comoscreator

Life is short, and we do not have too much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel the way with us: so be swift to love, and make haste to be kind.                                                        ~ Henri-Frederic Amiel

I suppose that those of us who pray regularly find ourselves drawn to particular prayers that might be enrolled among our favorites.  One of my favorite prayers is one penned by Henri-Frederic Amiel, a nineteenth-century Swiss Protestant pastor.  These words are also, I dare say, one of the favorite forms of blessing at Trinity Church, Copley Square, where I serve as Vicar.  When we use Amiel’s words to bless, we conclude the prayer with an invocation of the Blessed and Undivided Trinity.  But I think the Swiss pastor’s words embody a way to live that anyone – whether religious or not – take inspiration from..

Every time these words pass my lips, or rise up in my heart, they remind me not to live in a plodding, automatic pilot kind of way, as if life were endless.  Wake up!  Life is short, and every moment is precious, and in each moment we have a choice whether to act with kindness and love, or not.  And I dare say that if I give my moment-by-moment energy to anything other than kindness and love, I will have given myself to something lesser.

“The hours too swiftly fly” is a phrase from a hymn that I love.  But Amiel’s words remind me that though time flies – and seems to do so with increasing speed as I grow older – I still can seize the time for good by devoting myself to kindness and love each moment.

Today would have been my father’s 101st birthday.  He lived to be 98, and so one could hardly say that his life was short.  Though my father had his flaws – as do we all – most days he lived so as to embody the virtues that Amiel’s prayer exhorts us to incarnate.  Dad’s kindness and love were evident not so much in words – he was an introvert, and suspicious of easy words.  His love and kindness were enacted, quietly, solidly, without fanfare.  When I first discovered  Robert Hayden’s poem, Those Winter Sundays, it was as if I were reading about my father – and my unheeding self.

Those Winter Sundays       Robert Hayden, 1913 – 1980

Sundays too my father got up early 
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold, 
then with cracked hands that ached 
from labor in the weekday weather made 
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. 

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking. 
When the rooms were warm, he’d call, 
and slowly I would rise and dress, 
fearing the chronic angers of that house, 

Speaking indifferently to him, 
who had driven out the cold 
and polished my good shoes as well. 
What did I know, what did I know 
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Thank you, Dad, for your love and kindness, and for teaching me
so much of whatever love and kindness I know how to live.  On this 
your 101st birthday, I give thanks to God for you.  Today I find myself
imagining that you, and Henri-Frederic Amiel, and Robert Hayden are together in 
the Presence, basking in the primal love and kindness that has been
pouring into Creation from the first day.  By your prayers, may Grace grant us 
the power to live out whatever love and kindness we can today, and every day.