15. Guard Your Heart
To help us all with the challenges we have been going through, and the uncertainty that surrounds us, it may be helpful to bring our thinking back to Jesus’s foundational teaching by exploring a collection of his most memorable parables. You may remember these stories from your youth. Or you may have heard them referenced in common culture.
Either way, you will know they have a child like quality to them that seems to reflect the lightness of summer. But don’t be fooled into thinking they are easy teachings, for embedded within them are the foundational tools for building the kingdom of heaven here on earth. And that’s what we are about, is it not? Building the kingdom of heaven here on earth.
As Jesus knew well, we like stories, and we learn well from narrative. So, I hope you enjoy our little wander through the parables this summer. But remember, too, to spend time resting as much as you are able, being outside when you can, or near a window, somewhere you can observe the magnificence of this world that has been gifted to you – leaf by leaf, blade of grass by blade of grass, bird by bird – each a miracle in their own right, as are you. We begin the summer series with the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.
“Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
— Mary Oliver, The Summer Day