Daily Reading for June 22 • Alban, First Martyr of Britain, c. 304
What’s needed is a structure for our spiritual life, some container to keep our growing awareness from dribbling away. As John Tarrant writes, in The Light Inside the Dark, “Everything new needs to be held, needs a place into which it can be born.” The name of this container is “character,” he writes. Character, Tarrant says, is the vessel in which to hold “our swirling selves.” We do not have a say in all that befalls us, but we do have a say in the shape of our own character.
In our daily work, in our roles as caregivers and providers, in our manner of receiving gifts and good works of others, we can be disciplined or not, mindful or not, responsible and responsive or not, but always our actions both shape and are shaped by the vessel of character. And traditionally, religious faith and spiritual practice are thought to strengthen this vessel, creating a sound container for our developing relationship to mystery, suffering, and the Divine. Life throws things at us that we cannot predict and cannot control. What we can control is who we are along the way.
From Learning to Fall: The Blessings of an Imperfect Life by Philip Simmons (Bantam Books, 2000).