I stumbled upon this quote from a friend’s blog, I haven’t read this book (yet, but now I would like to) but I wanted to share it with you. I have some thoughts about it, but I don’t think I can put them into words yet – mostly revolve around the concept of joy and beauty in suffering.
It is when we are finally stumped, when we can think of nothing more that we can do, that we can most easily – though even then it is not, simply, easy – appreciate that problems are not just things calling for solutions. A problem is, more essentially, a unique situation calling for expression. It calls for a poet, a painter, a composer. And sometimes, in God’s providence, we may be that poet or painter or composer. Each individual situation in our world is an artistic, rather than an administrative, challenge. If we would inherit the earth, it must be, not by competent administration, but by something much more like artistic sensitivity and creativity.
It is surely the meek, those whose instinct is not to rush out and do something, but rather to look, helpless, passive before reality, and then, in union with God’s Word, to be, so speak, the word which releases each creature into itself, it is they who can enjoy a proper lordship in the earth. So do not get heated because of the wicked, there is no future in them or your fury. Rather rejoice hugely in the Lord and be content to rest in his truthfulness and to gaze with wonder upon the world of his making, and, with the eye of faith and hope, to see that world in the making even in the despair and helplessness of the world of everyday experience.
Father Simon Tugwell, O.P.
The Beatitudes: Soundings in Christian Traditions, pp. 46-47
