I craved space between this woman and her babe – and me with my own.
Reflecting on this moment now, I am embarrassed. I am filled with emotion; deep remorse and sorrow couple my recognition of my own poverty, need, and want. The space between this woman and I shrinks, and I see her as I see myself: full of desire, full of want; hungry for something…love, peace, a greater sense of security? The very thing that triggers my seemingly urgent need to turn away from this woman and experience lies at the heart of my need to be closer, gentler, kinder to my own self and the world around me. These are the very reasons I choose daily to align myself with the Visitation Community in north Minneapolis.
For your Reflection:
- What kind of space (between and among things) do you seek or crave?
- What surfaces in your prayer and reflection as you are present to your own life, community, world?
- How is your proximity to poverty or wealth, silence or sound an inspiration for your own contemplation and action?
I welcome your responses.
I’ve attached a flyer for the event — please consider joining us (and bringing a friend).
I can look at the apparent chaos of my life and see it as just that chaos. A slew of requests when I am getting the littles ready to go out the door in the morning. Or I can invite myself to find God in my mornings, and breath in the littles simple dependance. With this prayer on my heart their need for me to do, assist, help, or encourage depending on their ages becomes sweet like honey that God gave me these four gifts to nurture and nudge along in their growth from getting dressed, to grasping the intimacy of their loving God. The mere fact that they can trust that I am here with them through the mundane muddle of everyday routines to the bigger questions they pose, “Is God visible?” and be just as in awe at them buttoning their pants alone for the first time as the questions they ask, means together we encounter the sacred as we clothe ourselves in God’s graces. This brings me to my knees; I am humbled by their beauty.
