Being and Obedience

In my class Reading the Bible with Benedict, Sr. Irene Nowell asked us to reflect on the statement by Abraham Joshua Heschel that “just to be” is already obedience, because it is obedience to God’s call in creation: “Let there be.” Whoa! So does that mean that when we obscure our being with noise and ceaseless activity, we are actually being disobedient to God’s call to us?

It is difficult for us to grasp that just to be is the basis of obedience, because most of us believe we need to earn God’s favor by what we do. Nonetheless, Heschel insists, “Just to be is a blessing; just to live is holy.”

“Just to be” does entail choices, however. I need to decide how I am going to be in the situations I encounter each day. For example, on Monday, when I was picking grapes in a vineyard in Weston with Srs. Barbara Smith and Marcia Ziska, I was savoring the meditative silence until two women arrived and began talking loudly and incessantly as they filled their own buckets. I could have chosen to use prayer or a chant to help myself stay focused, reminding myself that talking was their way of decompressing, but instead I fumed and allowed my annoyance to build, destroying my own sense of peace. In the future, when such situations arise, I need to remember to ask myself: “Is this who I choose to be?”